Showing posts with label Dutch Navy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dutch Navy. Show all posts

Monday, January 24, 2022

Saturday January 24, 1942. The first surface engagement between the Allies and Japan.



A committee issued its report finding Admiral Kimmel and General Short at fault for failing to coordinate their defenses or taking appropriate measures, leading to the disaster at Pearl Harbor.

This significant item, or series of items, below:
Today in World War II History—January 24, 1942: Battle of Makassar Strait—first US naval surface action in Asian waters since Spanish-American War: US destroyers and US & Dutch aircraft sink six Japanese ships at Balikpapan, Borneo. US Flying Tigers P-40s shoot down 12 planes over Rangoon, Burma. New song in Top Ten: “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good.”

The Battle of Makassar Strait was significant for the reasons noted, although the Japanese land action at Balikpapan was successful.

The Germans relieved a Soviet encirclement at Sukhinichi in a type of action that would remain common for the rest of the war.

Peru broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan.

Abie's Irish Rose premiered on NBC. The radio comedy involves a wealthy Jewish widower whose son begins to court, and then secretly marries, an Irish Catholic girl.  The theme had been a long-running popular one and this was a radio adaptation of a play that had first premiered on May 23, 1922, and then made into a film in 1928.


It would be made into a film again in 1946.

The play, written by Anne Nichols, was loosely based on her own story, although in her case she had been raised in a strict Baptist family and married an Irish Catholic man.  It was an enduring American theme had appeared before, in other settings, by other authors, and would continue to be later. For example, O. E. Rölvaag had included it in his sequel to Giants In the Earth, Peter Victorious, but with the Irish Catholic girl marrying a Norwegian Lutheran.  It'd repeated directly in Brooklyn Bridge, the 1990s television show set in the 1950s and would, in a different twist, be repeated in the film Brooklyn, also set in the 1950s, with an Irish immigrant woman and an Italian American man, both Catholics but of different ethnic backgrounds.  In some altered form, perhaps involving somebody of Hispanic origin, it's probably ripe to be repeated.

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Friday, November 28, 1941. The USS Enterprise departs Pearl Harbor.

A task force centered on the USS Enterprise left Pearl Harbor in order to deliver twelve Marine Corps F4F aircraft to Wake Island.  But for this, the Enterprise would have been at Pearl Harbor on December 7.


The Enterprise would complete that mission on December 4, and then it turned around to return to Pearl Harbor.  It would have arrived there on December 6 but for bad weather.

The Enterprise's departure was known to the Japanese, due to reporting from a consulate based intelligence officer they had there.  At this time, this meant, due to reassignments and repairs, only one carrier remained in Pearl Harbor.

The Army concluded the Carolina Maneuvers.

A brand new, at that time, Jeep and a 37mm anti tank gun in the Carolina Maneuvers.

The maneuvers were massive in scale, involving 350,000 men.

The direction things were moving in was obvious, inside at least the Government.





German general Johann von Ravenstein was captured by New Zealanders in North Africa, making him the first German general officer to become a prisoner of war during World War Two.

The Soviets retook Rostov on Don.

The O-21 at Gibraltar.

The Dutch submarine O-21 sank the German U-95.