Today in World War II History—December 11, 1942: “Cockleshell Heroes” Raid: British commandos who had landed in France from a submarine on Dec. 7 and canoed up the Gironde River, damage six ships in Bordeaux.
From Sarah Sundin's blog.
The Italian navy sank two Allied cargo ships, and damaged three others, in a manned torpedo raid on Algiers.
All in all, the Italian raid was more successful than the Royal Marine one on the same day.
The Battle of El Agheila commenced, which saw the British launch an operation to outflank the retreating Afrika Korps, which was both invading and withdrawing into Tunisia.
The town of El Agheila, Libya, had been the site of an Italian concentration camp earlier in the war which had confined 10,000 Bedouin in poor conditions.
As of this day, the United States had been at war for a year.
The Marine Corps celebrated the day by bombarding Japanese position on Guadalcanal.
The USS New Jersey was launched by the U.S. Navy:
The massive battleship was of the Iowa Class, and would serve off and on until 1991.
We've covered this time frame, 12/7/41 to 12/7/42, in a sort of day by day fashion, even though this isn't "World War Two Day By Day". We've done it as an interesting historical exercise, much like we started tracking the period of a century ago when we commenced with our day by day on the Punitive Expedition. This blog isn't "A Century Ago", or whatever, either.
Anyhow, it has been instructive.
What we have seen is that on December 7, 1941, the world was truly in contest. The Soviets were losing the war in the East. Not just might be losing, they were outright losing. The British, who really would have been entitled to regard the Easter Front as "the second front", were holding on however, and continued to fight where ever they could, sometimes in a surprising place like Greece, but perhaps most notably in North Africa. They were doing surprisingly well, even though the Germans had joined the fight to aid failing Italy there.
On the seas, however, the titanic Battle of the Atlantic raged, and the Mediterranean was very much in contest.
A year later, the United States and Australia had arrested Japanese progress in the Pacific. The Japanese would have been entitled not to have necessarily regarded the tide as having been turned, but any rational observer would have had to conclude that their offensive in the Pacific had already ground to a halt, and they were now on the defensive. They should have been worried.
The tide had been turned in North Africa and the handwriting was on the wall for the Afrika Korps, although the now German lead enterprise was attempting to react to Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of Vichy France's possession in the region which lead to the effective and rapid end of Vichy. The French military had departed from its own official sovereign and joined the Allies. And the battle for the Medettreanean was over, with the Allies prevailing in what was a Royal Navy victory. The Italians were beginning to regard the war as lost.
The Red Army had finally arrested German progress in the East and had launched its first really successful counter-attack, surrounding Stalingrad in what was to become a German disaster. In the East too, the Germans would have been entitled not to regard the contest as decided, but they no longer would have reason to regard a battlefield victory against the Allies as likely.
What my parents did on this day I don't know, of course. Both would have been in school. For my father, at least, talk of the war being "a year old" must have come up in some fashion.
The British commenced Operation Frankton, a kayak insertion raid on the French port of Bordeaux. The raid by commandos of the Royal Marines gave rise to the nickname The Cockleshell Heroes for its participants, who over a course of several days several vessels in the harbor, damaging six of them. The Germans predictably captured six of the men, and executed them.
British military kayaks.
Interestingly, it was Japanese vessels that had evaded blockades that the British were particularly attempting to target.
Today saw the first flight of the P-63 Kingcobra, the intended successor to the P-39.
The aircraft based on this frame were never popular with the U.S. Air Force and the while the aircraft was adopted by the US, it was not deployed in combat. It should principally be regarded as a Soviet fighter, and it was very popular with the Soviet Air Force, which was actually not supposed to deploy it, by agreement with the US, against the Germans, but retain it in the Far East in case of a Japanese attack upon the Soviet Union. Nearly indistinguishable from the P39, that agreement was not honored.
A P63 was recently involved in a tragic accident in Dallas, which we have noted here:
Tragedy. P63 hits B-17 at Dallas Airshow. (Graphic)
I'm sorry, it's hard to see how this could happen.
Actually, it apparently isn't all that hard to see how it could happen, as the P63 had poor visibility.
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