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• Overnight, 400 US bombers, escorted by 600 fighters, bombed Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Later in the same night, the RAF bombed Düsseldorf, Germany. ww2dbase [Bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and Other Cities | TH]
• Soviet troops launched a massive breakout attack from their bridgehead north of Kiev, Ukraine. ww2dbase [Battle of Kiev | TH]
• During the German Aktion Erntefest, Jewish prisoners were beginning to be massacred at Trawniki, Poniatowa, and Majdanek Concentration Camps; when the aktion was completed on the following day, 42,000 would be dead. ww2dbase [Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | CPC]
• USS Scorpion arrived off Maug Islands of the Mariana Islands. ww2dbase [Scorpion | CPC]
• British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris wrote a treatise addressed to Winston Churchill in which he outlined British RAF Bomber Command's past achievements and its future objectives; Berlin, Germany would become the priority target with Leipzig, Chemnitz, Dresden, Bremen and other cities listed as secondary targets. He remarked disparagingly of recent American lack of co-ordination, their disastrous diversions such as the Ploiesti raid in Romania, and the siting of the recently formed US 15th Air Force in Southern Italy, far from the centres of German war production. ww2dbase [Arthur Harris | AC]
• Naka was slightly damaged by near misses by B-24 Liberator bombers 111 kilometers north of Kavieng, New Ireland at 1129 hours; 7 were killed, 20 were wounded. ww2dbase [Naka | CPC]
• B. Coy, US 100th Infantry Battalion, securing the left flank of 34th Division, conducted the first recorded bayonet charge by American forces in Italy. The attack was a complete success with all the German positions being overrun. The 100th Battalion was unique in being made up from men from two Hawaii Infantry Regiments already in uniform at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, including many Nisei who had been serving in the Hawaii National Guard. ww2dbase [AC]

• Captured Australian coast watcher Captain John Murphy was delivered to Rabaul, New Britain. ww2dbase [New Guinea-Papua Campaign, Phase 3 | New Britain | CPC]

• US Task Force 38 refueled in the Indispensable Reefs anchorage south of Rennell Island, Solomon Islands from the 21,000-ton tanker Kankakee. ww2dbase [CPC]

• The Japanese Autumn Mop-up Operation in Hebei, Shandong, and Henan Provinces in China was completed; many Chinese Communist guerrillas were killed. ww2dbase [CPC]

• Günther Altenburg stepped down as the Reich Plenipotentiary for Greece. ww2dbase [Günther Altenburg | CPC]

• British 78th Infantry Division reached San Salvo north of the Trigno River in Italy. ww2dbase [Advance to the Gustav Line | San Salvo, Abruzzo | CPC]

• Tomokazu Kasai was assigned to a training fighter squadron in Japan. ww2dbase [Tomokazu Kasai | CPC]

• Jewish ghettos at Riga, Latvia were liquidated. ww2dbase [Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Riga | CPC]

• Kamoi departed Pendang, Malaya at 1400 hours, escorted by submarine chaser CH-8. ww2dbase [Kamoi | Pendang, Kedah | CPC]

• Robert Johnson shot down a German Bf 109G fighter over Ameland, the Netherlands. ww2dbase [Robert Johnson | Ameland | CPC]

• Edinburgh Field in Trinidad was renamed Carlsen Field. ww2dbase [Carlsen Field | Chaguanas | CPC]

• A transport of 1,203 Jews arrived at Auschwitz Concentration Camp from a slave camp from Szopienice in southern Poland. 284 men and 23 women were registered into the camp; the remaining 896 were sent to a gas chamber. ww2dbase [Auschwitz Concentration Camp | Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Oswiecim | CPC]

• USS Ranger was floated out of Drydock #1 at Rosyth, Scotland and anchored in the Forth River. ww2dbase [Ranger | Rosyth, Scotland | DS]

• USS S-31 completed training services at San Diego, California, United States. ww2dbase [S-31 | San Diego, California | CPC]

3 Nov 1943 Interactive Map