Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 6, 1994 TAG: 9404050047
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Thirty American bombers, believed to be part of a Liberator raiding force striking at southwest Germany, apparently mistook the Swiss manufacturing city of Schaffhausen for one of its targets and rained bombs on factories and a rail station, killing 50 people. An announcement from the neutral Swiss took pains to indicate that they considered the bombing accidental.
Eighty-two Japanese planes were destroyed in the air and on the ground as Gen. Douglas MacArthur's bomber squadrons again smashed Japanese strongholds at Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea and Truk.
The Red Army moved to within 24 miles of Odessa, racing through nearly 200 villages on a 175-mile front above the imperiled naval base and inflicting tremendous losses on Axis troops retreating toward the Black Sea.
A nationwide poll revealed that the vast majority of the American public approved of the drafting of single women to help solve the problem of finding more than a million persons for non-combat military service by July 1. The taking of single women was preferred to the drafting of married men with families.
Registration for spring quarter classes was scheduled at Virginia Tech with only 500 students expected, roughly one-seventh the enrollment in pre-Pearl Harbor days. Nearly 1,000 soldiers who had been assigned to Tech's special army training unit left in the previous week. Only 100 remained to take advanced engineering courses in the spring quarter.
Marvin Gray, a Roanoke merchant marine engineer, who had just returned from landing cargo at the Anzio beachhead, said the battle for Italy was an uphill fight all the way with Americans facing artillery fire from the mountains where the Germans had dug in.
American and British forces staged a commando-type raid on Solta Island off Yugoslavia, capturing 11 Germans and destroying enemy installations.
Superior American land, sea and air forces had sprung a gigantic trap that had hopelessly ensnared some 100,000 Japanese troops from the Marshall Islands to New Guinea, the War Department reported.
Byron Nelson clipped seven strokes from par in the final 36 holes to win the war bond golf tournament in Knoxville.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed a 9-year-old decision and ruled that negroes had the right to vote in Texas Democratic primary elections. The decision had a far-reaching impact in the South, where success in the primary was tantamount to winning the general election.
A Martinsville doctor was given a special hearing with the Roanoke Office of Price Administration. The doctor was accused of using supplemental gasoline rations for purposes other than what they were issued for and using ration coupons issued other persons.
A labor shortage in Roanoke had reached the point where it was impossible to hire enough men to put in proposed water main extensions.
Early returns from the Wisconsin Republican presidential primary gave New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey the lead, followed by former Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen, Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Wendell Wilkie. Wilkie announced the next day he was quitting the race.
Plans for the religious observation of the allied invasion of Europe had been completed in Radford. Various services of rededication and reconsecration of the civilian population were to be held throughout the city when news of the invasion by allied troops was flashed.
In an effort to aid the Red Army, U.S. bombers raided the rail yards in the great oil center of Ploesti, Romania. Smoke soon rose three miles high over the yards that were filled with long strings of loaded cars.
Some 21 new penicillin plants costing $30 million would soon be busy making nine pounds of pure penicillin per month, enough for military forces but not enough to set a date when the life-saving drug could be made available to the public.
An American aircraft carrier task force, unchallenged by the Japanese, sank 28 enemy ships and damaged 18 and shot down 160 plans in a three-day fight at the Palau islands less than 600 miles from the Phillipines.
National D-Day Memorial Foundation is selling commemorative bumperstickers for $1 and enameled pins for $5 as fund-raisers. Write the foundation at 2551 Sweetbrier Ave. S.W., Roanoke, Va. 24015, or call 774-7045.
by CNB