February 20, 1942: First US Eighth Air Force officers arrive in England. Japanese land on Portuguese East Timor and Dutch West Timor in the East Indies.
Among those items is Navy pilot Edward O'Hare being credited with shooting down five Japanese aircraft within six minutes on this day in 1942, a feat which secured him the Congressional Medial of Honor.
The aircraft that O'Hare struck were Japanese Betty bombers headed towards the USS Lexington which was off of Bougainville. In reality, O'Hare shot down only three aircraft, rather than the six he thought he had, or the five he was credited with,although he so disrupted their attack that he prevented it from being a success. One of the stricken Japanese bombers did attempt to fly into the Lexington, so four were in fact lost during the raid.
The heroic O'Hare was killed in combat in November, 1943.
Sundin also reports that the first advance party of the U.S. 8th Air Force arrived in the United Kingdom.
The 8th, of course, would go on to figure enormously in the US strategic bombing campaign over Germany.
Sundin also notes that the vast majority of Norwegian teachers, on this day, refused an order to become fascists, leading to some of them enduing up in concentration camps.
The Battle of Badung Strait ended in a Japanese victory, with the Japanese navy driving off a much larger combined Allied task force.
The Japanese landed forces on Portuguese Timor and took the airfield. Portugal wasn't in the war and was now enduring its second Timorese occupation, as the British and Australians had occupied it first to prevent it from being attacked by the Japanese. The Portuguese protested the occupation without success.
Portuguese Timor was in the midst of an interesting transition at the time. The Portuguese government had just turned education over to the Catholic Church, and as a result, the educational fortunes of the population were improving. During the Japanese occupation of Timor the distinction between Portuguese and Dutch Timor were ignored, fairly obviously, but the Portuguese reasserted their possession in 1945 and would maintain it until 1975. The region was then invaded, following the political turmoil in Portugal of that period, by Indonesia, but in 2002 it gained independence. It's own independence movement can trace its origin to the improved educational lot of the population that started in 1941.
The Japanese also attacked Koepang in Dutch Timor on the same day, logically enough as it was all one island. The action was unusual in that it featured Japanese paratroopers who landed to take an airfield, but who were successfully repulsed by Australian troops. Japan did have paratroopers but they received little use during the war, and were in fact mostly only used in the early stages of the war in the Pacific.
German U-boats started raiding ships off of the Lesser Antilles. The Italian submarine Torelli participated with them.
The Hakim of Bahrain, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, died on this day in 1942. Under his administration, which commenced in 1932, oil exploration in the country commenced. Bahrain was a British protectorate at the time, something that had come about as the ruling family needed outside support due to their unstable position in the country.
