Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

September 7, 1940
The Blitz begins

On this day in 1940, 300 German bombers raid London, in the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing. This bombing "blitzkrieg" (lightning war) would continue until May 1941.
After the successful occupation of France, it was only a matter of time before the Germans turned their sights across the Channel to England. Hitler wanted a submissive, neutralized Britain so that he could concentrate on his plans for the East, namely the land invasion of the Soviet Union, without interference. Since June, English vessels in the Channel had been attacked and aerial battles had been fought over Britain, as Germany attempted to wear down the Royal Air Force in anticipation of a land invasion. But with Germany failing to cripple Britain's air power, especially in the Battle of Britain, Hitler changed strategies. A land invasion was now ruled out as unrealistic; instead Hitler chose sheer terror as his weapon of choice.
British intelligence had had an inkling of the coming bombardment. Evidence of the large-scale movement of German barges in the Channel and the interrogation of German spies had led them to the correct conclusion-unfortunately, it was just as the London docks were suffering the onslaught of Day One of the Blitz. By the end of the day, German planes had dropped 337 tons of bombs on London. Even though civilian populations were not the primary target that day, the poorest of London slum areas-the East End--felt the fallout literally, from direct hits of errant bombs as well as the fires that broke out and spread throughout the vicinity. Four hundred and forty-eight civilians were killed that afternoon and evening.
A little past 8 p.m., British military units were alerted with the code name "Cromwell," meaning the German invasion had begun. A state of emergency broke out in England; even home defense units were put to the ready. One of Hitler's key strategic blunders of the war was to consistently underestimate the will and courage of the British people. They would not run or be cowed into submission. They would fight.

[Peter Clare]

SHINYO MARU (September 7, 1944)

Japanese 2,634-ton transport carrying hundreds of American and Filipino prisoners of war captured at an airstrip near Lasang, were being transported from the island of Mindano to Manila when attacked by an American submarine, the USS Paddle commanded by Lt. Cdr. Byron Nowell. A torpedo hit the Shinyo Maru blowing her apart, the bow section sinking with hundreds of men trapped inside. But many survived the sinking, some making their way to Sindangan Bay in Mindano. There, they contacted Filipino guerrillas who radioed for help. The US submarine USS Norwhal was contacted, and being in the area of the sinking, proceeded at full speed to search for any survivors. As luck would have it, 81 persons were plucked from the water. A total of 667 American and Filipino POW's were killed in the explosion or drowned when the ship went down. Some were shot by the Japanese while attempting to swim to shore.

[Peter Clare]

September 8, 1943
Italian surrender is announced

On this day in 1943, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower publicly announces the surrender of Italy to the Allies. Germany reacted with Operation Axis, the Allies with Operation Avalanche.
With Mussolini deposed from power and the earlier collapse of the fascist government in July, Gen. Pietro Badoglio, the man who had assumed power in Mussolini's stead by request of King Victor Emanuel, began negotiating with Gen. Eisenhower for weeks. Weeks later, Badoglio finally approved a conditional surrender, allowing the Allies to land in southern Italy and begin beating the Germans back up the peninsula. Operation Avalanche, the Allied invasion of Italy, was given the go-ahead, and the next day would see Allied troops land in Salerno.
The Germans too snapped into action. Ever since Mussolini had begun to falter, Hitler had been making plans to invade Italy to keep the Allies from gaining a foothold that would situate them within easy reach of the German-occupied Balkans. On September 8, Hitler launched Operation Axis, the occupation of Italy. As German troops entered Rome, General Badoglio and the royal family fled Rome for southeastern Italy to set up a new antifascist government. Italian troops began surrendering to their former German allies; where they resisted, as had happened earlier in Greece, they were slaughtered (1,646 Italian soldiers were murdered by Germans on the Greek island of Cephalonia, and the 5,000 that finally surrendered were ultimately shot).
One of the goals of Operation Axis was to keep Italian navy vessels out of the hands of the Allies. When the Italian battleship Roma headed for an Allied-controlled port in North Africa, it was sunk by German bombers. In fact, the Roma had the dubious honor of becoming the first ship ever sunk by a radio-controlled guided missile. More than 1,500 crewmen drowned. The Germans also scrambled to move Allied POWs to labor camps in Germany in order to prevent their escape. In fact, many POWS did manage to escape before the German invasion, and several hundred volunteered to stay in Italy to fight alongside the Italian guerillas in the north.
The Italians may have surrendered, but their war was far from over.

[Peter Clare]

September 9, 1943
Allies land at Salerno and Taranto

On this day in 1943, Operation Avalanche, the Allied land invasion of Salerno, and Operation Slapstick, the British airborne invasion of Taranto, both in southern Italy, are launched.
The U.S. 5th Army under Lt. Gen. Mark Clark landed along the Salerno coastline while British Commando units and their American counterparts, the U.S. Rangers, landed on the peninsula itself. Salerno had been chosen as the first site for invasion of the peninsula because it was the northern-most point to which the Allies could fly planes from its bases in Sicily, which they had already invaded and occupied. Rockets launched from landing craft provided cover, and the beach landings went relatively smoothly. It wasn't until two days later that the Germans, with some Italian troops coerced into service, mounted a heavy counterattack on the beachhead. But Clark called in the 82nd Airborne for support, and by the 15th, Salerno was in Allied hands.
Meanwhile, the British 1st Airborne Division, having successfully landed at Taranto, captured the airfield at Foggia.

[Peter Clare]

R.N. ROMA (September 9, 1943)

Italian battleship, flagship of Admiral Carlo Bertgamini, sunk in the Mediterranean (off the coast of Sardinia) by direct hits from two radio-guided 'Fritz-X' 320 kg bombs dropped from Dornier 217 K11s Luftwaffe planes from the Istres airstrip near Marseille. (A total of 1,386 such bombs were manufactured during the war. This radio-controlled bomb was the first really effective weapon against the battleship, other than the torpedo). The Roma capsized, broke in two and sank at 16.12hrs. The Italian surrender had just been signed and now their foe was their former ally, Germany. The Roma (41,650 tons) had set sail for Malta from her base at La Spezia with orders to join the British fleet. On seeing the planes approach, the gun-crews mistook them for British aircraft coming in to act as escorts and held their fire. Of the ships crew of 1,849, Admiral Bertgamini, 86 officers and 1,264 crewmen perished as the ship went down. The pitifully few survivors were picked up by two of the escort destroyers. In the Mediterranean theatre alone, a total of 28,937 Italian sailors lost their lives. During World War 11 eight battleships were sunk by aircraft; these were the Roma, Prince of Wales, Repulse, Arizona, Oklahoma and the Japanese Hiei, Musushi, and Yamato.

[Peter Clare]

September 10, 1940
British War Cabinet reacts to the Blitz in kind

On this day in 1940, in light of the destruction and terror inflicted on Londoners by a succession of German bombing raids, called "the Blitz," the British War Cabinet instructs British bombers over Germany to drop their bombs "anywhere" if unable to reach their targets.
The prior two nights of bombing had wrought extraordinary damage, especially in the London slum area, the East End. King George VI even visited the devastated area to reassure the inhabitants that their fellow countrymen were with them in heart and mind. Each night since the seventh, sirens had sounded to announce the approach of incoming German planes, which had begun dropping bombs indiscriminately in the London vicinity, even though the docks had been their primary target on Day One of the Blitz. As British bombers set out for Germany to retaliate, they were instructed not to return home with their bombs if they failed to locate their original targets. Instead, they were to release their loads where and when they could.
On the night of the 10th, a night when British Home Intelligence had been alerted of how panicked Londoners were becoming at the sound of those air-raid sirens, Berlin was paid in kind, with a cascade of British bombs-one of which even landed in the garden of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party's minister of propaganda.

[Peter Clare]

10 Sep 1939 - The British Expeditionary Force (BEF), consisting of some 158,000 men, leaves for France. Canada joins the list of Commonwealth countries to declare war against Germany.

[Peter Clare]

September 11, 1940
Hitler focuses East, sends troops to Romania

On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler sends German army and air force reinforcements to Romania to protect precious oil reserves and to prepare an Eastern European base of operations for further assaults against the Soviet Union.
As early as 1937, Romania had come under control of a fascist government that bore great resemblance to that of Germany's, including similar anti-Jewish laws. Romania's king, Carol II, dissolved the government a year later because of a failing economy and installed Romania's Orthodox Patriarch as prime minister. But the Patriarch's death and peasant uprising provoked renewed agitation by the fascist Iron Guard paramilitary organization, which sought to impose order. In June 1940, the Soviet Union co-opted two Romanian provinces, and the king searched for an ally to help protect it and appease the far right within its own borders. So on July 5, 1940, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany-only to be invaded by its "ally" as part of Hitler's strategy to create one huge eastern front against the Soviet Union.
King Carol abdicated on September 6, 1940, leaving the country in the control of the fascist Prime Minister Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard. While Romania would recapture the territory lost to the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded Russia, it would also have to endure the Germans' raping its resources as part of the Nazi war effort. Besides taking control of Romania's oil wells and oil installations, Hitler would help himself to Romania's food crops-causing a food shortage for native Romanians.

[Peter Clare]

USS ROWAN (September 11, 1943)

While screening empty transport ships returning to Oran after the Allied invasion of Italy at Salerno, the convoy was attacked by German E-boats just hours after leaving Salerno harbour. The wake of a torpedo was seen streaking towards the Rowan, fortunately it missed, but a second tin-fish hit the ship on her port quarter. This caused her 5 inch magazine to explode with an ear shattering roar. The once proud Rowan took only 40 seconds to sink, killing 202 of her crew of 273. There were only 75 survivors, picked up by the American destroyer USS Bristol. The Bristol was torpedoed a month later on October 13, by the U-371 and sank off Cape Bougaroun, Algeria, with the loss of 52 of her crew.

[Peter Clare]

September 1940 - Air reconnaissance show a build-up of Italian forces in Libya preparing to attack Egypt. Blenheims of No. 202 Group attack enemy airfields and enemy shipping in Tobruk harbour. The Italian Eastward advance halted about 15 miles past Sidi Barrani, having over-run the village and the DLG's to the East.