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• Philippe Leclerc was promoted to the rank of division general. ww2dbase [Philippe Leclerc | CPC]

• Chinese 86th Corps, having held the Japanese 39th Division attack at the shore of the Yangtze River since the previous day, fell back toward Pianyan, Hubei Province, China. Earlier in the afternoon, Chiang Kaishek had personally telephoned area commander Wu Qiwei, stressing the importance of holding Pianyan. ww2dbase [Battle of Exi | Pianyan, Hubei | CPC]

• Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary that the industrial and residential districts in Dortmund, Germany were heavily damaged by Allied bombing. ww2dbase [Bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and Other Cities | Dortmund, Westfalen-Süd | CPC]
• In a conference in Berlin, Germany, Albert Speer recommended that the funding for military research be focused on the V-2 rocket program rather than being spread around a wide range of projects that included jets, heat-seeking missiles, sound-seeking torpedoes, and others. Ultimately this recommendation would be ignored. ww2dbase [Albert Speer | V-Weapons Campaign | Berlin | CPC]

• Gato-class submarine USS Silversides made reconnaissance observations of Apamama Atoll, Gilbert Islands. ww2dbase [Silversides | Apamama | DS]

• USS Tunny departed Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii for her third war patrol. ww2dbase [Pearl Harbor Navy Base and Ford Island Naval Air Station | Tunny | Pearl Harbor, Oahu | CPC]
• USS Permit arrived at Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii, ending her eighth war patrol. ww2dbase [Permit | Pearl Harbor, Oahu | CPC]
• Barbers Point Naval Air Station: Bachelor Officer Quarters (BOQ) "C" turned over to station. ww2dbase [Barbers Point Naval Air Station | Ewa, Oahu | DS]

• Submarine USS Saury arrived in her assigned patrol area between the Ryukyu Islands and Kyushu, Japan. ww2dbase [Saury | DS]

• 507 men and 528 women of the Gypsy camp in Birkenau of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp system, most of whom were from Poland and Austria, were gassed. At least several hundred of them were sick, many of whom with typhus, thus giving the camp authorities to write off their deaths as natural. ww2dbase [Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Auschwitz Concentration Camp | Oswiecim | CPC]

• A Victoria Cross award was gazetted for John Linton, who had recently been lost when the submarine HMS Turbulent which he commanded became missing in action in mid-Mar 1943, for the sustained period of leadership during the war. ww2dbase [CPC]

• In a letter dated on this date, Robert Oppenheimer responded to a proposal by Enrico Fermi to use radioactive materials to poison German food supplies. In the letter, Oppenheimer asked whether Fermi could produce enough strontium while still maintaining secrecy. Oppenheimer also noted that such a project should not be started unless there would be a certainty that 500,000 people could be killed. ww2dbase [CPC]

• USS Whale arrived off Apra, Guam, Mariana Islands and observed Japanese activities inside the harbor. ww2dbase [Whale | Apra | CPC]

• The first British mission to coordinate with local partisans parachuted into Yugoslavia. ww2dbase [TH]

25 May 1943 Interactive Map