Wednesday, September 30, 1942 U.S. rations footgear, Canada conscripts at age 19.

Today in World War II History—September 30, 1942: US begins rationing men’s rubber boots and work shoes. Canada begins draft for men 19 and older (men 21-24 are already subject to draft).

So notes Sarah Sundin on her blog.  

Conscription was controversial in general in Canada. At this point in the war, conscripts could not be sent overseas unless they volunteered to do so, although a high percentage did volunteer.

Sundin also noted that high scoring German fighter pilot, Hans-Joachim Marseille, was killed bailing out of his Me109 on this day.  His engine had caught on fire, and he hit the horizontal stabilizer upon bailing out. Most of Marseille's victories had been over North Africa.  

Marseilles was a high scoring, but largely unstudied, German pilot.  He was noted for being unorthodox in his flying and his personality.

Canada closed Hastings Park Assembly Center, a temporary staging center for the internment of Japanese Canadians, as it was no longer needed, internment now being in full swing.

Hitler delivered a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast in which he promised that the Jews would be exterminated, rather than the "Aryan peoples".  Nobody was, of course, attempting to exterminate the Aryan peoples, to the extent that such a category even exists.  The speech was long and mocking, and oddly made reference to specific figures, like Gen. MacArthur.

The Germans were, at this point, in trouble, and at the higher reaches of their government, they knew it.  Hitler had been sacking generals on the Eastern Front, the Afrika Korps was back on the defensive, and the British were raiding by air nightly.  New weapons were being put into Allied production, which Hitler derisively mentioned, but which indicates that the knowledge that the Germans were losing the technology and production war was starting to set in.

On the same day, Germany and Turkey signed a trade agreement.

Tuesday, September 29, 1942. The British launch Operation Braganza, and the Japanese try again in Oregon.

The British launched Operation Braganza with the goal of capturing the ground around Deir el Munassib in Egypt.  It would fail.

The Japanese tried again with a second submarine launched seaplane bombing mission against the forest in Oregon, hoping to set them on fire. They did not.

The great comedic actress Madeline Kahn was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

Lahn was born to Bernard and Freda Wolfson, who divorced when she was two.  Her mother later married Hiller Kahn who adopted her.  Her mother had wanted to be an actress and for a time pursued that goal.  Kahn graduated in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy from Hofra University and began purusing an actiing career herself soon after.

Kahn in 1964.

Starting with roles on Broadway, she broke into film in 1968 and by 1972 was in the major motion picture, What's Up Doc?, which I've never seen.  The following year, she was in Paper Moon, which is a great film, for which she secured an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.  She was in a series of notable roles after that.  In the 1990s she was in the television series Cosby, which was hugely respected, but which is now probably un-airable due to the later revelations about Bill Cosby.  She died in 1999 of ovarian cancer at age 57.

Wednesday, September 23, 1942. Departures, bad health, appointments and tragedies.

Rommel left North Africa o this day in 1942 for six weeks of recuperation in Germany.  He was suffering from exhaustion, sinusitis, high blood pressure, and stomach ailments.  On the way home he stopped in Rome to talk to Mussolini.

Perhaps ironically, George Stumme, who suffered from high blood pressure as well, was put in command in Rommel's absence where he'd die a month later in combat, probably from a heart attack or stroke.

The East African 22nd Infantry Brigade captured the capital of Madagascar.

Sarah Sundin reports:

Today in World War II History—September 23, 1942: René Blum, founder of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and brother of former French prime minister Léon Blum, is deported to Auschwitz, where he will be killed.

She also noted that Gen. James Doolittle was appointed to command the 12th Air Force. 

Sunday, August 16, 1942. The mystery of the L-8.

The Navy blimp L-8, put out earlier that day in search of Japanese submarines, coasted into Daly California without its crew.

The blimp and its crew of two had taken off at 06:03 from Treasure Island off of San Francisco.  At 07:38 its crew radioed that they had seen an oil slick off of Farallon Islands, Point Reyes.  A Liberty ship and a fishing boat both later reported that the blimp descended to about 30 feet above the slick and then headed east, rather than its planned route, which would have taken it northwest.  It was next spotted at 11:15 off of Ocean Beach, by which time it lacked a crew.  The blimp contained its parachutes and life raft, so the crew had not bailed out.

They've never been found.

Official speculation is that they were trying to deploy a smoke signal when one slipped out and the other went to rescue him, with both going into the ocean, or some variant of that. This seems fairly likely, although other theories abound.

The 101st Airborne Division, provided with cadre from the 82nd Airborne Division, was activated.  The 82nd had been converted organizationally from a conventional infantry division to an airborne division the day prior.

Shoulder insignia of the 101st Airborne Division.

The 101st had come into the table of organizations during World War One, but just existed for nine days on the charts, having been created immediately before the end of the war.  In contrast, the 82nd "All American" Division had seen action in World War One and included in its ranks the famous Alvin York.

Shoulder patch of the 82nd Airborne Division.

The USS Alabama was commissioned.

The Alabama in 1942.

The ship avoided being scrapped in 1964, which the Navy intended to do, and was acquired by the State of Alabama where she became a museum ship.  In spite of the original scrapping intent, a provision of the Navy's transfer of her ownership was that she could be recalled if needed, and in fact when the Iowa Class battleships were reactivated in the 1980s, some of her engine parts were cannibalized by the Navy as they were needed for those ships and were no longer manufactured.

The German Navy began Operation Wunderland with the goal of entering the Kara Sea, an extension of the Arctic Ocean, in order to attack Soviet ships that took refuge in the region which was iced up ten months out of the year.  The German Navy also sank three ships off of Aracaju, Brazil, operating under the belief that Allied ships were operating in neutral territorial waters off of eastern South America.

The Japanese, operating off of faulty areal reconnaissance, dispatch the 28th Naval Infantry Regiment from Truk to retake what they believe is a mostly abandoned Guadalcanal.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Axis targets in Egypt for the first time.

What started as a Mass to commemorate members of the Begona Regiment who had died in the Spanish Civil War degenerated into a riot between Falangist and Carlist factions in which a Falangist member, who had hand grenades with him, through two resulting in the wounding of thirty people.

Friday, August 14, 1942. Eisenhower named to command Torch.

While there are different dates for this that seem to be given, and this is just one of them, it seems that on this date Dwight Eisenhower, career U.S. Army officer who had been a Colonel prior to the built up for World War Two, and who had never been in combat, was chosen to lead Operation Torch, the planned fall 1942 amphibious landings by Anglo-American troops in North Africa.

Maj. Gen. Eisenhower, at that time, in 1942.

That this was being planned shows the degree to which, in planning, the tide of the war was turning, in spite of the evidence on the ground.

On the ground, British commandos conducted a nighttime raid on anti-aircraft and radar sites at Pointe de Saire, France.  The raiders crossed the channel in a British motor torpedo boat and did not sustain any losses.

The Ohio, mentioned yesterday, and the day before, doesn't sink, is reboarded and taken back under tow.  Further attacks break the towline, but they're repaired, and the towing keeps on, lashed to warships near her.

British freighter MV Brisbane Star, part of Pedestal as well, makes it to Malta at 4:15 P.M. in spite of being heavily damaged.

The Australians retreat from Deniki in New Guinea.   The Japanese land 3,000 additional troops.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—August 14, 1942: Two P-38 Lightnings of the US 1st Fighter Group shoot down a German Fw 200 Condor bomber off Iceland—the first US claim against the Luftwaffe

Friday, August 7, 1942. The Marines land on Gaudalcanal.

On this date in 1942 U.S. ground forces engaged in offensive actions in World War Two for the first time when U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida islands in the British Solomon's.  The landing at Guadalcanal was comprised of the 1st Marine Division and numbered 11,000 men in strength.

Marines landing on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942.

The degree to which this is truly momentous is sometimes lost. This event occurred just nine months after Pearl Harbor and even fewer, obviously, after Midway.  The hard fought campaign would ultimately involve 60,000 U.S. troops, about half that number of Japanese troops, and include both Marine and U.S. Army elements.  The goal was the simple one of retaking lost territory in the South Pacific.

The initial landing force was principally made up of Marines.  The initial landings saw the rapid fall of all of the objectives, save for Guadalcanal, the most substantial one.  The Japanese were on the offensive in New Guinea at the time and had rolled their advances to the doorstep of Australia.

Lt. Gen. Gott.

British Lt. Gen. William "Strafer" Gott was killed when his transport plane was shot down by German fighters.  He had just been appointed to command the British 8th Army.

Churchill had appointed Gott over objections of some of his advisors, who wished to see Bernard Law Montgomery appointed.  Anthony Eden had urged the appointment, as he had served with Gott in the First World War and had a high opinion of him.  According to at least one of Montgomery's advisors, Gott himself was desperately worn down by his prior commands prior to accepting this one.

His death would result in Montgomery's appointment.  Churchill went on to state that the "hand of God" had been involved in removing Gott, and it was, while a terrible tragedy for Gott and those in the airplane with him, a bizarrely fortuitous event for the British in elevating Montgomery.

Wednesday, August 5, 1942. Vichy Guilt.

Today in World War II History—August 5, 1942: 80 Years Ago: Churchill appoints Lt. Gen. William Gott to replace Gen. Claude Auchinleck over British Eighth Army in North Africa.

So reports Sarah Sundin.

Churchill visited El Alamein. He'd flown into Cairo the day prior.

More ominously, she also notes:

Vichy France (not occupied by the Germans) sends its first group of Jews to Drancy in occupied France, where they will be sent to Auschwitz.

Antisemitism in France had a long history.  Tragically, during the war, it began to come out in events such as this. Vichy was still an independent state, and it was cooperating accordingly in one of hte most horrific crimes in history.

In France, the Japanese, yes Japanese, submarine I-30 arrived in Lorient with a load of mica and shellac, and blueprints for the highly successful Type 91 aerial torpedo.  The crew was met and greeted by Admirals Raeder and Donitz.  Ultimately, the crew visited Berlin and its commander, Commander Endo, met Hitler.

It would carry radar equipment for Japan on the way back, but it didn't make it, being sunk by a British mine on its return trip.

France, according to Sundin, also began to ration wine at the rate of two liters per person per week.  There are about five glasses of wine in a liter, according to the Internet, so that probably was a pretty significant restriction in a country in which wine still provided a significant number of daily calories.

Beyond that, however, as late as the 1950s French wine consumption was so large that the French government, concerned with the health impacts of excessive drinking, began a campaign to encourage the French to limit their consumption to one liter per day.

Yup, one liter per day.

Wine consumption has dropped way off in France. As late as the 1980s, more than half of all French adults drank at least one glass of wine daily.  That figure is now 17%, and 38% of the French don't drink.  This huge cultural shift is attributed to a wide variety of factors.

Dutch Queen Wihelmina visited the White House and addressed Congress.

Anthony Eden announced that the British would not feel bound by the 1938 Munich Agreement post-war, which seems rather obvious.

Monday, July 27, 1942. North African Stalemate

The First Battle of El Alamein ended with a tactical stalemate but a strategic British victory in that they arrested the Afrika Korps advance.

Thursday, July 2, 1942. Churchill's government survives an attempted Motion of Censure.

Members of the British Army's Special Air Service in North Africa with American Jeeps.

A Motion of Censure of Churchill's government was brought in the House of Commons, and then overwhelmingly failed.

The motion was brought due to recent reversals in North Africa, although the recent setbacks in the newly started war with Japan played a part as well.  Churchill specifically noted that he expected fortunes to reverse as British forces started receiving American arms.

Churchill had stated in response to the motion:

The will of the whole House should be made manifest upon important occasions. It is important that not only those who speak, but those who watch and listen and judge, should also count as a factor in world affairs. After all, we are still fighting for our lives, and for causes dearer than life itself. We have no right to assume that victory is certain; it will be certain only if we do not fail in our duty. Sober and constructive criticism, or criticism in Secret Session, has its high virtue; but the duty of the House of Commons is to sustain the Government or to change the Government. If it cannot change it, it should sustain it. There is no working middle course in wartime

Interestingly enough, things were already turning around, or at least not getting any worse. The Afrika Korps failed to take El Alamein for the second day in a row, with Briitsh forces mounting a counterattack that took 2,000 prisoners and 30 field guns.

The Tirpitz and Hipper, with escorts, left Trondheim to attack Allied convoy PQ17.  Seventeen He115s attacked the convoy unsuccessfully.

PQ17 was being shadowed by submarines and flying boats.

Tuesday, June 30, 1942. Spreading Nazi Oppression.

The Third Reich closed all remaining Jewish schools inside of Germany.

This odd fact, that the schools were still open to some degree, points out the oddity that German Jews, while subject to all of the repression that Jews in German occupied territories were, were still safer than those in the occupied territories.  Indeed, the mortality rate during the Third Reich, while still ghastly and large, was significantly lower than it was for the occupied territories.  This has been explained by there being at least a remnant of laws applying to Jews in Germany, whereas those elsewhere were completely subject to Nazi lawlessness.

The U158, having destroyed 12 ships during a successful patrol, was sunk by a U.S. Navy PBM Mariner off of Bermuda, demonstrating how submarines were vulnerable to aircraft.

German forces moved forward again in Case Blue.  At Sevastopol, Stalin ordered senior figures evacuated by submarine.

The Afrika Korps arrived in front of El Alamein.

British troops at El Alamein.

Wedding fashions, by which we mean female wedding fashions, was the topic of the Life magazine that came out on this day.

Monday, June 29, 1942. More German advances.

Meresa Matruh, an Egyptian port city well into Egypt, fell to the Afrika Korps. Rommel's forces were now advancing at a rapid pace into Egypt.  

The city today remains a significant Egyptian port.  It's history stretches back into antiquity.

The city in 1942, Allied armor column.

They also reached Sidi Abd el Rahman, which was only 20 miles from El Alamein, even further East.  The city today is a tourist destination, although large numbers of landmines still exist in the area.

Mussolini flew, as the pilot, from Italy to Libya, carrying his white horse in anticipation of a complete conquest of North Africa in near days, and a triumphal parade in Cairo.

The Germans were also advancing rapidly in the southern Soviet Union. Dust columns from German forces could be seen from a distance of 40 miles.

The Germans crossed Severnaya Bay at Sevastopol by boat.

Admiral King proposed an invasion of the Eastern Solomon Islands to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Tuesday, June 23, 1942. Married men exempted from the draft.

US soldier in training, June 1942.

Sarah Sundin reports on her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 23, 1942: RAF captures first German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter plane, which lands by mistake in Wales. President Roosevelt signs bill deferring married men from the draft.

The FW 190 was a great aircraft, the best German fighter of the war, if you discount the ME262 jet fighter, which I think you can.

The married men draft deferment removed 18,000,000 men from the draft pool and was designed to intentionally use up the pool of eligible single men first.  The exemption would not last, although it did last for a while.  In April 1943 married men were once again eligible, but could be exempted if their conscription imposed an "extreme hardship" on their wives or children. 

This exemption would be reinstated at some point during the Vietnam War, leading to some rushed marriages in order to avoid conscription.  I'm not really sure what I think about it, frankly.  It was probably more defensible during the Second World War during which men remained the sole "bread winners" for many families and couples.  Indeed, while women did of course work during the war, the scale at which women overall worked is exaggerated in the popular recollection of the war.

Hitler authorized the Afrika Korps to pursue the 8th Army towards Egypt.

Monday, June 22, 1942. Laval wishes for a German victory.

Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of (Vichy) France, stated in a radio address; 

I wish for a German victory, because, without it, Bolshevism tomorrow would settle everywhere.

He was in his third period of being the Prime Minister, with the second and third both being during the Vichy period.

The statement came as a shock to many of his countrymen, who assumed that Vichy France was playing a waiting game until an Allied liberation would come.  Laval, however, had come to heavily sympathize with the Nazis.

Laval had been Prime Minister in 1931-32. He originally had been a pacifist Socialist politician and a lawyer who championed working men, but by the 1940s he'd migrated towards fascism.  He was executed following a trial after the war.

Sarah Sundin reports the following for today:

Today in World War II History—June 22, 1942: Germans take Bardia, Libya. US Flag Code becomes public law, regarding the Pledge of Allegiance and treatment of the flag.

World War II Every Day with Army Sizes

Sunday, June 21, 2022. The Japanese shell Ft. Stevens. Tobruk falls.

The I25 followed up on the action by the I26 of yesterday's date and shelled Ft. Stevens, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River.  It failed to hit anything.  Ft. Stevens did not return fire for a variety of reasons, including the problems of firing at night, worrying about whether the fire was simply from a reconnaissance mission, and a concern that the guns mounts made firing on the I25 impossible.

Crater from the I25.

The failure to return fire caused the Army to start reevaluating coastal artillery.

The I25 was sunk by the US the following year.

Tobruk fell to the Afrika Korps, with the Germans taking over 25,000 prisoners of war.  Rommel was rewarded with the Field Marshall's baton on the same day.

The temperature in Tirat Zvi Palestine, now Israel, reached 129.2 F, which remains the record for that location.

Thursday, June 18, 1942. Advancing Wehrmacht.

 

Winston Churchill, following his transatlantic flight, arrived in Washington, D. C.

The Wehrmacht took Fortress Maxim Gorky in Sevastopol.

The Afrika Korps took Kambut, Libya.

It was another day of heavy Allied shipping losses to German submarines.

At least from a news of the day prospective, things weren't looking great for the Allies in regard to the war against the Germans.

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Wednesday, June 17, 1942. Yank goes to press.

First issue of Yank's pinup girl.

Yank magazine, a service produced magazine issued entirely by enlisted men, was issued for the first time.  

Actress Jane Randolph appeared as the pin up girl for the of the first issue, something that was a feature of every issue. Generally, the pinup was pretty mild, as would be expected from a service magazine.  The first issue's color pinup was unusual for any magazine of the era, as color was much less used in magazines at the time.

I'd like to put up the front cover of the magazine, but I can't find it.  Generally, Yank featured a black and white photograph.  It occasionally had combat illustrations on the cover, a lot of which were of very high quality.  Every now and then the pinup girl made the cover if she was a famous actress, such as Rita Hayworth.   The magazine was published throughout the war.

A second group of German saboteurs landed in Florida.  This was the second part of the plot to land German operatives in the US to sabotage German production, something that didn't go far due to the nearly immediate defection of two of the operatives who were landed in New York as addressed the other day.

Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo was slightly wounded when a Korean nationalist shot him. The assailant was immediately killed by the return fire of Japanese policemen.

The Afrika Korps took control of the coast road to Bardia, thereby surrounding Tobruk.

Tuesday, June 16, 1942. Allied setbacks.

Winston Churchill left the UK by plane to the United States for a visit with Franklin Roosevelt.

He would not have left had he known how dire the British position in North Africa was becoming, something that he'd been reassured about by Gen. Auchinleck before he departed.  On the same day, the Afrika Korps attacked El Adem and Sidi Rezegh near Tobruk, which effectively cut it off from contact with other British forces.

German U-boats had another good day in the Atlantic and Caribbean.

Operations Vigourous and Harpoon, designed to relieve Malta, concluded, largely a failure.

The Germans obliterated Ft. Maxim Gorky's artillery at Sevastopol.

The RAF conducted an ineffective nighttime raid on Essen.

Friday, June 5, 1942. The aftermath of Midway.

June 5 saw the aftermath of the Battle of Midway play out.  At 0215 two Japanese cruisers spotted the approaching US submarine USS Tambor and started zigzagging, hitting each other, and resulting in 92 deaths aboard the Mogami.  At 0450 the Akagi was scuttled.  At 0510 the Hiryū was scuttled by torpedoes from destroyer Makigumo.  Hiryū’s Captain Kaku and Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, commander of the 2nd Carrier Division, went down with the ship in a pointless death.

Things went better for the Tanikaze, a destroyer, that managed to avoid being hit in an attack by no less than 66 dive bombers on this day, following up on the Battle of Midway.

Japan, on the same day, began raiding in the Mozambique Channel.

The British attempted a counterattack against the Afrika Korps that failed, with the Germans resuming the offensive that afternoon.

The United States declared war on Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.

Thursday June 1, 1942. General Service opened up to African Americans in the Department of the Navy.

The Department of the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, opened up recruitment of enlisted men to African Americans for segregated units.

This was a change from the existing status in which the Navy only accepted blacks as messmates, and the Marine Corps not at all.

The Marine Corps had been all white during its history, something which is not true of the Navy, which actually had only become segregated in the early 20th Century.

Howard P. Perry.

The first enlisted black Marine was Howard P. Perry.  He survived the war and died in 1986 in Virginia, the state he enlisted in.   The first black recruit for established general service was William Baldwin.

The Grand Coulee Dam opened.

It was a major and celebrated Depression era project in an era in which such major construction projects were highly celebrated.

Sarah Sundin reports the following:

Today in World War II History—June 1, 1942: RAF launches 1000-bomber raid on Essen, Germany. US Navy lets Blacks enlist in services other than the mess—but not as officers and only in segregated units.

The raid on Essen was only one day behind the 1000 plane raid on Cologne.

She also notes the opening of Treblinka concentration camp in occupied Poland.

And she also notes that employees of Kaiser Shipyards were extended the benefit of the Permanente Health Plan.  That may seem like a minor thing, but acts like that brought about the current American health care system.  Before World War Two, there were health insurance companies, but during the war they expanded greatly as an employment benefit.  In order to curb inflation brought about by labor demands, the government had frozen wages, but it didn't think to freeze benefits, which were rare at the time.  Health care plans rapidly became a benefit offered by some employers to entice employees.

Health insurance has, as a result, became a standard feature of American life and a dominating force in our health care system today, in contrast to other countries where state supplied health coverage is the norm.

The Afrika Korps broke through British lines at Sidi Muftah.  Fighting was hand to hand.

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Related thread:

Blacks in the Army. Segregation and Desegregation