Germany's latest battleship, the Bismarck, is sunk in the Atlantic with the loss of nearly all her 2222 crew

Roosevelt and Churchill publish a joint Atlantic Charter, foreseeing a future free from 'Nazi tyranny'

De Gaulle forms in London the French National Committee, a government in exile in London for the Free French

The British aircraft carrier Ark Royal is sunk by a U-boat in the Mediterranean

A report by UK economist William Beveridge proposes a wide-ranging social security programme for postwar Britain

Leslie Howard directs and stars in The First of the Few, about the creator of the Spitfire, with music by William Walton

David Lean and Noel Coward create a classic wartime film, In Which We Serve about the crew of a naval destroyer

Early tests of the Dambusters' bouncing bomb are carried out at the National Physical Laboratory's ship tank

A rich hoard of Roman silver is unearthed near Mildenhall, in Suffolk

English children's author Enid Blyton introduces the Famous Five in Five on a Treasure Island

Arthur Harris is put in charge of British Bomber Command, and is later much criticized for his ruthless approach

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