Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 27, 1994                   TAG: 9505100001
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: EXTRA   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE OIL INDUSTRY WAS IN HIGH GEAR AGAINST GERMANY

In a full-page newspaper advertisement, Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey said it and affiliated companies alone were producing more oil than Germany was from all sources. The U.S. petroleum industry as a whole was producing 10 times as much oil as Germany, the company said.

Pre-invasion fleets of 4,000 American and Allied bombers and fighters smashed the German rail center of Hamm, coastal fortifications in France and airfields in Belgium and France. This followed a week in which 29,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on German targets.

The General Conference of the Methodist Church, meeting in Nashville, was to consider a proposal that Negro segregation be removed form the organizational structure of the church.

Responding to a national clamor for tax simplification, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a bill that would make it unnecessary for up to 50 million taxpayers to file another income tax return again.

Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbor reported Army and Navy heavy bombers had struck at Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas about 150 miles north of Guam and that two more Japanese-held atolls in the Marshall Islands had been taken.

The strength of the German Army had been cut in half from its maximum of 9.5 million men with the number of divisions down to 290 from their peak of 360 in 1942-43.

The Associated Press was completing its plans for coverage of the invasion of Europe. Heading the staff were Robert Bunnelle, AP London bureau chief. Four AP reporters going in with the first wave of correspondents were Roger Greene, William S. White, James King and Don Whitehead, a former Wise County resident.

In sports: Stir Up and Lucky Draw won the two divisions of the Wood Memorial in Jamaica, N.Y. William Fleming High School held off William Byrd and Radford for the district track title.

Powerful U.S. Army forces landed on both sides of Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea and headed inland toward three Japanese airfields.

British Imperial forces fought the Japanese invasion of India to a standstill.

German U-boats were no longer a serious threat to shipping along the Atlantic coast, Ernest J. King, Navy commander in chief, reported.

Virginia's labor shortage would be relieved by the assignment of 2,000 war prisoners to the state, war manpower officials were told at a meeting at Roanoke's Patrick Henry Hotel.

Capt. Robert E. Woody of Roanoke claimed destruction of four German planes in the air and a share of a fifth kill as the American fighter pilots had a field day over southern Germany, downing a total of 66 enemy craft. ``It was like shooting clay pigeons,'' said Woody, who led a flight of P51 Mustangs. Woody had come up on a flight of five Germans waiting to ambush an American bomber group.

S.G. Gibboney, a Wytheville native and New York lawyer, died at the University of Virginia hospital. He had led the restoration of Monticello as a shrine to Thomas Jefferson and played a leading role in the building of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.

Gen. George S. Patton Jr., speaking to 200 members of a British service club that welcomed American soldiers, said, ``The sooner our soldiers write home and say how lovely the English ladies are, the sooner American dames will get jealous and force the war to a successful conclusion, and then I shall have a chance to go and kill the Japanese.'' The only welcoming he had done lately, Patton said, was welcoming about 177,000 Germans and Italians into hell.

The government used a detachment of troops to seize the offices of Montgomery Ward in Chicago after Sewell Avery, chief of the huge merchandizing firm, had rebuffed a presidential order calling for seizure of the facilities. President Franklin Roosevelt had authorized the Commerce Department to seize the mail order plant because management had refused a White House order to extend an expired contract with a CIO union. Avery was carried by soldiers from his office to the street.

Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, 70, one of two Republicans in President Roosevelt's cabinet, died of a heart attack. James V. Forrestal became acting secretary.

The National D-Day Memorial Foundation is selling commemorative bumper stickers 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.