Friday, July 17, 1942. End of the Archangle Route, Soviet female snipers, Combat at El Alamein, Case Blue resupplied from the air.

Churchill informed Stalin that in light of the PQ 17 disaster, convoys to Archangel would be suspended. Stalin already believed that the British were exaggerating about their losses.

It's worth noting, in my view, that Stalin's grasp, in my view, of the difficulties faced by the Western Allies tended to be clouded.  The Soviet Union was no more of a naval power than Imperial Russia had been, indeed considerably less so, and Stalin's ability to grasp the problems faced by the United States Navy and Royal Navy was not necessarily great.

Red Army sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Roza Shanina appeared on the cover of Life Magazine.

Pavlichenko.

Pavlichenko, as her last name would indicate, was Ukrainian.  She was sent on a tour of the United States and Canada in 1942, where she was very blunt in her comments and found the questions asked of her by the press to sometimes be stupid.  Her husband died during the war, and she suffered from his loss and PTSD until her early death at age 58 in 1974.

Shanina

Shanina was a Russian from northwestern Russia.  Unlike Pavlichenko, she was highly photogenic and there are a great number of photos of her as a result, in which she is usally broadly smiling.

A bright, highly intelligent woman, she was killed in action in January 1945.

Shanina's death notice to her mother.

Australian and British forces at El Alamein attempted to take Miteirya Ridge, succeeded at first against Italian troops, but were later pushed back by combined German and Italian forces.

The Luftwaffe airlifts 200 tons of fuel to advancing German forces in Russia.  Hitler moved his headquarters to Werewolf, where he plans to personally oversee Case Blue.

Saturday, July 11, 1942. The remanants of PQ 17.

Marine Corps recruiting poster released on this date.

 

Today in World War II History—July 11, 1942: Allied Arctic convoy PQ-17 arrives in ports in northern Russia, having lost 22 of 33 cargo ships plus two auxiliary vessels, to German U-boats and aircraft.

As Sarah Sundin notes on her blog.  The convoy, however, actually lost 24 ships.

The ships had started arriving in Archangel about two days prior.  So few came in that Stalin thought that the Allies had lied about the size of the convoy in order to purposely send less than they promised.  He later accuses the UK of lying about the convoy's troubles.

PQ 17 was the hardest hit convoy of the war.

On the same day, the Soviets sunk another Swedish freighter, this one the SS Lulea which was carrying iron ore to Germany.

The RAF bombed Danzig's submarine pens, with the loss of only two bombers. The raid took place at dusk.  The route over the North Sea was the longest RAF raid up until that point in the war.

Australian troops advanced at El Alamein.

Japan cancelled planned invasions of Fiji, New Caledonia and Samoa, demonstrating that the Japaneses staff appreciated that the war was not going as well as it had been formerly.

Friday, July 10, 1942. The Akutan Zero.

In the Aleutians, a PBY pilot spotted a nearly intact Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island.  The aircraft would be recovered and rebuilt, with lessons learned from that instrumental in learning how to take on the advanced Japanese fighter.

The discovery was due to the crew of the PBY having becoming lost and having to reorient themselves before flying back to their base at Dutch Harbor.  The route took them over the downed aircraft.

The island had been evacuated, with its mostly native population having been removed the month prior. They would not return until 1944, although many chose to go back to the island.

The discovery was a major loss to the Japanese.

The A-26 Invader flew for the first time.

The first flight.

The twin-engined attack aircraft would remain in service until the late 1960s.

British forces launched an offensive on Italian forces outside of El Alamein, gaining ground.  By "British" we mean Commonwealth, as in this case the advancing troops were South African and Australian.  The battle at El Alamein was from a British prospective an international affair.

Two more ships of the harried convoy PQ 17 are sunk, this time by U boats.

Bombardier, the Canadian manufacture of snow machines (and jet aircraft), was founded.  The company, named for its founder, came about due to a tragedy when Jospeh-Armand Bombardier's two-year-old son was not able to reach the hospital due to snow blocked roads, and died of appendicitis.  This inspired Bombardier, who had made snow machines as a hobby before, to start making heavy snow machines commercially.

The Orson Wells directed tragedy, The Magnificent Ambersons, was released.

Thursday, July 9, 1942. Hitler splits his forces.

Hitler split his forces by ordering that Army Group South be so divided, with Group A to seize Rostov-on Don and continue into the Caucasus while Group B was to drive through Stalingrad and on to Astrakhan, a city on the Volga near the Caspian Sea.

Stalin authorized strategic withdrawals in the face of advancing Axis forces, the first time this had been done by the Soviet dictator.

To at least a certain extent, the German actions at this point reflected the original thinking behind Barbarossa.  The Germans thought themselves on the verge of capturing the Caucasian oilfield which they needed, to their thinking, to defeat the British.  They had also taken the Soviet grain belt as well.  Beyond the Volga was largely tractless wilderness, in their view, and they didn't fully conceive of the war really extending beyond that point.

The Soviets, of course, didn't regard being driven east of the Volga as defeat.

Sarah Sundin notes the following on her blog:

Today in World War II History—July 9, 1942: US Navy assigns Lt. Cdr. Samuel Eliot Morison the task of writing the US naval history of WWII, which will run to 15 volumes.

Morison was a professional and academic historian, with a profession at Harvard, where he eccentrically became the last professor to arrive at the school on horseback.  His position commenced before World War One, in 1915, but he temporarily left to enlist in the U.S. Army as a private during the war.  Following the war, he served on the Baltic Commission of the Paris Peace talks.  He then returned to Harvard.

He did not enter the Navy until 1942, in which he was asked to take on the role as Naval historian by Franklin Roosevelt.  In his role, he was active in witnessing combat.  His history of the Navy during the war would be fifteen volumes in length.  He retired from the Navy in 1950, and was promoted to the rank of  Rear Admiral.  He retired from Harvard in 1955 and died in 1976.

Of minor note, Samuel Eliot Morison (one "r") is sometimes confused with Rear Admiral George Stephen Morrison, who was a career combat officer in the Navy and who was the father of famed rock star, Jim Morrison.

Morison's history of the Navy is regarded as an authentically important and significant work of history.

German Ju88s damage PQ17's El Capitan and the SS Hoosier, but the first ships of the embattled convoy start pulling into Archangel.  At the same time, Convoy WP 183 comes under heavy attack by German torpedo boats, which sink six ships of the convoy.  German aircraft sink an additional ship.

It's often claimed that torpedo boats didn't live up to their promise during the Second World War, but this event certainly was a successful one for them.

In the Baltic, Soviet submarine S-7 sank Swedish coast freighters ten miles off the Swedish coast, sinking one.  It was carrying coal from Germany to Sweden.

In a part of the war that had grown somewhat quiet, Finns counterattacked a Soviet beached on Someri in the Gulf of Finland and defeated the Soviet invasion force.

Tuesday, July 7, 1942. The sinking of the U-701.

Heinrich Himmler authorized sterilization experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz, increasing Nazi barbarity to new perverse levels.

It's hard to appreciate how deeply weird the Nazis truly were.  As their reign expanded, and authority deepened, they not only turned to greater levels of killing, but also acts that were more and more perverse on every level.

The U-701 was sunk by a Lockheed Hudson off of Cape Hatteras.  This was noted by Sara Sundin in her blog, in which she stated:

Today in World War II History—July 7, 1942: US Army Air Force opens Wideawake Field on Ascension Island. US Army Air Force sinks its first submarine off the US East Coast.

Seven men survived the sinking, including the captain, and were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard.  Seventeen has escaped the submarine through the conning tower, of which ten died before being rescued.  Another 29 went down with the ship.

While I haven't been noting it, while the Germans were losing submarines in this period, they were also commissioning new ones almost every day.  An outside observer would have real reason at this point to ask who was winning the war.  Having said that, the human toll of submarine losses, which would ultimately be over 50,000 for the Germans, was truly horrific.

On that topic, the U-457 sank the British fleet oiler FRA Alderdale which had been part of the embattled convoy PQ 17.  It had been disabled and abandoned two days prior.  The U-355 sank the SS Hartlebury. The U-255 sank the SS Alcoa Ranger.  PQ 17 was becoming a major naval disaster.

The U-571 sank the SS Umtata off of Miami.  It was under tow for repairs at the time.

Sundin also noted the item about Wideawake Field on Ascension Island and has a further website entry on that here:

 Of Terns and Planes: While the armies of democracy battled the armies of totalitarianism, a smaller battle raged between US Army Engineers and a little bird called the sooty tern.

Ascension Island figured most recently in wartime in the Falklands War, when the British, whose possession it is, used it as a military staging area.   The United Kingdom continues to maintain communications installations there.  During World War Two the use of the island by the Air Force was able to extend the range of airborne protection to convoys on the southern route in the Atlantic.

Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, in a debate in the Canadian parliament on manpower, stated that the government's policy was "not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary".

Friday June 5, 1942. PQ 17 scatters.

Ships in embattled convoy PQ 17 ordered to scatter, and the escorts ordered to return to the UK.

Rommel halts the offensive of the Afrika Korps due to material losses and logistical problems, combined with effective British resistance at El Alamein.

Axis forces reached the Don.

Saturday, July 4, 1942. The first wartime Independence Day since 1918.

The National Publishers Association orchestrated United We Stand Campaign basically hit the newsstands today as the country's weekly magazines all featured patriotic covers.

The country also engaged in the usual 4th of July festivities, such as this gathering in Saint Mary's County, Maryland.  Having said that, the 4th was dampened both by the war, and by President Roosevelt's directive that fighting the war should be the focus of the day, rather than celebration.

War related tasks went on.

Aircraft spotters assistants, Dentsville Maryland.

Closer to home, I don't know what occurred on this Saturday of 1942, other than that the day would have been observed somehow.

President Roosevelt had issued a desire to see U.S. forces in action on this day, if at all possible. As a result, the 15th Bombardment Squadron participated in a raid on the Netherlands, thereby making it the first US Air unit to bomb occupied territory in Europe.  The low level daytime raid was conducted with British DB7 bombers (A-20s), with the American crewmen borrowing British aircraft.

The A-20 was the most produced attack bomber of the war, even though to a large degree its forgotten now.  It served in multiple air forces, including the US, the British, and the Soviet air arms.

The American Volunteer Group, the "Flying Tigers", were converted from a mercenary bad serving Nationalist China in the war against Japan, to the China Air Task Force of the United States Army Air Corps.  Almost all of the pilots chose to be released, however, so they could go on and return to their prewar service, or join the service, and fly elsewhere.

A debate between Hitler and General von Bock results in Von Bock prevailing in his desire to commit the 4th Panzer Army to an assault on Voronezh, but the infantry is sent south without support towards Stalingrad.

The gas chambers commenced operation at Auschwitz.  This was in part a result of recent German battlefield successes, as the Germans had now taken in so many Eastern European Jews that they could not kill them efficiently enough.

Torpedo bombers harass Convoy PQ17 in the Barents Sea all day, sinking three of the cargo ships in the embattled convoy.

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.