Saturday, August 15, 1942. Ohio gets to Malta.

Today in World War II History—August 15, 1942: Allied “Pedestal” convoy arrives in Malta—only 5 of 14 cargo ships have survived (including tanker Ohio lashed to destroyers HMS Penn and HMS Ledbury).

From Sarah Sundin's blog. 

The Pedestal convoy was a major saga in 1942.  Even now, historians debate whether the huge convoy losses made the matter an Axis victory or the fact that some ships did get through, including the Ohio, made it an Allied one.  At the end of the day, the arrival of the Ohio was in fact materially important, and the supplies allowed Malta to carry on.

The Ohio after arriving in port.

Malta was in truth very near to being starved out of the war at this point and therefore, from my prospective, this was in fact a British naval victory, albeit one at a high cost.  The British could not afford to lose the island, however, and Pedestal prevented that and allowed it to go on to be used as an air and naval base to disrupt supplies going to the Afrika Korps.

Also on this day, the British submarine HMS Porpoise sank the Italian MV Lerici.  The U-705 sank the SS Balladier off of Ireland.  The Finnish patrol boat VMV 5 sank the Soviet submarine M-97 in the Gulf of Finland.

The Germans attacked Grozny.

The Marines, now suffering from short supplies, opened the captured Japanese airfield at Lunga Point, naming it Henderson Field.  On the same day, four ships arrived with much-needed supplies.

1942  The first landing at the Casper Air Base took place when Lt. Col. James A. Moore landed a Aeronca at the base.

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

Thursday, August 13, 1942. Pedastal hit, Montgomery takes command, Japan enacts laws against what they had committed, Stalin writes a memo, Bambi opens in the United States.

The Pedestal convoy was hit again by German and Italian torpedo boats.  They sank four freighters and damaged the HMS Manchester.

Torpedo hitting the Ohio.

The oil tanker Ohio, manned for the trip by a British crew, was attacked by aircraft and finally immobilized and then abandoned, but with fuel tanks intact.  She did not sink.

It's of note here that much of what we're told about World War Two naval action really isn't applicable to the war in the Mediterranean, and as we saw from the Battle of Savo Island earlier, it isn't to the early war in the Pacific either.  It's often claimed that torpedo boats were worthless in World War Two, but as late as 1942 they certainly were not.  Indeed, this is just once of several instances in the first half of the war of torpedo boats performing successfully just as they were meant to, making surface raids at high speed against larger war ship and coming out on top.  Additionally, air cover clearly wasn't adequate or wasn't cutting it for convoy escort in the Mediterranean.  This convoy had an aircraft carrier with it, but it was itself one of the first vessels to be sunk.

On this day, the Italian Navy, still a major force in the Mediterranean, had to recall, however, a major task force that was attempting to intercept Pedestal due to a lack of German air cover, and British submarine action.

The excellent, but unfortunately discontinued, blog World War II Day-By-Day also notes this naval action on this day:

Caribbean. U-600 and U-658 attack as 2 USA-South America convoys pass the strait between Cuba and Haiti. At 5.07 AM, U-658 sinks Dutch SS Medea in convoy WAT 13 (5 killed, 23 rescued by convoy escorts). At 9.48 AM, U-600 sinks Latvian SS Everelza (23 killed, 14 rescued by convoy escorts) and American passenger/cargo ship SS Delmundo (8 killed including 3 passengers, 50 survivors including 5 passengers picked up by British destroyer HMS Churchill) in convoy TAW 12.

At 7.50 AM in the Gulf of Mexico 25 miles off the coast of Louisiana, U-171 stops US tanker SS R.M. Parker Jr. with 2 torpedoes and finishes her off with the deck gun (all 37 crew and 7 gunners rescued 8 hours later by US Coast Guard auxiliary craft USS Pioneer).

South Atlantic. At 7.40 AM 400 miles Southwest of Freetown, Sierra Leone, U-752 sinks American SS Cripple Creek carrying 7500 tons of war supplies from USA to British 8th Army in Egypt (1 killed, 38 crew and 13 gunners in 3 lifeboats rescued after 4 days by British armed trawler HMS St. Winstan). 1400 miles West of Freetown, Italian submarine Reginaldo Giuliani sinks American SS California with the deck gun and torpedoes (1 killed, 35 survivors)

Bernard Law Montgomery took over the British 8th Army in the wake of the death of Gen. Gott.

Montgomery in August 1942.  He had a love of irregular uniform items, and ins this case is wearing an Australian slouch hat, although that item was popular with British officers.

Montgomery, one of the most controversial senior commanders of the Second World War, had been considered for the post prior to Gott being appointed, but had lost out to Gott. With Gott's death, he was the natural choice. He was of Scots ancestry and from what might be regarded as a sort of Scottish variant of the Anglo-Irish community. While born in England, his father was a Church of Ireland minister who would ultimately be sent to Tasmania, where Montgomery grew up.  While his father Henry had inherited the family estate in Ulster, there was not sufficient money to support the family until his father took the position in Tasmania.

His father was a dutiful clergyman and spent much of his time on the road in the rural areas of what remained a British colony at the time.  While he was gone, his mother, only in her twenties, constantly beat and then ignored the children.  This treatment made Bernard something of a bully in his youth and caused lasting animosity between him and his mother, whose funeral he did not attend in 1949.

The family returned to England in 1897.  Bernard joined the Army in 1908.  By all accounts he had a difficult personality, but in spite of American claims to the contrary, he was a brilliant tactician with a great appreciation of how to use troops who were inadequately equipped with thin resources.

The Germans took Elista on the Eastern Front.

The Australians retreated at Deniki on New Guinea, and the Japanese landed troops at Buna.

The Japanese, acting with rich hypocrisy, passed the Enemy Airman's Act.  It stated:

Article I: This law shall apply to all enemy airmen who raid the Japanese homeland, Manchukuo, and the Japanese zones of military operations, and who come within the areas under the jurisdiction of the China Expeditionary Force.

Article II: Any individual who commits any or all of the following shall be subject to military punishment:

Section 1. The bombing, strafing, and otherwise attacking of civilians with the objective of cowing, intimidating, killing or maiming them.

Section 2. The bombing, strafing or otherwise attacking of private properties, whatsoever, with the objectives of destroying or damaging same.

Section 3. The bombing, strafing or otherwise attacking of objectives, other than those of military nature, except in those cases where such an act is unavoidable.

Section 4. In addition to those acts covered in the preceding three sections, all other acts violating the provisions of International Law governing warfare.

Article III: Military punishment shall be the death penalty [or] life imprisonment, or a term of imprisonment for not less than ten years.

The hypocrisy was that Japan had used air assets extensively against Chinese civilian populations by this point in the war.  Using air assets against civilians is in fact a crime, but in this case, the Japanese were familiar with that crime by having done it.  Not only this, the murder, rape and enslavement of civilian populations was a common practice by Japanese ground forces.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that 1) the British had arrested the German advances in North Africa but were nowhere near reversing them; 2) the Japanese were still advancing in the South Pacific and the recent U.S. offensive in the Solomons was now imperiled by a lack of progress on Guadalcanal and the Japanese Navy driving the U.S. Navy from that island's coast; 3) British efforts to contest for the Mediterranean were hardly an unqualified success; and 4) tens of ships were going down in the Atlantic every day, Joseph Stalin wrote a memo protesting the Allied decision not to land in France in 1942.

What Stalin seemingly was missing is that while he was losing the war inside of Russia at that moment, all the evidence was that the Allies were still losing it in the Pacific and barely hanging on in North Africa.  A landing in France was simply impossible.

Bambi opened in the United States.

Aerial view (altitude 3,000 ft.) looking northwest at the start of construction of Dry Dock No. 4. East terminus of Palou Avenue, San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA.

Wednesday, August 12, 1942 The Second Moscow Conference commences.

The Second Moscow Conference opened on this day in 1942.  Averrell Harriman attended for the United States.  Churchill was there in person for the United Kingdom and, of course, Joseph Stalin was there, where he would have been anyway, for the USSR.

At least from an external view, the war was really not going well at this time for the Allies.  The Soviets were being pushed back inside their own borders every day, and it would have been rational to conclude that the latest big city to be entered, Stalingrad, would fall within days.  British Commonwealth forces had been pushed back to El Alamein, where they had however arrested the German advance.  The Japanese were advancing in New Guinea, and while the US had landed Marines on Guadalcanal, the Japanese Navy had driven the U.S. Navy from its coast.

Stalin's trip to the USSR would be regarded an ordeal by modern travelers.  He met with Stalin at 7:00 p.m. that night, having just arrived from Tehran, and informed Stalin immediately that there would not be a second front in 1942, although he then went on to inform Stalin about developing plans for Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa, which by any rational measure was a boosting of an existing second front.

Churchill promised landings in France in 1943.

On this day the Germans took Slavyansk and, in Operation Pedestal, the British ships Cairo and Foresight were sunk and the tanker Ohio badly damaged. The Ohio had to be taken under tow.  The convoy was constantly under attack from the air and sea by German and Italian forces.  

The Germans, however, transferred forces from Case Blue to the siege at Leningrad, which weakened the offensive which was already running into trouble.  Erich von Manstein was dispatched with those forces to Leningrad.

Actor Phillips Holmes died in a midair collision while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force.  Actor and future aircrewman Clark Gable joined the U.S. Army as a private.  He was 41 years old.

Monday, August 3, 1942. Supplying Malta.

Today in World War II History—August 3, 1942: Lt. Cdr. Mildred McAfee is named the first director of the WAVES, becomes the first female officer in the US Naval Reserve.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

The British launched Operation Pedestal, a naval operation designed to provide supplies to besieged Malta. The degree to which Malta was in desperate straights for much of 1941 and 1942 is often forgotten in the story of the war, as is the fact that the naval contest there was for a long time more evenly matched than we might otherwise remember.