Today in World War II History—September 2, 1942: Allied convoy PQ-18 departs Scotland for USSR, the first Arctic convoy with an escort carrier and the first since the PQ-17 disaster; 13/40 ships will be lost.
From Sarah Sundin's blog.
Escort carriers were game changers. While losing 13 out of 40 ships wasn't good, it was better than what the PQ-17 had experienced. With air cover, submarines were at a disadvantage. The PQ-18 task force was, in fact, the largest and most successful Arctic run up to that time.
The carrier was the HMS Avenger, as Sundin's blog entry notes.
The U-222 and the U-626, German training submarines, collided in the Baltic sinking the U-222 which took 42 of her crew with her.
The German 46th Infantry Division, which had been dishonored following an unauthorized withdrawal due to Soviet landings on the Kerch peninsula in December 1941, crossed the Kerch Straits while the German 17th Army advanced into Novorossisk, putting Soviet positions on the Eastern Black Sea coast at extreme risk. The Soviets began, on this night, evacuations from Black Sea ports which were harassed by German and Italian patrol boats.
The Germans sustained heavy material losses at Alam el Halfa resulting in an Afrika Korps withdrawal.
British commandos took a lighthouse and its occupants near Alderny without the Germans noticing and without loss in Operation Dryad.
Tom Williams of the Irish Republican Army was executed for the felony murder of Royal Ulster Constabulary officer Patrick Murphy. This occurred when an IRA unit Williams was in command of staged a diversionary action against the RUC in order to allow parades commemorating the Easter Rebellion to occur. Who killed Murphy is actually not known, but Williams was the acknowledged commander of the unit.
No comments:
Post a Comment