Tuesday 16 February 1943 Hard Fighting in Tunisia The American United Press News Agency reported: The fighting east of Sbeitla in central Tunisia lasted all day Monday, with strong armored forces, artillery and dive bombers operating on both sides. In the morning American armored units went on the counterattack east of Sbeitla to drive back the two Axis columns which advanced on Sunday, and to prevent any further enemy advance to Sbeitla. So far, nothing has been reported about the outcome of these operations.
Friday 16 February 1945 Beromünster Radio (Switzerland) Last Monday evening, February 12, marked the publication of a joint declaration signed by President Roosevelt, Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill, summarising the results of their week-long conference. . . Most significant for Europe was their statement about (the fate of) Europe after the liberation. This statement was clearly inspired by the Americans and reflects the "open door" principle, that is, the idea of joint responsibility and cooperation among the Allies within the liberated nations, as well as inside the so-called former Axis satellite nations. The policy, by giving the other Allies joint control, is designed to curtail the exclusive rights of any individual major Allied power to dispose affairs in an occupied country.
February 17, 1944 U.S. troops land on Eniwetok atoll Operation Catchpole is launched as American troops devastate the Japanese defenders of Eniwetok and take control of the atoll in the northwestern part of the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Central Pacific Campaign was formulated during the August 1943 Quebec Conference. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed on, among other things, a new blueprint for fighting in the Pacific: an island-hopping strategy; the establishment of bases from which to launch B-29s for a final assault on Japan; and a new Southeast Asia command for British Adm. Louis Mountbatten. The success of the island-hopping strategy brought Guadalcanal and New Guinea under Allied control. Though those areas were important, the Allies also still needed to capture the Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Gilbert Islands, which had comprised an inner defensive perimeter for the Japanese. Each was a group of atolls, with between 20 to 50 islets, islands, and coral reefs surrounding a lagoon. The Allies planned an amphibious landing on the islands--all the more difficult because of this unusual terrain. On February 17, a combined U.S. Marine and Army force under Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner made its move against Eniwetok. Air strikes, artillery and naval gunfire, and battleship fire 1,500 yards from the beach gave cover to the troops moving ashore and did serious damage to the Japanese defenses. Six days after the American landing, the atoll was secured. The loss for the Japanese was significant: only 64 of the 2,677 defenders who met the Marine and Army force survived the fighting. The Americans lost only 195. The position on Eniwetok gave U.S. forces a base of operations to finally capture the entirety of the Marianas. Eniwetok was also useful to the United States after the war--in 1952 it became the testing ground for the first hydrogen bomb.
HMS BLUEBELL (February 17, 1945) Royal Navy corvette of 925 tons, enroute from Loch Ewe in Scotland to the Kola Inlet in Russia, when sunk by the U-711 (Lange). One torpedo hit the ammunition magazine which exploded blowing the ship apart. The Bluebell (Lt. G. Walker) was scouting ahead of Convoy RA-64 on the lookout for enemy submarines when at 5.30pm the torpedo hit. The corvette sank in about four minutes. There was only one survivor from her 86 man crew. (The U-711 was sunk on May 4, 1945, near Harstad, Norway, by depth charges dropped from aircraft of the escort carriers HMS Trumpeter, HMS Queen and HMS Searcher. Forty of her crew died and twelve survived)
17 February 1940. The destroyer Cossack arrived at Leith carrying 299 merchant seamen taken off the German tanker Altmark. (See post #1082. 16 February 1940)
17-18 February 1944. On 17-18 February 1944 the nine carriers of Task Force 58 attacked the Japanese Navy's most advanced anchorage at Truk in the Caroline Islands. The heavy units of the Combined Fleet had recently removed to Singapore; although the US Navy was disappointed by the small number of warships sunk, the aircraft sank numerous auxiliaries in the lagoon, which never again regained its importance as a base. Japanese Training Cruiser Katori Damaged by air attack off Truk. Later sunk 40 miles west of Truk. Japanese Destroyer Maikaze Sunk in company with Katori. Japanese Destroyer Fumizuki Sunk south-west of Truk. Japanese Destroyer Oite Sunk west of Truk. Japanese Destroyer Tachikaze Sunk at Truk. Japanese Armed Merchant Cruiser Akagi Maru Sunk north west of Truk. Japanese Cruiser Naka Sunk 35 miles west of Truk.
Wednesday 17 February 1943 Kharkov falls to Russians Moscow; The Soviet Information Bureau reported: The troops of General Golikov have captured Kharkov. On Tuesday Soviet artillery, brought from Zhopozhnikov and moved into position around Kharkov, aimed three hours of devastating fire at the German defensive positions. Then white flares shot up ordering the artillery to cease fire, and two minutes later, seven armoured formations burst out of their carefully camouflaged positions and rolled against the German lines. Two German panzer divisions, the "Adolf Hitler" and the "Reich," assembled in a fan formation, tried to halt the onslaught. They took extremly heavy losses as Russian assault artillery followed hard in the wake of Russian tanks. While the armoured attack continued, two Russian columns circled around Kharkov from the north and mounted a surprise attack on the rear of the concentrated German motorised infantry. March on the Mareth Line 17 February 1943, Cairo The British Reuters News Agency reported: The lead columns of the British Eighth Army have already left Ben Gardane far behind and are advancing virtually unopposed against the (Italian defended) Mareth Line (in Tunisia.)
Wednesday 18 February 1942 Fighting in Burma Rangoon; The British Reuters News Agency reported: Since early this morning, powerful Japanese forces have been attacking Allied positions along the Bilin River (Burma).
February 18, 1943 Nazis arrest White Rose resistance leaders Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, the leaders of the German youth group Weisse Rose (White Rose), are arrested by the Gestapo for opposing the Nazi regime. The White Rose was composed of university (mostly medical) students who spoke out against Adolf Hitler and his regime. The founder, Hans Scholl, was a former member of Hitler Youth who grew disenchanted with Nazi ideology once its real aims became evident. As a student at the University of Munich in 1940-41, he met two Roman Catholic men of letters who redirected his life. Turning from medicine to religion, philosophy, and the arts, Scholl gathered around him like-minded friends who also despised the Nazis, and the White Rose was born. During the summer of 1942, Scholl and a friend composed four leaflets, which exposed and denounced Nazi and SS atrocities, including the extermination of Jews and Polish nobility, and called for resistance to the regime. The literature was peppered with quotations from great writers and thinkers, from Aristotle to Goethe, and called for the rebirth of the German university. It was aimed at an educated elite within Germany. The risks involved in such an enterprise were enormous. The lives of average civilians were monitored for any deviation from absolute loyalty to the state. Even a casual remark critical of Hitler or the Nazis could result in arrest by the Gestapo, the regime's secret police. Yet the students of the White Rose (the origin of the group's name is uncertain; possibly, it came from the picture of the flower on their leaflets) risked all, motivated purely by idealism, the highest moral and ethical principles, and sympathy for their Jewish neighbors and friends. (Despite the risks, Hans' sister, Sophie, a biology student at her brother's university, begged to participate in the activities of the White Rose when she discovered her brother's covert operation.) On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie left a suitcase filled with copies of yet another leaflet in the main university building. The leaflet stated, in part: "The day of reckoning has come, the reckoning of our German youth with the most abominable tyranny our people has ever endured. In the name of the entire German people we demand of Adolf Hitler's state the return of personal freedom, the most precious treasure of the Germans which he cunningly has cheated us out of." The pair were spotted by a janitor and reported to the Gestapo and arrested. Turned over to Hitler's "People's Court," basically a kangaroo court for dispatching dissidents quickly, the Scholls, along with another White Rose member who was caught, were sentenced to death. They were beheaded--a punishment reserved for "political traitors"--on February 23, but not before Hans Scholl proclaimed "Long live freedom!"
Friday 18 February 1944 Fighting Continues at Cherkassy Berlin; The German News Bureau reported: Attention still focusses mainly on the fighting between Cherkassy and Zhashkov (Ukraine) on the southern flank of the Eastern Front, where German forces destroyed 9 Soviet armoured and assault guns and knocked another 17 tanks out of action in tough defensive fighting. Despite the incredible difficulties of the terrain which make every movement a strain, German armoured forces continued their attacks on the Soviet units amassed here, which greatly outnumbered them, and have taken more territory from them.
HMS DARING (February 18, 1940) British destroyer of 1,375 tons, launched in April, 1932 and torpedoed and sunk by two torpedoes from the U-boat U-23 (Kptlt. Otto Kretschmer-Knights Cross) while escorting convoy HN-12 from Norway to Britain. She sank about 30 nautical miles east of Duncansby Head in the northern tip of Scotland. Commander S. A. Cooper went down with the ship as did eight other officers and 148 ratings. One officer and four ratings, the only survivors, were picked up from the sea by rescue ships. The U-23 was scuttled on September 10, 1944, off the coast of Turkey.
USS TRUXTUN & USS POLLUX (February 18, 1942) Two American destroyers blown on to the rocks at Chambers Cove, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, during a vicious snow blizzard. The ships were en route to the US Naval Base at Argentia, Newfoundland, when the blizzard struck. In poor visibility and raging seas, the USS Truxtun headed straight for the rocks at the base of a 200-foot high cliff and broke in two. About two miles away the USS Pollux became stranded on the beach at Lawn Point. A group of sailors from the Truxtun managed to get ashore and alerted the Iron Spring Mine, a miners camp nearby. The miners hurried to the rescue of the two ships and within hours, 168 survivors were pulled from the boiling seas. From the Truxtun, only three officers and 43 ratings survived. Next day a total of 204 bodies were washed up on the shore. In June, 1954, the US Government built a hospital on the Burin Peninsula as a memorial to the 204 sailors who died on that fateful night.
HMS PENELOPE (February 18, 1944) British cruiser (Captain George D. Belben) launched in 1935 and sunk by a torpedo from the German submarine U-410 (Oberleutnant Horst-Arno Fenski). The Penelopewas returning from the Anzio beach-head to Naples when she went down at 0718 hrs taking the lives of 417 members of her wartime complement of 623. The U-410 was later destroyed on March 11, 1944, during a US bombing raid on the Vichy Naval Base at Toulon. The British cruiser HMS Penelope
I.J.N. OITE (February 18, 1944) On the eve of the American carrier-borne air strike on the Japanese naval base at Truk Lagoon, the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Oite (1,270 tons) sailed for Japan escorting the light cruiser Agano. Both ships were due for a refit. When about 200 miles from the island, the Agano was torpedoed and had to be abandoned by her crew. The 523 crewmembers were taken on board the Oite which was ordered to proceed back to Truk. The air attack against ships anchored in the Lagoon was by now taking place (Code-named Operation Hailstorm). As the Oite approached the entrance to the Lagoon she came under heavy attack by Avenger torpedo carrying planes from the carrier USS Yorktown. With her back broken, and within minutes, the Oite plunged 240ft. to the bottom. Almost all the 523 rescued crew of the Agano perished together with the Oite's own complement of 150 officers and ratings.
February 19, 1945 Marines invade Iwo Jima On this day, Operation Detachment, the U.S. Marines' invasion of Iwo Jima, is launched. Iwo Jima was a barren Pacific island guarded by Japanese artillery, but to American military minds, it was prime real estate on which to build airfields to launch bombing raids against Japan, only 660 miles away. The Americans began applying pressure to the Japanese defense of the island in February 1944, when B-24 and B-25 bombers raided the island for 74 days. It was the longest pre-invasion bombardment of the war, necessary because of the extent to which the Japanese--21,000 strong--fortified the island, above and below ground, including a network of caves. Underwater demolition teams ("frogmen") were dispatched by the Americans just before the actual invasion. When the Japanese fired on the frogmen, they gave away many of their "secret" gun positions. The amphibious landings of Marines began the morning of February 19 as the secretary of the navy, James Forrestal, accompanied by journalists, surveyed the scene from a command ship offshore. As the Marines made their way onto the island, seven Japanese battalions opened fire on them. By evening, more than 550 Marines were dead and more than 1,800 were wounded. The capture of Mount Suribachi, the highest point of the island and bastion of the Japanese defense, took four more days and many more casualties. When the American flag was finally raised on Iwo Jima, the memorable image was captured in a famous photograph that later won the Pulitzer Prize.
USS PEARY DD-226 (February 19, 1942) Old four stack destroyer of 1,190 tons commissioned on October 20, 1920. On the 10th of December, 1941, The Peary lost eight of her crew during an air attack on the Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines where she was moored. In February, 1942, she was sunk during the fifty minute surprise Japanese air attack on Darwin Harbour. This was the first time enemy bombs had fallen on Australian soil. Four American pilots at a nearby RAAF airfield struggled to get their fighters into the air but were shot down during their attempt to gain altitude. The destroyer Peary, in harbour replenishing her fuel tanks, and now attempting to free her moorings, fought an uneven battle. One bomb hit the forward ammunition magazines, another caught her in the stern. With her guns blazing, she slowly sank stern first at about 1:00pm, taking with her over half her complement of 143 men. Altogether, 80 crewmen died on the gallant Peary and 13 were wounded. One of the Peary's 4-inch guns was salvaged and now forms part of the Peary Memorial in Bicentennial Park in Darwin. A bronze plaque bears the names of all those who died.
Friday 19 February 1943 Beromünster Radio (Switzerland) Day after day the Russian High Command has been issuing special victory communiqués marking the stages of the Soviet advance. . . At the same time, Berlin reported the evacuation of Rostov and Voroshilov by German troops. . . The recapture of Rostov means that the entire stretch of the rail line connecting Moscow with the Caucasus is now once again in Russian hands, as are the oil pipelines leading from the Caucuses oilfields to the mouth of the Don.
February 20, 1942 Pilot O'Hare becomes first American WWII flying ace On this day, Lt. Edward O'Hare takes off from the aircraft carrier Lexington in a raid against the Japanese position at Rabaul-and minutes later becomes America's first flying ace. In mid-February 1942, the Lexington sailed into the Coral Sea. Rabaul, a town at the very tip of New Britain, one of the islands that comprised the Bismarck Archipelago, had been invaded in January by the Japanese and transformed into a stronghold--in fact, one huge airbase. The Japanese were now in prime striking position for the Solomon Islands, next on the agenda for expanding their ever-growing Pacific empire. The Lexington's mission was to destabilize the Japanese position on Rabaul with a bombing raid. Aboard the Lexington was U.S. Navy fighter pilot Lt. Edward O'Hare, attached to Fighting Squadron 3 when the United States entered the war. As the Lexington left Bougainville, the largest of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific (and still free from Japanese control), for Rabaul, ship radar picked up Japanese bombers headed straight for the carrier. O'Hare and his team went into action, piloting F4F Wildcats. In a mere four minutes, O'Hare shot down five Japanese G4M1 Betty bombers--bringing a swift end to the Japanese attack and earning O'Hare the designation "ace" (given to any pilot who had five or more downed enemy planes to his credit). Although the Lexington blew back the Japanese bombers, the element of surprise was gone, and the attempt to raid Rabaul was aborted for the time being. O'Hare was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery--and excellent aim.
20 February 1944. On Lake Tinnsjoe, the ferry Hydro was blown up and sunk by Norwegian resistance members; the ferry was carrying 3,600 tons of heavy water which was lost to German Scientists.
Friday 20 February 1942 Berlin; The German News Bureau reported: The new German minister of armaments and war production, Professor Albert Speer, has ordered two heads of an armaments factory to be sent to a concentration camp because they were employing in their own households workers who had been assigned to arms manufacture.
