A foggy night in Bedford Massachusetts. January 17, 1941.
The oddity of the "wars within wars" nature of World War Two, which is often forgotten, was illustrated by the Battle of Co (Koh, Koi) Chang, which occurred off the Gulf of Thailand. French Navy vessels defeated Thai naval vessels decisively after a Thai incursion.
The Thai navy had recently been updated with Japanese and Italian vessels, but it was not up to the task and the battle was a disaster. It prompted Japan to act as an intermediary in the war between Thailand and France out of fear that it would lead to reversals in Thai gains.
The conflict is interesting in that Thailand was seeking to adjuster a regional dispute through the use of arms supplied by two Axis powers with which it was, at that time, more than nominally aligned. The French, on the other hand, were now weakly aligned with Japan by force, given the defeat of France by the Germans and the impairment of contact with France as a result. It's military, however, still remained stronger than the Thai's.
It wasn't stronger than Japan's and Japan and France had already fought a short undeclared war in Indochina leading to Japanese occupation of the north, although an agreement to allow Japanese forces to co-occupy Indochina had already been reached. France legitimately feared that Japan would take over it's entire Indochinese colony, which in June 1941 it in fact did, as its treaty rights now allowed it to do. French troops and administration, however, remained all the way until March 1945 when the Japanese staged a coup to overthrow the French administration out of fears it would act against Japan.
Japanese troops advancing towards Lạng Sơn in their September 1941 campaign against the French. The city is on Vietnam's border with China.
Japan in turn invaded Thailand on December 8, 1941, as part of its new war against the United States and British Empire. Fighting only lasted five hours with Thailand surrendering and agreeing to formally become an Axis power.
On the same day, the British Blue Star linger SS Almeda Star was sunk by a U-boot with the loss of all 325 souls on board. The Zealandic was sunk the same day with the loss of all 73 on board.
More on the events of the day in World War Two can be read about here:
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