CAMILLE BOHANNON

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

On May 19, 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt plot the cross-Channel
landing that would become D-Day—May 1, 1944.

That date would prove a bit premature, as bad weather
became a factor.

The D-Day invasion ended up taking place on June 6, 1944.

     
    
    
         
DAVID MELENDY

With the world anxiously watching, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar
spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey
to the moon, safely returned to Earth on April 17, 1970.

On April 11, the third manned lunar landing mission was
launched from Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell,
John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise.

Swigert reported to mission control on Earth, “Houston, we’ve
had a problem here,” and it was discovered that the normal
supply of oxygen, electricity, light and water had been disrupted.

On April 1, 1945, after suffering the loss of 116 planes and
damage to three aircraft carriers, 50,000 U.S. combat troops,
under the command of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner
Jr., landed on the southwest coast of the Japanese island
of Okinawa, 350 miles south of Kyushu, the southern main
island of Japan.

Determined to seize Okinawa as a base of operations for
the army ground and air forces for a later assault on
mainland Japan, more than 1,300 ships converged
on the island, finally putting ashore 50,000 combat
troops.

Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.
(18 July 1886 – 18 June 1945)

Buckner was among the casualties,
killed by enemy artillery fire just three
days before the Japanese surrender.

The 1952 film Okinawa starring Pat O’Brien, is one of several movies to depict this decisive episode in the history of the
war.

Fort Buckner is a small United States Army base located immediately south of Camp Foster, near Futenma, on
Okinawa, Japan.

Operation Detachment, the U.S. Marines’ invasion of Iwo Jima, 
was launched. Iwo Jima was a barren Pacific island guarded
by Japanese artillery, but to American military minds, it was
prime real estate on which to build airfields to launch bombing
raids against Japan, only 660 miles away.