On this day...... 4 September

1643: Parliament's isolated garrison in Exeter was forced to surrender to Prince Maurice's Royalist army.

1916: British troops supported by a naval squadron captured Dar-es-Salaam during the campaign against the German colony of East Africa.

1939: Seven RAF bombers were lost attempting daylight raids on German ports, the first of a series of costly failures which were to prove that unescorted bombers could not normally operate safely by day.

1940: Fleet Air Arm Swordfish aircraft from Illustrious and Eagle mounted an air strike against airfields on the island of Rhodes.  Over the UK, airfields in the south-east remained the focus for German attacks, as well as the Vickers Armstrong aircraft factory at Weybridge.  The day's events are recorded on the RAF's Battle of Britain website.

1942: The Japanese were forced to begin evacuating their troops from Milne Bay in New Guinea, the first time that one of their amphibious assaults had been driven back.  Corporal French, an Australian soldier serving there, destroyed three Japanese machine-gun nests, despite suffering fatal wounds in the process.  He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

1943: Lieutenant John Bridge, RNVR, was awarded the George Cross for leading the bomb disposal work at Messina in Sicily with the Royal Navy's Port Clearance Party 1500.  P1500 had started work on 25 August, attempting to make the port useable in time for the Allied invasion of mainland Italy.  P1500's original officer and four divers were killed at the start by booby-trapped depth charges.  Under Bridge's leadership, over 250 booby-traps ashore, and forty in the water, were made safe.  Bridge himself made 28 dives to disarm two large clusters of depth-charges.

In New Guinea, Allied forces including the veteran Australian 9th Division landed at Lae, a key Japanese port.  The garrison was eliminated in heavy fighting by 16 September.

1944: 11^th Armoured Division liberated Antwerp, securing a major port for the supply of the advancing Allied forces, although much work was needed to clear minefields and German coastal batteries before shipping could safely make use of the port.