Today in World War II History—May 5, 1942: First 29 Navajo recruits begin boot camp with the US Marine Corps; they will pioneer code-talking.
Sarah Sundin's blog catalogs a lot of significant Second World War Events for today's date, including the Japanese landing on Corregidor, the beginning of the end of the Battle for the Philippines, as well as the British Commonwealth invasion of Vichy France's colony of Madagascar, the latter undertaken out of fear that the Japanese would land there.
The Germans, it might be noted, had urged the Japanese to do just that. The Japanese, for their part, had acknowledged that the island was strategically important, but had not committed to landing there, perhaps realizing that by this point they were at the absolute limits of their logistical abilities and such an operation would have been massively exposed to Allied strikes.
The action was at least the third time that the British had attacked the French in the war, which is of note. The French had resisted every time, but up to that point they had not declared war against the United Kingdom in spite of it. This invasion was undoubtedly a massive violation of French neutrality, but would not lead to such a declaration. Of course, by this point, the Vichy French had sustained a similar usurpation of their sovereignty in Indochina by the Japanese.
The Germans relieved the Kholm pocket in the Soviet Union. The German troops there had been encircled since January and had been resupplied by air, something that would make the Germans overconfident about the ability to accomplish that for surrounded troops. During the long siege the Germans had sustained 3,500 casualties including 1,500 dead, meaning that well over 50% of the surrounded force had become casualties. The Red Army, however, sustained 20,000 casualties attempting to take the city.
Sundin also note the commencement of sugar rationing in the United States on this date.
No comments:
Post a Comment