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• Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell visited India and offered US Army railway troops to support the British Bengal and Assam Railway. ww2dbase [CPC]
• Banking tycoon William Averell Harriman replaced William H. Standley as the United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. ww2dbase [Averell Harriman | AC]
• USS Nicholas departed Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides bound for Efate, New Hebrides. ww2dbase [Nicholas | DS]

• Destroyer USS Saufley arrived at Tulagi, Solomon Islands. ww2dbase [Saufley | Tulagi, Solomon Islands | DS]

• U-23 sank Soviet merchant ship Tanais, at anchor off Poti, Georgia, with a torpedo. The ship broke in two, with the stern sinking immediately, and the bow sinking a few minutes later. Eleven were killed, ten survived. ww2dbase [U-23 | Poti | CPC]

• British elements of US 5th Army capture Sparanise, Italy. ww2dbase [Advance to the Gustav Line | Sparanise, Campania | CPC]

• Yamato, Musashi, Fuso, Nagato, Kongo, Haruna, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Takao, Atago, Maya, Chokai, Mogami, Suzuya, Tone, Chikuma, Agano, Oyodo, and a destroyer screen departed Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands and sortied to a position 250 miles south of Wake Island. ww2dbase [Yamato | Tone | Agano | Oyodo | Chokai | Maya | Atago | Suzuya | Mogami | Chikuma | Haruna | Kongo | Mineichi Koga | Musashi | Shokaku | Fuso | Takao | Zuikaku | Nagato | Eniwetok | CPC]

• U-537 departed Martin Bay, Labrador, Newfoundland after installing Weather Station Kurt and repairing the submarine's storm damage. ww2dbase [Weather Station Kurt | U-537 | CPC]

• USS Grayback fired her deck gun at a small boat in the East China Sea, causing no damage. ww2dbase [Grayback | East China Sea | CPC]
• Submarines USS Balao and USS Silversides made a torpedo attack on the seven ships of Convoy O-006 bound from Rabaul to Palau. Balao observed three badly damaged ships before having to go deep to avoid a counterattack. Silversides sank fleet oiler Tennan Maru and badly damaged army cargo ships Johore Maru and Kazan Maru which sank the following day. ww2dbase [Silversides | DS]

• A transport of prisoners from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp arrived at Gas Chamber II of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. In the undressing room, one of the Jewish women seized SS man Josef Schillinger's pistol and shot Schillinger and another guard, Wilhelm Emmerich. Other prisoners joined in to attack other guards, but the SS eventually took control of the situation. Schillinger died on the way to the hospital; Emmerich survived the wound, but became permanently disabled. ww2dbase [Auschwitz Concentration Camp | Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Oswiecim | CPC]

• Soviet forces captured Melitopol, Ukraine after 10 days of combat; meanwhile, Malinovsky's forces captured Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. ww2dbase [TH]

• Two years after the death of his first wife, Margaret, former British Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George (aged 80) married his secretary and mistress, Francis Stevenson, much to the disapproval of his children. ww2dbase [AC]

23 Oct 1943 Interactive Map