The USS Omaha and the USS Somers stopped a suspicious vessel in the South Atlantic. As they boarded, scuttling charges went off but the crews of the US ships prevented the ship from sinking. It turned out to be the German blockade runner Odenwald, loaded with rubber and other supplies for Nazi Germany on a dangerous mission.
The ship was taken in a very old-fashioned way to Puerto Rico, where it was sold along with its contents. The German owners of the vessel sued after the war claiming the seizure, which had been justified on the basis of the Navy suspecting the vessel contained slaves, was illegal, but the court upheld the seizure and the proceeds of the sale were distributed to the surviving members of the crew, along with two months pay.
Joseph Stalin addressed his nation on the radio and declared that Hitler's "crazy plan" to unite the United States and the United Kingdom with Germany to defeat the USSR had failed. There was, of course, no such plan.
Stalin declared that there was effectively a three nation coalition fighting the Germans, which was correct, and he hoped for the establishment of a "second front" soon. In reality, the British were fighting in North Africa which was a second front, simply one that Stalin refused to recognize as such, and the US and the UK were fighting in the Atlantic, which was effectively its own third front.
German troops started reporting with frostbite.
The Germans removed over 15,000 Jewish Ukrainians from Rivne and killed them over a two-day period.
Australian troops landed at Singapore to reinforce the garrison there.
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