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• The Allies launched Operation Carpetbagger, which airdropped supplies to resistance fighters in Axis-occupied France and the Low Countries. ww2dbase [CPC]
• Sydir Kovpak was made a Hero of the Soviet Union for the second time. ww2dbase [Sydir Kovpak | CPC]

• Lieutenant Douglas Bedkober, a coast watcher of Australian Z Special Unit, died while in captivity at Rabaul, New Britain. It was reported by fellow prisoners of war that he had refused to eat for several days prior to his death. ww2dbase [Rabaul, New Britain | CPC]

• German government office RSHA released five Danish Jews of mixed descent per an agreement reached between Adolf Eichmann and the Danish administration. ww2dbase [CPC]

• USS Ray attacked two Japanese cargo ships in the Savu Sea just off the coast of Timor Barat (West Timor), Dutch East Indies, damaging one of them with 2 of 4 torpedoes fired. ww2dbase [Ray | Timor Barat | CPC]

• 80 British RAF aircraft attacked two German flying bomb sites in France. ww2dbase [Bombing of Cities in France and Low Countries | CPC]

• Germany called for the mobilization of school children to aid the war effort. ww2dbase [TH]
• In a conference attended by German leaders Heinrich Himmler, Wilhelm Keitel, Albert Speer, and Fritz Sauckel, it was decided that four million people were to be conscripted from occupied territories as forced laborers for war production. One million were to be drafted from France between 1 Feb and 31 Dec 1944. ww2dbase [Heinrich Himmler | CPC]
• 13 British Mosquito aircraft attacked Berlin, Germany. ww2dbase [Bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and Other Cities | Berlin | CPC]
• Artur Axmann was awarded the German Order. ww2dbase [Artur Axmann | CPC]
• The USAAF 306th Bomb Group flying from RAF Thurleigh launched a bombing raid against the submarine facilities at Kiel, Germany. ww2dbase [RAF Thurleigh | Bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and Other Cities | Kiel | DS]

• Barbers Point Naval Air Station: Part of ACORN-20 arrived. ww2dbase [Barbers Point Naval Air Station | Ewa, Oahu | DS]
• USS Grayback arrived at Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii, ending her ninth war patrol. ww2dbase [Grayback | Pearl Harbor Navy Base and Ford Island Naval Air Station | Honolulu, Oahu | CPC]

• The fascist Italian Social Republic in Northern Italy passed laws to prohibit Jews from owning stock or land and to seize Jewish-owned assets. ww2dbase [CPC]
• US II Corps attacked along Route 6 across the Bernhardt Line in Italy. ww2dbase [Advance to the Gustav Line | CPC]

• Irako departed Yokosuka, Japan for Truk, Caroline Islands with destroyers Shigure and Harusame in escort. ww2dbase [Irako | Yokosuka, Kanagawa | CPC]

• USS Cabrilla sank a Japanese transport in the late afternoon in the South China Sea, hitting her with 3 of 6 torpedoes fired. Six hours later, she attacked another oiler with 3 torpedoes, damaging her with 1. ww2dbase [Cabrilla | South China Sea | CPC]
• USS Bluefish sank a Japanese oiler and damaged other ships in the South China Sea, hitting them with 3 of 13 torpedoes fired. ww2dbase [Bluefish | South China Sea | CPC]
• Gato-class submarine USS Silversides detected a convoy of two large tankers but with no torpedoes left, all she could do was track the ships while giving position reports to other submarines. ww2dbase [Silversides | DS]

• At Auschwitz Concentration Camp, SS Doctor Eduard Wirths notified fellow medical officers at Auschwitz III-Monowitz that, as of this date, corpses of deceased prisoners should be identified and then sent directly to the crematoria, bypassing the previous procedure of sending the corpses to the morgue at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau first. Death reports, however, must still be filed at the orderly room of prisoners' hospital in Auschwitz I by noon time of the same day that the corpses were sent to the crematoria. ww2dbase [Auschwitz Concentration Camp | Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Oswiecim | CPC]

• US Navy aircraft struck Japanese bases on Taiwan. ww2dbase [CPC]

• Physicist Albert Einstein sent a two-page letter to the United States Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance describing the exponentially increasing forces created when a torpedo strikes a target at a right angle versus more oblique approaches. ww2dbase [Albert Einstein | Mark XIV | DS]

4 Jan 1944 Interactive Map