Sunday, February 13, 1944. The sinking of the Henry and Irma.

The Norwegian cargo ship Henry and passenger ship Irma were sunk off Kristiansund by two ships of the Royal Norwegian Navy due to their not having markings, according to the Royal Norwegian Navy.

The sinking became controversial, and remains so.

The USS Macaw ran aground at Midway and sank.  

The U.S. 14th Air Force raided Hong Kong.

The Germans assassinated Cretan resistance fighter Yiannis Dramoutanis.

The Red Army took Luga, Polna and Lyady.  Trapped German units pulled out of Korsun-Sevchenkosky late in the day, but did not break out of encirclement.

Horseshoe Dam Site Bridge, Maricopa County, Arizona.  February 13, 1944.

Sunday, June 7, 1942. The Yorktown goes down, the Chicago Tribune blabs, Attu occupied.

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success. 

Isoroku Yamamoto to Japanese cabinet minister Shigeharu Matsumoto and Prime Minister Fumimaro before World War Two.

This day is regarded as the official end of the Battle of Midway.

Yorktown after she had rolled over on her port side

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Lots of interesting items are mentioned by Sarah Sundin, on her blog, including the following.

Today in World War II History—June 7, 1942: In the Battle of Midway, carrier USS Yorktown sinks due to damage from the previous day, but the US is victorious in the major turning point of the Pacific War.

The Yorktown had sustained battle damage during the battle, and had been hit by a torpedo fired by a Japanese submarine the prior day.

The Yorktown started to list rapidly to port on the morning of June 7. She had already been abandoned due to battle damage by that time.  She rolled over to her port side, revealing the torpedo hole from a Japanese submarine.  The ship sank at 07:01 at which time the ships in the vicinity were all flying half-mast for her, and the crewmen mustered and at attention, heads uncovered.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the US had knowledge of the Japanese plans to strike Midway before it occurred, revealing sufficient information that had the Japanese studied the article, they would have realized that their codes had been broken.  Secretary of War Frank Knox demanded that the authors be prosecuted, but when it was soon noticed that the Japanese failed to change their codes, the matter was quietly dropped so as to avoid pointing the story out.

As Sundin also reports, Maj. Gen. Clarence Tinker, who was the commander of the U.S. Seventh Air Force, died when an LB-30 he was flying went down off of Midway. Tinker was leading a squadron of bombers in action in pursuit of the retreating Japanese forces.

The number of aircraft deployed from Midway during the battle is impressive, but U.S. Army Air Corps bombers, which included B-17s, LB-30s (B-24s) and B-26s were singularly unsuccessful in the action, largely disproving the prewar theory that multi engine bombers would be successful as a ground based threat to surface fleets.

Tinker had been born in Indian Territory and was of Osage extraction.  He was the first U.S. general officer to be killed in World War Two.  His Army service dated back to 1912.  Like several other generals in the Second World War, during World War One he'd served stateside.  He transferred to the flying service in 1922 and had reached the rank of Brigadier General in 1940.

The Japanese sweep in the Aleutians continued, with the Japanese landing on and taking Attu.  There were no military personnel on the island.  Three Aleuts were killed when the Japanse landed. It's 42 surviving Aleut residents were interned by the Japanese on Hokkaido, where 16 of them would die during the war.  Charles Jones, a resident of the island and a radio operator was murdered by the Japanese for his refusal to fix his radio for their use.  His wife Etta, a teacher on the island, survived the war and was interned with Australian nurses who had been taken on Rabaul.

The former residents of the island were resettled on other Aleutians islands after the war. 

The Japanese had intended the invasion of the island as a type of raid, intending to leave it by winter, but they ended up garrisoning it instead.

Attu village, 1937.  Note the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Germans ordered Jews in occupied France to wear yellow Stars of David.

British Commandos raided German airfields on Crete.

Thursday June 4, 1942. US prevails at Midway, the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

The Battle of Midway was being fought in earnest.

Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu shortly before it sank.

The Japanese launched aircraft to attack Midway Atoll at 04:30, the same time that the Yorktown launched ten aircraft to search for the Japanese fleet. AT 0534 a PBY from Midway itself sighted Japanese ships.  At 0710 aircraft launched from Midway, including six TBF's and four B-26s bombers attacked the Japanese.  Over the course of the entire day, various strikes and countries would occur, mostly from carriers.

The Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga and Soryu were all lost to the Japanese due to planes from the Enterprise and Yorktown.  The Yorktown had to be abandoned after it was hit by planes launched from the Hiryu, which itself was hit by U.S. carrier planes subsequently.  It would be scuttled the following day.

While the Japanese seemingly didn't appreciate it, the battle was the turning point in the war in the Pacific. The Japanese had been decisively defeated and would never regain the initiative nor be able to make good their losses.  The turning of the tide essentially came down to a single day.

A second day of raids occurred at Dutch Harbor.

A meeting between Hitler and Finnish general Mannerheim, effectively the Finnish head of state, results in the only known recording of Hitler speaking in a conversational manner.

Hitler at meeting that was recorded.

June 3, 1942. The High Water Mark for Japan.

On this day in 1942, at approximately 09:00, a PBY from Navy patrol squadron VP-44 spotted the Japanese Occupation Force heading towards Midway, some 580 miles distant.  Thinking, erroneously, that this was the main Japanese naval task force, he reported it as such.

At 12:30 Nine B-17s took off from Midway Island, found the occupation force, and attacked it unsuccessfully.

The Battle of Midway was on.

Part of the Japanese plans involved a diversionary attack in the Aleutians, which also served as a Japanese effort to block a possible invasion route into Japan via the northernmost portion of the Pacific..  Not surprisingly, that began on this day with carrier launched air raids on Dutch Harbor.

This day can be regarded as the high water mark of the war for the Japanese.  I.e, this is the last day of the war in which they would not be, effectively, losing the war in a strategic sense.

The British government announced it was taking over the coal and dairy industries for the balance of the war.

Tuesday, June 2, 1942. The BBC reports news from the Polish underground of Nazi mass extermination of Jews.

Members of the Death's Head SS, Germans who ran the death camps.

Today in World War II History—June 2, 1942: 80 Years Ago—June 2, 1942: BBC reports news from the Polish underground of Nazi mass extermination of Jews. Henry J. Kaiser proposes building auxiliary carriers; the Navy awards him a contract for the Casablanca class by the end of the month.

Sarah Sundin's blog notes that news broke in the West, and indeed the world, of one of the biggest crimes ever committed in human history, the German efforts to exterminate the Jews.

This has been controversial, in terms of "when did they know" and "what could have been done", ever since.  But in retrospect, the news actually broke relatively quickly after the effort truly became industrial.  Up until that time, the Germans had been killing Jews on a large scale, to be sure, but it had been mostly done by deployed SS field units with that specific task, which accomplished it largely via small arms fire. A lot of people were killed in that fashion, and also by Eastern European unofficially allied bands, but it had taken place in conditions which precluded the news from being much more than rumors.  SS, and Eastern European, murders of this fashion had taken place either in chaotic conditions as the Germans marched in, or in actual field conditions just behind the lines.  As a result, they took place in areas where reporting was limited to what the Germans chose to report.  As the only significant opposition force in these regions was the Red Army, which had not recaptured any of these areas by this point in the war, news getting out simply didn't.

Industrial scale murder, however, was impossible to keep a secret.  The Poles reported it first, in an underground opposition newspaper.  The BBC picked it up the next day.

On the same day the Germans deployed an 800mm (31") railroad gun at Sevastopol.  For comparison, battleships typically had 16" guns.

The insanely large gun was a devastating weapon, but the crew required to man it was also insanely large.

Size comparison to Russian OTR-21 rocket launcher, which delivers a similarly sized payload.

The gun would be part of a five-day artillery barrage of the city, which also featured large raids by the Luftwaffe.

In North Africa the Afrika Korps was threatening to have its most recent offensive halt due to logistical problems.

U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific rendezvous at Point Luck, uniting Task Force 16 and Task Force 17, which are then under the command of Admiral Fletcher. They are there in anticipation of a Japanese assault on Midway Atoll, which they know is coming due to breaking the Japanese code.

Thursday May 14, 1942. "AF" to be attacked.

The US Navy partially decoded a Japanese message concerning a large force preparing to invade "AF".  Navy Cryptanalyst Joseph Rochefort suspected it was Midway Island, but as AF was not known with certainty, a message in the clear was subsequently broadcast from Midway that its desalination plant had broken down, which the Japanese picked up, and rebroadcast as an intelligence report in regard to "AF".

The Mexican oil tanker Petrero del Llano was sunk by a German submarine.

Today in World War II History—May 14, 1942: US Navy begins full convoys on East Coast as the first convoy departs from Hampton Roads, VA, for Key West, FL.

So notes Sarah Sundin's blog.

She also noted that Australia commenced rationing of food and clothing on this day, something I had never considered, in the Australian context, before reading about it on her site.

Sunday, January 25, 1942. Australia initiates conscription.

As Sarah Saradin's blog, notes, the following things happened on this day in 1942:

January 25, 1942: Japanese set up puppet government in Thailand, which declares war on US and UK. Japanese land at Lae, New Guinea. Australia orders full mobilization; all white male British subjects 18-45 years are eligible for conscription.

It's worth noting that conscription was not popular in Australia.  The Australians were justifiably freighted that the Japanese would land on Australia and outright conquer it, a thought that seems fantastical today, but which is less extreme than one might imagine.  Japan's population grossly outnumbered Australia's and Australia, for the most part, is only populated on its coasts.  Japan was, at the time, expanding its conquests massively, and on this day were making landings in New Guinea and Borneo.  As noted, their puppet government in Thailand declared war on the US and UK.

Nonetheless, Australians, who have always had a strong contrarian streak, didn't like the idea of conscription and at first Australian conscripts only served in Australia itself, matching a pattern that was true for Canada, at first.  Late war Canadians conscripts could be sent overseas, and Australian ones ended up fighting in the Pacific. The quality of Australian conscript combat troops was notably poorer than their volunteer troops, with morale really being the reason why.

The United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa reciprocated Thailand's declaration of war.  Thailand's ambassador to the US refuses to deliver the declaration and defects, going on to form a Free Thai government in exile.

Japanese submarines shelled Marine Corps positions at Midway unsuccessfully, and submerged due to counterfire.

Uruguay severed diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan.

The Red Army surrounded the Germans at Kholm.   The Germans overran British lines, including armor, at Msus.

Friday August 1, 1941. New things.

The United States Navy was about to get a brand new, and very advanced, torpedo bomber in the form of the Grumman TBF.

TBF's at the Natrona County International Airport as fire bombers in the 1960s.  These aircraft are an enduring memory of my childhood. According to a commenter on one of our companion blogs, these were removed from firefighting duties, which were a common post-war use of them, as the Forest Service was concerned over single engine aircraft being used in this role.  Ironically, the Air Tractor is a common firefighting aircraft today.

It was the first flight of the TBF.

It's interesting, in part because the U.S. Navy regarded the existing TBD-1 as obsolete, which by American standards it was, but it had only gone into service in 1935.  The TBD-1, obsolete though it may have been, was a more advanced aircraft than the Fairey Swordfish that had recently proven to be instrumental in the sinking of the Bismarck, even though the Sworfish had gone into service the following year, 1936.

Also of interest the Japanese already regarded the Nakajima B5N2, "Kate", which had gone into service in 1937 as obsolete, even though it was a more advanced aircraft than the TBD.  The B5N was slated for replacement by the new Nakajima B6N.  

All of this goes to show the technological race in the Pacific was significantly different from that in Europe.  The Japanese Navy was highly advanced, as was the U.S. Navy, and they were racing against each other for the most advanced aircraft and equipment in anticipation of the upcoming war.

On the same day, the U.S. Navy established a base at Midway Island in the Pacific and on Trinidad.

Midway, November 1941.

Midway isn't really a friendly location for humans and there was no permanent human presence on the tiny atoll until 1903, when it was first a station for a transpacific telegraph cable and then U.S. Marines, starting in 1908, when the cable company complained about an unauthorized Japanese presence on the island. An effort to dredge a path through the atoll for shipping purposes in the 1870s had previously failed.  In 1935, it became a stopover on the way to China for Pan American flying boats.  Pan American opened a hotel on the island as a result of the needed to service its wealthy customers on what was a luxury passage at the time.

The island remained a Naval station after World War Two and reached peak population in the 1960s. Since that time technological developments have rendered it obsolete as a base and there is no other reason for human habitation.  Its population has returned to 0.

You can read about those events here:

Today in World War II History—August 1, 1941

On the same day, the Jeep went into full production.

Grim wartime depiction by combat artist of the dead being transported by Jeep on Guadalcanal.

Jeep became the most famous U.S. military vehicle of all time, although it was not as important, in real terms, as the 6x6 series of military trucks.  Of note, while the Army's artillery branch had been working on 6x6 trucks since well before the war, being unable to find a suitable civilian truck, the famous military series really went into production in 1941 as well.

The Jeep dates back to a U.S. Army request for a 1/4 ton truck that was only a year old at the time.  The first suitable vehicle was produced by the Bantam company, which had a prewar history of making tiny vehicles and therefore was well suited to design one for the military.  Unfortunately for them, them, Bantam was not a large-scale manufacturer, so even though it came up with an excellent 1/4 truck, they really weren't capable of mass-producing it.

Because of these concerns, the Government provided the Bantam design to Willys and Ford, larger manufacturers.  This was common for defense contracts, with it being often the case that a product designed by one company would be produced by another.

Also common at this time was the technological development of a design once a company had it, and this rapidly occurred. Willys in particular improved on the Bantam truck and produced a new variant that rapidly became the standard one that Ford and Willys manufactured during the war.  Bantam did not produce any significant number of Jeeps, other than the very early ones, as a result.

The Jeep became a ubiquitous American military vehicle and indeed an iconic American 4x4.  Extremely dangerous and unstable in its early variants, it went into multiple roles.  It's sometimes claimed that it "replaced the horse", which at least in officer transportation it did, but the claim is over broad  Indeed, the widespread use of vehicles was sui generis, although there is some slight truth to that claim.

The wartime BRC40, MB and GPW Jeeps yielded to the M38 after the war, which was an extremely similar Jeep. At the same time, Willys introduced the CJ2, a civilian variant of its wartime MB.  The vehicle was a huge success but for some reason Willys itself, which had specialized in rugged vehicles, couldn't make a go of it in the post-war world specializing in them, and ultimately sold the Jeep product line.  The M38 itself yielded to the M38A1, which in civilian use became the familiar CJ5. Today, Chrysler owns the Jeep brand and produces an updated vehicle which is much safer than the prior variants, but which strongly resembles the CJ5.  The last military Jeep was the M151 "Mutt", which was not only highly dangerous, but which was a Ford design that was also manufactured by Kaiser (which also made CJ5s as a successor to Willys) and AMC (which also made CJ5s as a successor to Kaiser).

My first car, the incredibly dangerous M38A1.

As with the first item on this August 1, 1941, thread, I have a personal connection here as well.  I've owned three Jeeps over the years including a CJ2 and a M38A1.  I no longer have either for those first two vehicles, but I still own a 97 TJ.

Jeeps, I'd note, are so associated with the American military of World War Two that even movies made close in time to actual events, such as They Were Expendable, often mistakenly show them in use very early in the war.  In actuality, when World War Two broke out for the United States, the Jeep was so new that there were none of them in the Pacific Theater.

Roosevelt, on this day, restricted export sales of petroleum to the Western Hemisphere and the United Kingdom.  This followed up on recent actions aimed at Japan, but it also had the impact of securing petroleum supplies for the United Kingdom.

The Germans resumed civilian executions on Crete.