On baseball front –
Luque, Jonnard may direct Giants if Ott is called to Armed Forces
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Syracuse plans comeback
Syracuse, New York –
Syracuse University will hold spring football practice to determine if sufficient players are available to field a team next fall, athletic officials have announced.
Any suppressed desires?
Let Yourself Go to be premiered on air
People get paid for stunt ideas
By Si Steinhauser
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Willkie warns of federal rule
Every ill exploited, candidate declares
Ripon, Wisconsin (UP) –
Charging that the Democratic Party was “a vehicle for the maintenance of power,” Wendell L. Willkie last night accused the New Deal of aiming at “eventual adoption of a government-controlled society.”
The candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaking in the town where the GOP was organized 90 years ago, charged that the New Deal had exploited the theory that the only solution for “every ill” was complete government control.
The speech was Mr. Willkie’s second in his campaign to win the support of Wisconsin delegates to the Republican National Convention.
Mr. Willkie said:
The panic of 1929 and the devastating years that followed gave impetus and encouragement to the thesis that the solution lay solely in government control.
The total result, consistently fostered by the administration, has been the illusion that there is conflict between a society built upon economic incentive and a society of human welfare.
Mr. Willkie said that the modern Democratic Party:
…provides us with a clear example of… subversion, by which an inner group has carefully nurtured its power for 12 years.
Völkischer Beobachter (March 22, 1944)
Pazifikoffensive an Stoßkraft eingebüßt –
US-Flotte an der Grenze ihrer Leistungsfähigkeit
Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“
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U.S. Navy Department (March 22, 1944)
Communiqué No. 513
The submarine USS SCORPION (SS-278) is overdue from patrol and must be presumed to be lost.
The next of kin of casualties of the SCORPION, have been so notified.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 322
For Immediate Release
March 22, 1944
Mitchell medium bombers of the 7th Army Air Force, Dauntless dive bombers and Hellcat and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing and Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two bombed four enemy positions in the Marshall Islands on March 20, 1944 (West Longitude Date).
Heavy explosion was observed on one of the objectives, and several smaller explosions and fires observed on another. Anti-aircraft fire ranged from moderate to meager. All of our planes returned.
The New York Times (March 22, 1944)
VESUVIUS FORCES MAY MORE TO FLEE
Lava threatens to cut shore highway and oust other villagers in the area
Crater pours streams; two children killed when a water tank explodes after boiling over ashes
By Milton Bracker
Cercola, Italy –
Smashing through San Sebastiano and Massa di Somma on a broadening, though generally slowing, front, the Vesuvian lava flow tonight had resulted in complete evacuation of this town of 7,000, two miles to the northwest.
At the same time, reports reaching field headquarters established here by Lt. Col. Charles Poletti, AMG chief in Italy, indicated imminent danger at Torre del Greco, on the coast between Naples and Torre Annunziata, with the possibility that a further breakthrough of the southern rim of the crater would cut the vital shoreline highway and force a far greater evacuation than has yet been necessitated.
The volcano put up another spectacular show tonight, although the encroachment of lava between buried San Sebastiano and this truck-cluttered town was less than early this morning. The fiercest displays were on the slopes above coastal towns, with red jets leaping high in the air and spilling down the sides in multiple new streams.
Dust spurts from crater
One of the most awesome spectacles of the entire eruptive period came at 5:30 p.m. CET, when a seething plume of gray lava dust billowed from the crater.
“That’s what killed Pompeii,” mused Lt. Col. James L. Kincaid, AMG executive for Naples Province, as he watched from the balcony of the threatened City Hall here.
He also revealed that two children were killed at San Sebastiano yesterday when lava reached a water tank, which exploded in a great hiss of steam, throwing them high in the air. So far as is known, theirs are the only deaths so far.
Another official observer at Cercola was Prof. Giuseppe Imbò, director of the Royal Vesuvian Observatory, who said the current phenomenon was completely different from that which overwhelmed Pompeii in 79 AD. He conceded the danger of further inundation by molten rock, but he said the exact situation would remain unclear, possibly for several days.
The entire semicircle from Torre Annunziata around to Santa Anastasia is more or less under the shadow of the worst eruption since 1906. This poses a serious problem for the Allied authorities and is diverting hundreds of men and vehicles from normal work.
Roads leading here are choked with trucks and laden with household supplies. On the direct road from San Sebastiano, families huddled over fires lit in doorways waiting for soldiers to assist them in loading.
At San Sebastiano, the end of the road is cut off by a crunching wall of lava, which is following the road’s axis directly toward the south end of the town.
People move before lava
Life in this stricken town revolved around the Town Hall, in front of which the Army has set up a food kitchen. Long lines of women and children waited hours for a share of available soup, cheese and bread. Meanwhile, men helped to move out belongings, and the streets are packed with bent figures carrying pieces of furniture larger than themselves.
AMG officials estimated that there were at least 4,000 refugees already, many of whom have been taken to a Naples refugee camp. Others went to Santa Anastasia and Aversa.
The last moment of San Sebastiano came about 3:15 a.m., when a seething mass 12 feet high burst across, the main street and the bridge in the center. A three-story yellow schoolhouse disappeared as in a fiery meatgrinder. So did a nearby wine shop in which the tall figure of San Gennaro, patron saint of the province, had been stored earlier after a priest had used it to help quiet the populace.
Cercola seemed tonight to have an excellent chance of escaping complete destruction, although it is most likely that both ends will be chewed off by the flanks of the inexorable foe. An outlying school has already been devoured.
Col. Poletti is hopeful that, once past here, the stream will dissipate itself in the flat terrain.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 22, 1944)
JAP TROOPS INVADE INDIA
Enemy thrusts across border from Burma
Gen. Auchinleck: No need for alarm
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U.S. BIG BOMBERS SMASH AT BERLIN
1,500-ton raid loosed on city by Yank fliers
3 waves of planes meet no Nazi fighters
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
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Battleships rip Japs’ base on New Ireland
Marines take islands north of Kavieng
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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Nazis increase Cassino blows
Field guns in hills rake Allied lines
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Commissions for women fliers given approval
Washington (UP) –
The House Military Affairs Committee today approved legislation to five Regular Army commissions to women pilots, after hearing Gen. H. H. Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, say he expects in time “to have every [male] Army flier out of the United States and overseas fighting.
The Army now has about 500 women pilots in service and 500 in training. But as members of the WASPS – Women Airforce Service Pilots – they now have civilian status.
Gen. Arnold told the House Military Affairs Committee:
We must provide fighting men wherever we can, replacing them with women wherever we can whether it be in factories or towing airplane targets.
Gen. Arnold said the need for fighting men is “so severe” that the Air Force has “returned to the ground forces some 36,000 men who were available for air service.”
U.S. sub Scorpion lost in Pacific
Washington (UP) –
The Navy today announced the loss of the 1,525-ton submarine USS Scorpion, presumably in the Pacific.
The Scorpion, which was commanded by Cdr. Maximilian G. Schmidt of Annapolis, Maryland, carried a normal complement of about 75 men.
Disclosure of the loss of the Scorpion, the 23rd U.S. submarine to be lost in this war, followed by a day the Navy’s announcement that 15 more Jap merchant ships had been sunk by our underseas fighters.
2-B or not to be!
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Refused Army induction because he was an essential war worker, Charles W. Howell, 27, shot himself to death yesterday.
CIO gives approval to ‘G.I. Bill of Rights’
Washington (UP) –
The Congress of Industrial Organizations today endorsed the “G.I. Bill of Rights” for veterans, now before the Senate, which would provide increased hospitalization, educational opportunities, loans to establish homes and small businesses and a year’s unemployment compensation.
Lava flow veers to menace 3 Vesuvius coastal towns
By Eleanor Packard, United Press staff writer
On the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, Italy –
Three Italian coastal towns harboring 86,000 people were menaced today by a shift in the lava flow from erupting Mount Vesuvius, and experts warned that the volcanic cone might burst at any moment and bury the countryside under tons of molten rock.
Five days after the start of its worst outbreak in modern times, the great volcano has stopped acting according to form and has gone completely erratic.
The main lava flow now has shifted from the northwest to the west slopes and is moving down like a fiery snake on the coastal towns of Torre del Greco, Torre Annunziata and Resina, site of the ancient town of Herculaneum, which was buried in the great eruption of 79 AD.
Allied military authorities were understood to be preparing to evacuate the residents of the three towns if the lava flow continues.
Meanwhile, the seething cone of the volcano glowed with such intensity that Italian experts warned it may break suddenly and send a terrific overflow of lava in all directions.
Not a single life has been lost thus far, largely because of the prompt measures taken by the Army to remove reluctant civilians from their homes, but millions of dollars’ worth of property have been ruined and some of the finest vineyards in Italy have been partially wiped out, including the famous Lacryma Christi vineyards.
It was estimated that cultivation on the lava-wasted soil would be impossible for at least a century.
The villages of San Sebastiano and Massa di Somma were all but obliterated yesterday by the lava wall moving down the northwest slopes and a two-mile-high column of fine dust peppered Naples and Salerno.
The road to the Royal Vesuvian Observatory, where experts up on the slopes were watching the activity, was closed to all traffic except officers on duty.
12 more bodies sought in Passaic bus crash
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