Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that B-29's out of Saipan had hit Tokyo in the first raid on the city since the Doolittle raid of April 18, 1942. General Hap Arnold promised that the bombing raid was not hit-and-run and that, henceforth, Japan would be relentlessly bombed until such time as an invasion by sea and land.

The undisclosed number of Super-fortresses were led by Brig. General Emmett "Rosie" O'Donnell and originated out of Brig. General Hayward Hansell's newly formed 21st Bomber Command of General Curtis LeMay's 20th Air Force. The invasion of Saipan had as a goal the establishment of an airbase from which could be launched just such raids on the home islands of Japan. Neighboring Tinian would serve as the launching platform for the final B-29 raids on Japan the ensuing August.

Tokyo claimed that about seventy B-29's were involved in the raid. In fact, there were 110. Each B-29 could carry 10 tons of bombs. The raid began at 12:20 p.m. and lasted two hours. Japan claimed that three Super-fortresses were shot down. Apparently, there were none lost.

The bomber pilots were instructed not to "lay eggs" on Emperor Hirohito's palace to avoid touching off retaliatory Japanese fanaticism aimed at the United States and American prisoners of war.

General O'Donnell flew in the "Dauntless Dotty" piloted by Major Robert Morgan of Asheville. Major Morgan was the commander of the celebrated "Memphis Belle" Flying Fortress which was one of the first B-17's to complete 25 missions over Europe. Major Morgan, beginning with this mission, during the ensuing six months, flew 26 B-29 missions over Japan, until he was sent home the following April 24. The "Dauntless Dotty" was the first plane over Tokyo, striking the Nakajima Aircraft factory.

Sgt. Robert B. Hinson of Charlotte also flew on the mission.

General O'Donnell described the mission as one of the easiest he had ever flown, that fighter opposition was light and ground fire practically non-existent.

On Leyte, American infantry of the reinforcing 32nd Division, supporting the 24th, advanced a thousand yards southward from Limon to the Leyte River after capturing the mainstay of the so-called Yamashita Line formed by the Japanese to protect the port of Ormoc to the south. The battle around Limon had been ongoing since the landing of Japanese reinforcements October 25. The Japanese First Division defending Limon was practically destroyed. The terrain would be more easily negotiated in the coming days south of Limon, but the Japanese could still dig in inside pillboxes and machinegun nests, necessitating a time consuming operation to ferret them out.

The French First Army forces under Maj. General Jacques Le Clerc had the day before taken Strasbourg, following an 18-mile advance to the city on the Rhine, by noon having cleared all Germans from the western part of the city, and by 4:00, having taken all except the Rhine bridge approach two miles from the city center. Strasbourg was taken so swiftly as to be largely undamaged, though still within range of German big guns along the Siegfried Line on the other side of the Rhine.

This day, French and American troops of the Seventh Army, under the command of General Alexander Patch, crossed the Rhine east of the city, albeit only in reconnaissance strength, and had taken control of all of Strasbourg save the German bridgehead on the western end of the main bridge.

A corridor sixteen miles long and twelve miles wide from Saverne to Strasbourg had been cleared by the American 79th and 44th Infantry Divisions, clearing the way for the Seventh Army to move unlimited men, armament, and supplies into Strasbourg.

The taking of the city brought the Allies to within 360 airline miles of Berlin and 30 miles southwest of Karlsruhe.

The Third Army continued to battle east of captured Metz, against stiffening German opposition.

On the Cologne plain to the north near Aachen, the British Second Army was pushed out of previously captured Hoven and Beeck, three miles northeast of Geilenkirchen.

In Holland, the British moved to within 1.5 miles of Venlo.

The Ninth Army, 25 miles west of Cologne on the Roer River, had taken out its 110th tank, of which 23 had been the new, powerful Tiger Royals, in a seven-day battle for Julich on the right flank of the Second Army front.

The First Army fought house by house back into Weisweiler, two miles east of captured Eschweiler, from which the Germans appeared slowly to be evacuating behind a rear guard action.

Before the Ninth, First, and British Second Armies, Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt had amassed ten to twelve of his best remaining divisions along a 25-mile front from north of Geilenkirchen to the Hurtgen Forest

In the Baltic, Estonia was liberated by the Red Army following the clearing of all Germans from the Island of Saare, north of the entrance to the Gulf of Riga.

German radio reported that the Russians had resumed the offensive in Latvia in the area of Auce, 55 miles southwest of Riga, and were driving on Liepaja, 70 miles west of Auce.

In eastern Czechoslovakia, the Russians were moving toward Kassa, west of captured Ungvar, 45 miles north, northwest of Miskolc in Hungary.

A pact between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union had been signed by the Advisory Commission in London, after consultation with each of the three governments, for the purpose of formation of a Supreme Allied Council charged with military occupation of Germany at the conclusion of the war. Each government still had to sign the document, the details of which were not released, before it became an actual agreement. It was likely that France also would be given a role in the Supreme Allied Council.

The Ohio telephone operators, as well as those in Washington and Detroit, returned to the job, avoiding a serious blockage of communication lines during the war, stemming from the strike in Dayton regarding the $18.25 being paid by Ohio Bell to out of town operators for travel expense to work, made necessary by the fact of labor shortages during the war, but causing consternation among the in-town operators of Dayton who saw the bonus as creating an inequity.

It was a good thing that the strike was resolved when it was as it threatened to spread to New York City and elsewhere. Which could have resulted in much yelling out of windows.

In Joliet, Ill., an attempted break from Stateville Prison had been foiled, but a guard had been killed and three convicts wounded when ten prisoners, using the guard as a shield, tried to make it over the wall via a makeshift ladder.

Two of the would-be escapees were veterans of the late 1942 escape of "Terrible" Touhy and six other prisoners from Stateville, subsequently caught or killed by G-men in a Chicago stakeout personally overseen by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and in which Special Agent Guy Banister participated. It was the last time the Director personally participated in an arrest.

On the editorial page, "Little Stick" points out that the strike by the Ohio telephone workers, and its continuation despite the War Labor Board having ordered the operators to return to work, fit an overall pattern seen from Labor of late, this one only differing in that the workers involved were primarily female.

"Priority" observes that the Mayor and City Council had passed an ordinance which required that all new dwellings in the City of Charlotte possess "bathing facilities". The piece finds the notion a desirable one, even if some people might keep coal in the bath and wood in the shower.

"Two Rings" comments on the "new frontier" to be opened to rural America by the coming of the telephone, according to a Southern Bell spokesman. It would not be a costly project, says the piece, as the lines would be strung on poles of the Rural Electrification Authority, already in place. The planning of the interconnection of the country by telephone had been halted by the war.

"Arbiter" comments on the beneficent work of a tax expert sponsored by the North Carolina Citizens Association who was touring the state, speaking impartially before audiences on the fiscal effects to be expected from lowering taxes, without advocating any position on the matter. His work was educating the public so that an intelligent choice could be made on whether to lower taxes, as many favored because of a budget surplus in Raleigh, or to keep them at present levels.

Drew Pearson tells of the lameduck Senate being active in at least one area, Senator Josiah W. Bailey of North Carolina, as chair of the Commerce Committee, having introduced an amendment to a flood-control bill preventing the Government from building transmission lines and distributing power from the dam projects authorized by the bill. Senator Bailey, long supported by Duke Power in his home state, wanted to reduce the prospect of Government competition with private power companies. The committee voted overwhelmingly to support the amendment, with only three Senators dissenting, each favoring TVA. The President had already stated, however, that he would veto the legislation if it had attached as a rider such an amendment.

Samuel Grafton, writing from Detroit, tells of the planning for several public works projects, built of modern architectural designs. All of these projects were considered necessary to absorb the expected 300,000 unemployed persons to be laid off from Detroit war industries employing 750,000. The costs of the projects would run to 270 million dollars, of which the city only had 22 million thus far.

Marquis Childs comments on the two-fold drain from the pool of educated minds in the society. On the one hand, pulled by the necessities of war, General Marshall had been forced, to ameliorate the increasing age of the infantry, to draw younger troops via abolition of the Army Specialized Training Program, formerly training 100,000 exceptionally intelligent men in specialized tasks.

Hal Boyle, reporting from Germany on November 15, tells of the no-fraternization rule, prohibiting contact between GI's and German civilians, under penalty of fines ranging from $40 to $65. It was sometimes made lip-bitingly difficult by wise-cracking Germans.

He should have spoken to Senator Reynolds about it.

A couple of doughboys got even with German troops who had sprayed a street with machinegun fire after the Americans had just cleaned it up. They tied kettles and tin pans to a wire, ran it into their basement shelter, from which, all night, they periodically then pulled the wire, causing the Germans to remain awake, firing hundreds of rounds into an empty street.

We should note that Tom Wicker passed away this date, November 25, 2011, at age 85. His career in journalism began on a small town North Carolina newspaper and continued on the Winston-Salem Journal, until he joined the New York Times in 1960. He was the only Times reporter assigned to President Kennedy's trip to Texas in November, 1963. He had thus befall him the unpleasant task of having to cover the assassination and its immediate aftermath. In 1971, he acted as a mediator with the prisoners during the Attica State Prison riot. His rumpled appearance, his familiar accent, his sharply liberal mind, always stood as a breath of fresh air when we used to listen to his thoughts each Sunday two decades and more ago on "David Brinkley's Journal". Goodbye to a true journalist, one who told the story never forgetting that he was a human being with a point of view first, a reporter nevertheless.