British engineer Barnes Wallis designs a bouncing and rotating bomb for use against German dams

Germany launches a bombing campaign specifically targeting historic British cities with three stars in the Baedeker guidebook

Bernard Montgomery is appointed commander of the demoralized British and Commonwealth Eighth Army in North Africa

The loss of merchant shipping to U-boats reaches a peak in the Battle of the Atlantic, with 1.5 million tons sunk in the last quarter of the year

English contralto Kathleen Ferrier makes her London début in Handel's Messiah in Westminster Abbey

New Allied successes against the German U-boats provide a turning point in the battle of the Atlantic

British admiral Louis Mountbatten is appointed to head the new Southeast Asia Command, with his headquarters in Delhi

Colossus Mark I, the world's first computer, goes into decoding service at Bletchley Park in Britain

Commissioned by a church in Northampton to sculpt a Madonna and Child, British sculptor Henry Moore produces the first of his family groups

The separate poems forming T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets are brought together for the first time as a single volume, published in New York

Laurence Olivier directs and stars in a patriotic film of Henry V with stirring music by William Walton

US general Dwight Eisenhower is appointed to command the Allied invasion of Normandy

The RAF's first jet, the Gloster Meteor, flies with a Whittle engine

The Allies cross the Channel on D-day for the Normandy invasion

British general Bernard Montgomery commands the Allied land forces in the Normandy Landing on D-day

Two pre-constructed harbours, known by the code name Mulberries, are towed across the Channel to Normandy

The first V-1 flying bombs (or doodlebugs) appear over London, numbering more than 2000 in two weeks

The first V-2 rocket lands on London, killing three people in Chiswick

The first of many thousands of war brides arrive in Canada, mainly from Great Britain

English painter Francis Bacon creates a sensation with his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love

Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes has its premiere in London, at the Sadler's Wells theatre

British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin describes the molecular structure of penicillin

Winston Churchill, losing the postwar general election in Britain, has to yield his seat at Potsdam in mid-conference to Clement Attlee

TheAllies celebrate V-J Day – victory over Japan and the end of the war