Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

MASSACRE ON PALAWAN (December 14, 1944)
One hundred and fifty American prisoners of war, were incarcerated in a POW enclosure situated on top of the cliffs overlooking the Bay of Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. While working on the construction of an airfield they were made to dig three trenches 150ft long and 4ft 6ins deep within the camp. They were told that the trenches were air-raid shelters and practice drills were carried out. The shelters were small and cramped, the prisoners sitting bunched up with their knees under their chins. When an American convoy was sighted heading for Mindoro an air-raid alarm was sounded. The Japanese guards, thinking the island was about to be invaded, herded the prisoners into the covered trenches and then proceeded to pour buckets of petrol into the entrances followed by a lighted torch to ignite the gasoline. As the prisoners stormed the exists, their cloths on fire, they were mown down by light machine-gun fire or bayoneted, shot or clubbed.
Dozens managed to get through the barbed wire fence and tumble down the fifty foot high cliff to the water's edge only to be shot at by a Japanese manned landing barge which was patrolling the shore. Only five survived by swimming across the bay and reaching the safety of a Filipino guerrilla camp. One prisoner, who tried to swim the bay, was re-captured and brought back to the beach. There, he suffered the agony of having petrol poured on his foot and set alight. His screams delighted the guards who then deliberately set fire to his other foot while at the same time prodding and stabbing his body with bayonets until he collapsed. His body was then doused with petrol and cremated. His remains, and the bodies of the other dead on the beach, were then buried in the sand. US Forces captured Puerto Princesa on February 28, 1945, and weeks later discovered 79 skeletons within the enclosure. They were given a proper burial by the men of 601 Quartermaster Company of the US Army. In all, 145 Americans had died.
THE PIG BASKET ATROCITY

[spidge]

Another disgraceful act on unarmed prisoners.

[Peter Clare]

1945 : MacArthur orders end of Shinto as Japanese state religion


On this day, General Douglas MacArthur, in his capacity as Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in the Pacific, brings an end to Shintoism as Japan's established religion. The Shinto system included the belief that the emperor, in this case Hirohito, was divine.
On September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, MacArthur signed the instrument of Japanese surrender on behalf of the victorious Allies. Before the economic and political reforms the Allies devised for Japan's future could be enacted, however, the country had to be demilitarized. Step one in the plan to reform Japan entailed the demobilization of Japan's armed forces, and the return of all troops from abroad. Japan had had a long history of its foreign policy being dominated by the military, as evidenced by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye's failed attempts to reform his government and being virtually pushed out of power by career army officer Hideki Tojo.
Step two was the dismantling of Shintoism as the Japanese national religion. Allied powers believed that serious democratic reforms, and a constitutional form of government, could not be put into place as long as the Japanese people looked to an emperor as their ultimate authority. Hirohito was forced to renounce his divine status, and his powers were severely limited--he was reduced to little more than a figurehead. And not merely religion, but even compulsory courses on ethics--the power to influence the Japanese population's traditional religious and moral duties--were wrenched from state control as part of a larger decentralization of all power.

[Peter Clare]

HMS GALATEA (December 15, 1941)
British light cruiser (5,220 tons) of the Alexandria Fleet, 15th Cruiser Squadron, commissioned 1935 and sunk by three torpedoes from the U-557 (Paulshen) off Alexandria, Egypt. The commander, Captain Sims, 22 officers and 447 ratings were lost when the Galatea sank. There were 144 survivors. The U-557 was sunk next day west off the island of Crete after being rammed accidentally by the Italian torpedo boat Orione. All hands, 43 men, were killed.

[spidge]

Originally Posted by Peter Clare

HMS GALATEA (December 15, 1941)
British light cruiser (5,220 tons) of the Alexandria Fleet, 15th Cruiser Squadron, commissioned 1935 and sunk by three torpedoes from the U-557 (Paulshen) off Alexandria, Egypt. The commander, Captain Sims, 22 officers and 447 ratings were lost when the Galatea sank. There were 144 survivors. The U-557 was sunk next day west off the island of Crete after being rammed accidentally by the Italian torpedo boat Orione. All hands, 43 men, were killed.

I posted that as the 14th. Wonder which one is correct.

[spidge]

Dec 16, 1941 - Rommel begins a retreat to El Agheila in North Africa.

Dec 16, 1942 - Soviets defeat Italian troops on the River Don in the USSR.

Dec 16-27 - Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.

[Peter Clare]

Originally Posted by spidge

I posted that as the 14th. Wonder which one is correct.

Could be either when you look at the time given in "Warship Losses of World War Two" by David Brown, although the loss is listed in the book as 14 December.

14 December 1941.
RN Cruiser Galatea. 23:59 hrs. Torpedoed 30 miles west of Alexandria by the German submarine U 557. sank almost immediately - 144 survivors rescued by RN destroyers.

[Peter Clare]

HMS FIREDRAKE (December 16, 1942)
Destroyer of 1,410 tons, launched in June 1934 at the Vickers-Armstrong Shipyard on the Tyne and sunk by torpedo from a German U-boat U-211 in the North Atlantic, about 400 nautical miles west of Mizen Head, Galway, Ireland. The Firedrake was escorting the forty-three ship Convoy ON-153 to Canada when the torpedo struck breaking the vessel in two. The bow section, including the bridge, sank immediately leaving thirty-five men stranded on the stern section. Another escort, HMS Sunflower ploughed through 60 foot waves to rescue the men who had jumped into the water. Twenty-seven crewmembers (6 officers and 20 ratings) were thus saved, one died later. In all, Commander Tilden and 167 of the Firedrake's crew were lost, plus three survivors who had been picked up earlier from another ship sunk that same night.

[Peter Clare]

16/17 December 1943

483 Lancasters and 10 Mosquitos on the main raid to Berlin and 5 further Mosquitos dropped decoy fighter flares south of Berlin. The bomber route again led directly to Berlin across Holland and Northern Germany and there were no major diversions. The German controllers plotted the course of the bombers with great accuracy; many German fighters were met at the coast of Holland and further fighters were guided on to the bomber stream throughout the approach to the target. More fighters were waiting at the target and there were many combats. The bombers shook off the opposition on the return flight by taking a northerly route over Denmark. 25 Lancasters, 5.2 per cent of the Lancaster force, were lost. Many further aircraft were lost on returning to England. Berlin was cloud-covered but the Pathfinder skymarking was reasonably accurate and much of the bombing fell in the city. In the city centre, the National Theatre and the building housing Germany's military and political archives were both destroyed. The damage to the Berlin railway system and to rolling stock, and the large numbers of people still leaving the city, were having a cumulative effect upon the transportation of supplies to the Russian Front; 1,000 wagon-loads of war material were held up for 6 days. The sustained bombing had now made more than a quarter of Berlin's total living accommodation unusable. On their return to England, many of the bombers encountered very low cloud at their bases. The squadrons of 1, 6 and No 8 Groups were particularly badly affected. 29 Lancasters (and a Stirling from the minelaying operation) either crashed or were abandoned when their crews parachuted. The group with heaviest losses was No 1 Group with 13 aircraft lost; the squadron with heaviest losses was 97 Squadron, No 8 Group, with 7 aircraft lost.
47 aircraft - 26 Stirlings, 12 Mosquitos, 9 Lancasters - carried out raids on 2 flying-bomb sites near Abbeville. Neither raid was successful. The larger raid, by the Stirlings on the Tilley-le-Haut site, failed because the Oboe Mosquito markers could not get any closer than 450 yards from the small target. The 9 Lancasters of 617 Squadron which attacked the second site, in a wood at Flixecourt, dropped their 12,000lb bombs accurately on the markers placed by the only Oboe Mosquito operating at this target but the markers were 350 yards from the flying-bomb site and none of the 617 Squadron bombs were more than l00 yards from the markers. No aircraft lost.
2 Beaufighters and 2 Mosquitos of 141 Squadron, recently transferred from Fighter Command to No 100 Group, inaugurated Bomber Command's Serrate operations in patrols near the routes of the Berlin raid. (Serrate was a device which homed on to the radar emissions of a German night fighter.) 1 Mosquito made contact with an Me110 and damaged it with cannon-fire. The crew of this first successful Bomber Command Serrate patrol was Squadron Leader FF Lambert and Flying Officer K Dear.
5 Mosquitos to Duisburg, 35 aircraft minelaying in the Frisians and off Biscay ports. No losses.

[Peter Clare]

1941 : Commander at Pearl Harbor canned


On this day, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel was relieved of his command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet as part of a shake-up of officers in the wake of the Pearl Harbor disaster.
Admiral Kimmel had enjoyed a successful military career, beginning in 1915 as an aide to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He served admirably on battleships in World War I, winning command of several in the interwar period. At the outbreak of World War II, Kimmel had already attained the rank of rear admiral and was commanding the cruiser forces at Pearl Harbor. In January 1941, he was promoted to commander of the Pacific Fleet, replacing James Richardson, who FDR relieved of duty after Richardson objected to basing the fleet at Pearl Harbor.
If Kimmel had a weakness, it was that he was a creature of habit, of routine. He knew only what had been done before, and lacked imagination-and therefore insight-regarding the unprecedented. So, even as word was out that Japan was likely to make a first strike against the United States as the negotiations in Washington floundered, Kimmel took no extraordinary actions at Pearl Harbor. In fact, he believed that a sneak attack was more likely at Wake Island or Midway Island, and requested from Lieutenant General Walter Short, Commander of the Army at Pearl Harbor, extra antiaircraft artillery for support there (none could be spared).
Kimmel's predictability was extremely easy to read by Japanese military observers and made his fleet highly vulnerable. As a result, Kimmel was held accountable, to a certain degree, for the absolute devastation wrought on December 7. Although he had no more reason than anyone else to believe Pearl Harbor was a possible Japanese target, a scapegoat had to be found to appease public outrage. He avoided a probable court-martial when he requested early retirement. When Admiral Kimmel's Story, an "as told to" autobiography, was published in 1955, Kimmel made it plain that he believed FDR sacrificed him-and his career-to take suspicion off himself; Kimmel believed Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed, although no evidence has ever been adduced to support his allegation.