The New York City Victory Parade of 1946 was held in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, United States, on January 12, 1946, to celebrate the victorious conclusion of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

History

The parade was led by 13,000 men of the

82nd Airborne Division The 82nd Airborne Division is an Airborne forces, airborne infantry division (military), division of the United States Army specializing in Paratrooper, parachute assault operations into denied areasSof, Eric"82nd Airborne Division" ''Spec Ops ...

(including the African-American

555th Parachute Infantry Battalion The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed The Triple Nickles, was an all-black airborne unit of the United States Army during World War II. History Activation The unit was activated as a result of a recommendation made in December 1942 b ...

) under General

James M. Gavin James Maurice Gavin (March 22, 1907 – February 23, 1990), sometimes called "Jumpin' Jim" and "the jumping general", was a senior United States Army officer, with the rank of lieutenant general, who was the third Commanding General (CG) of the 8 ...

. The 82nd was chosen as the All-American Division to represent the U.S. Army and the end of World War II. The parade also included Sherman tanks and other armored vehicles, such as self-propelled

howitzer A howitzer () is a long- ranged weapon, falling between a cannon (also known as an artillery gun in the United States), which fires shells at flat trajectories, and a mortar, which fires at high angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like ot ...

s, and a fly-by of a formation of glider-towing

C-47 The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota (Royal Air Force, RAF, Royal Australian Air Force, RAAF, Royal Canadian Air Force, RCAF, Royal New Zealand Air Force, RNZAF, and South African Air Force, SAAF designation) is a airlift, military transport ai ...

s. The 82nd also participated in the September

Berlin Victory Parade of 1945 The Berlin Victory Parade of 1945 was held by the Allies of World War II on 7 September 1945 in Berlin, the capital of the defeated Nazi Germany, shortly after the end of World War II. The four participating countries were the Soviet Union, the Un ...

. In preparation for the New York parade, the division mustered and trained three times a day since late 1945, after having finished their garrison duty in Berlin. The division arrived in United States on January 3 aboard the

RMS Queen Mary RMS ''Queen Mary'' is a retired British ocean liner that sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard-White Star Line and was built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland. ''Queen Mary'', along with , ...

, and continued training for the parade at Camp Shanks. The parade, beginning at Washington Square, marching up

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...

, was reported to be four miles long. It was a

ticker tape parade A ticker-tape parade is a parade event held in an urban setting, characterized by large amounts of shredded paper thrown onto the parade route from the surrounding buildings, creating a celebratory flurry of paper. Originally, actual ticker tap ...

, and was covered by newsreels of the time. However, ''Life magazine reported that it was "oddly subdued", and blamed it on the elimination of many military bands by the demilitarization. Government officials witnessing the parade included the New York Governor,

Thomas E. Dewey Thomas Edmund Dewey (March 24, 1902 – March 16, 1971) was an American lawyer, prosecutor, and politician who served as the 47th governor of New York from 1943 to 1954. He was the Republican candidate for president in 1944 and 1948: although ...

the New York City Mayor, William O'Dwyer, and the former New York City Mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia. New York was the site of the largest American

Victory in Europe Day Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Easter ...

celebrations. Two months earlier, on 27 October 1945, it also witnessed a naval victory parade.

References

External links

* {{cite book, author=Time Inc, title=LIFE, url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_WEkEAAAAMBAJ, accessdate=10 October 2012, date=28 January 1946, publisher=Time Inc, page
38
��, issn=0024-3019 - coverage, photos
946 USA, 82nd Airborne Division victory parade
newsreel
Photo at LoC
1946 in military history Victory Parade 1940s in Manhattan Aftermath of World War II in the United States Fifth Avenue January 1946 events in the United States Military parades in the United States Victory Parade of 1946 Victory parades

History

See also

References

External links