Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

USS PRINCETON (October 23-26, 1944)
American carrier was one of the six US warships sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval engagement since Jutland. The other five ships were the Gamber Bay (119 men were killed) and the USS St Lo, both escort carriers, the destroyers Hoel (202 killed) and Johnston (187 killed) and destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts. Casualties from the six ships were 898 killed and 913 wounded. The Princeton, hit by a bomb from a dive bomber, suffered 229 killed and 211 seriously injured when her magazine exploded. She had to be scuttled by the light cruisers USS Irwin and USS Reno. The Gamber Bay was the only American carrier sunk by naval gunfire in World War II.

[ADM199]

23rd October 1942 saw the start of the Battle for El Alamein. This was to be the turning point of the North African Campaign.

[Peter Clare]

October 24, 1945
The United Nations is born

On this day in 1945, the United Nations Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, is now effective and ready to be enforced.
The United Nations was born of perceived necessity, as a means of better arbitrating international conflict and negotiating peace than was provided for by the old League of Nations. The growing Second World War became the real impetus for the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union to begin formulating the original U.N. Declaration, signed by 26 nations in January 1942, as a formal act of opposition to Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Axis Powers.
The principles of the U.N. Charter were first formulated at the San Francisco Conference, which convened on April 25, 1945. It was presided over by President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, and attended by representatives of 50 nations, including 9 continental European states, 21 North, Central, and South American republics, 7 Middle Eastern states, 5 British Commonwealth nations, 2 Soviet republics (in addition to the USSR itself), 2 East Asian nations, and 3 African states. The conference laid out a structure for a new international organization that was to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,...to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,...to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom."
Two other important objectives described in the Charter were respecting the principles of equal rights and self-determination of all peoples (originally directed at smaller nations now vulnerable to being swallowed up by the Communist behemoths emerging from the war) and international cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems around the world.
Now that the war was over, negotiating and maintaining the peace was the practical responsibility of the new U.N. Security Council, made up of the United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China. Each would have veto power over the other. Winston Churchill called for the United Nations to employ its charter in the service of creating a new, united Europe-united in its opposition to communist expansion-East and West. Given the composition of the Security Council, this would prove easier said than done.

[Peter Clare]

ARISAN MARU (October 24, 1944)
Japanese freighter of 6,886-tons bound for Japan (in convoy of 17 ships) from Manila Bay in the Philippines. In the holds were about 100 civilians and 1,782 American prisoners of war being transported as slave labourers to work in the mines and factories of Japan. Crowded so close together they could not lie down, the holds soon became a hell-hole as the temperature soared to over 100 degrees F. The lack of fresh air caused many to go mad as the holds became fouled by the stench of sweating bodies, urine and human excrement. As the ship sailed into a typhoon, the odour of vomit from the hundreds of sea sick prisoners added to the wretched conditions.
Four days out into the China Sea, in the Bashi Straits, at 1500 hrs on the 24th, a terrible jolt shook the ship from bow to stern as three torpedoes from the American submarine USS Shark (some sources say USS Snook....both these submarines failed to return from that patrol) split the ship in two. The two halves separated but remained afloat only to sink two hours later. Most of the Japanese crew and guards were the first to escape by the few available lifeboats. Those guards left behind were set upon by the enraged POW's and killed. Only seven men survived the sinking by clinging to wreckage. Two were picked up by the Japanese escort destroyer the other five were later rescued by a Chinese fishing boat and reached the Chinese coast. As the Arisan Maru was unmarked, the captain of the submarine had no way of knowing that the ship carried POW's.
Many other 'hell ships' sailed the pacific seas and were sunk during the last three years of the war but little is known about them. After the war investigators discovered that the Japanese had destroyed numerous records of these voyages. Between 1942 and 1945 it is recorded that 134 Japanese ships made 156 voyages carrying POW's. The number of prisoners amounted to 126,064 of which 21,039 died.

[Peter Clare]

FUSO (October 24-25, 1944)
Japanese battleship (39,154 tons) sunk during the Battle of Surigao Strait, Leyte, by a torpedo from the American destroyer USS Melvin. Badly damaged, she lost speed and fell out of formation only to blow up in a cataclysmic explosion half an hour later at 03.40hrs. The Fuso (Admiral Masami Ban) broke in two parts, the two sections remaining afloat and blazing furiously only a short distance from the northern tip of Kanihaan Island. The bow section was sunk by gunfire from the USS Louisville and the stern section sank half an hour later after having drifted with the current for some distance. Many survivors swimming in the sea refused to be rescued by the US ships. The Japanese destroyer Asagumo may have, or may not have, rescued some of Fuso's survivors but she herself was torpedoed and sunk with all on board some four hours later. Those that survived the sinking of the Fuso and made it to shore, were butchered by Philippine natives out for revenge. The entire crew of the Fuso therefore died, the exact number is not known but estimates put her full complement at just over 1,400 men. (The last Japanese battleship still afloat at war's end was the NAGATO. It was sunk off Bikini Atoll during one of the atomic bomb tests in 1946).

YAMASHIRO (October 24-25, 1944)
Flagship of Vice Admiral Nishimura Shoji and sister ship of the Fuso, sunk during the Battle of Surigao Strait. As the formation entered the Strait, the ships were attacked by PT Boats and destroyers of the US Battle Force under the command of Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf. One of her escorting destroyers, the Yamagumo, hit by a torpedo, blew up and sank with all hands. The Yamashiro, after being hit by four torpedoes, started to list and when the list reached 45 degrees the order to abandon ship was given. The order came too late, for after two minutes the ship abruptly capsized taking most of her 1,400 crew to the depths. There were only ten survivors who were rescued by the American destroyer USS Claxton.

[Peter Clare]

October 25, 1944
First kamikaze attack of the war begins

On this day in 1944, during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Japanese deploy kamikaze ("divine wind") suicide bombers against American warships for the first time. It will prove costly--to both sides.
This decision to employ suicide bombers against the American fleet at Leyte, an island of the Philippines, was based on the failure of conventional naval and aerial engagements to stop the American offensive. Declared Japanese naval Capt. Motoharu Okamura: "I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our planes.... There will be more than enough volunteers for this chance to save our country."
The first kamikaze force was in fact composed of 24 volunteer pilots from Japan's 201st Navy Air Group. The targets were U.S. escort carriers; one, the St. Lo, was struck by a A6M Zero fighter and sunk in less than an hour, killing 100 Americans. More than 5,000 kamikaze pilots died in the gulf battle-taking down 34 ships.
For their kamikaze raids, the Japanese employed both conventional aircraft and specially designed planes, called Ohka ("cherry blossom") by the Japanese, but Baka ("fool") by the Americans, who saw them as acts of desperation. The Baka was a rocket-powered plane that was carried toward its target attached to the belly of a bomber.
All told, more than 1,321 Japanese aircraft crash-dived their planes into Allied warships during the war, desperate efforts to reverse the growing Allied advantage in the Pacific. While approximately 3,000 Americans and Brits died because of these attacks, the damage done did not prevent the Allied capture of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

[Peter Clare]

USS SAINT LO (October 25, 1944)
American aircraft carrier sunk in the Battle off Samar by a Japanese Zeke-52 kamikaze aircraft. The plane hit the St Lo at 10:53hrs. Shortly after, a massive explosion of her own magazines caused an enormous mushroom shaped cloud to rise above the doomed vessel. Another six or seven explosions occurred after her commander, Captain F. J. McKenna, gave the order to abandon ship. The St Lo disappeared beneath the sea at 11:25 hrs taking with her 126 members of her crew. Her escort destroyer, USS Dennis, rescued 434 survivors. (During the Battle off Samar the US lost 5 ships and 23 aircraft. Casualties were 1,130 men killed and 913 wounded)

[Peter Clare]

October 26, 1942
The United States loses the Hornet

On this day in 1942, the last U.S. carrier manufactured before America's entry into World War II, the Hornet, is damaged so extensively by Japanese war planes in the Battle of Santa Cruz that it must be abandoned.
The battle for Guadalcanal was the first American offensive against the Japanese, an attempt to prevent the Axis power from taking yet another island in the Solomon chain and gaining more ground in its race for Australia. On this day, in the vicinity of the Santa Cruz Islands, two American naval task forces had to stop a superior Japanese fleet, which was on its way to Guadalcanal with reinforcements. As was the case in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, the engagement at Santa Cruz was fought exclusively by aircraft taking off from carriers of the respective forces; the ships themselves were not in range to fire at one another.
Japanese aerial fire damaged the USS Enterprise, the battleship South Dakota, and finally the Hornet. In fact, the explosions wrought by the Japanese bombs that rained down on the Hornet were so great that two of the Japanese bombers were themselves crippled by the blasts, and the pilots chose to dive-bomb their planes into the deck of the American carrier, which was finally abandoned and left to burn. The Hornet, which weighed 20,000 tons, had seen battle during the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo (its commander at the time, Marc Mitscher, was promoted to admiral and would be a significant player in the victory over Japan) and the battle of Midway.
While the United States losses at Santa Cruz were heavy, the cost in aircraft to the Japanese was so extensive--more than 100, including 25 of the 27 bombers that attacked the Hornet--that they were unable finally to reinforce their troops at Guadalcanal, paving the way for an American victory.

Footnote: The Hornet lost at Santa Cruz was the CV-8; another Hornet, the CV-12, launched August 30, 1943, led a virtually charmed life, spending 52 days under Japanese attack in many battles in the Pacific, with nary a scratch to show for it. That is, until June 1945, when it was finally damaged--by a typhoon

[Peter Clare]

ABUKUMA (October 26, 1944)
Japanese light cruiser of 5,570 tons commissioned in May, 1925 and sunk off Negros Island. Attacked by B-24 Liberators of the US 13th Air Force the cruiser takes a direct hit followed by two more direct hits which starts heavy fires and explodes four 'Long Lance' torpedoes in the torpedo room. The Abukuma sinks by the stern at 11.42 hrs with the loss of 250 of her crew. Her commander, Captain Hanada and 283 officers and men were rescued by the escorting destroyer Ushio.

[Peter Clare]

October 27, 1940
De Gaulle sets up the Empire Defense Council

On this day in 1940, French Gen. Charles de Gaulle, speaking for the Free French Forces from his temporary headquarter in equatorial Africa, calls all French men and women everywhere to join the struggle to preserve and defend free French territory and "to attack the enemy wherever it is possible, to mobilize all our military, economic, and moral resources...to make justice reign."
De Gaulle had a long history fighting Germans. He sustained multiple injuries fighting at Verdun in World War I. He escaped German POW camps five times, only to be recaptured each time. (At 6 feet, 4 inches tall, it was hard for de Gaulle to remain inconspicuous.)
At the beginning of World War II, de Gaulle was commander of a tank brigade. He was admired as a courageous leader and made a brigadier general in May 1940. After the German invasion of France, he became undersecretary of state for defense and war in the Reynaud government, but when Reynaud resigned, and Field Marshal Philippe Petain stepped in, a virtual puppet of the German occupiers, de Gaulle left for England. On June 18, de Gaulle took to the radio airwaves to make an appeal to his fellow French not to accept the armistice being sought by Petain, but to continue fighting under his command. "I am France!" he declared. Ten days later, Britain formally acknowledged de Gaulle as the leader of the "Free French Forces," which was at first little more than those French troops stationed in England, volunteers from Frenchmen already living in England, and units of the French navy.
Another Free French movement had begun in Africa, under the direction of Gen. Henri Giraud. De Gaulle eventually relocated to Africa after tension began to build between himself and the British. Initially, de Gaulle agreed to share power with Giraud in the organization and control of the exiled French forces--until Giraud resigned in 1943, unwilling to stand in de Gaulle's shadow or struggle against his deft political maneuvering.
Whatever disagreements the British had had with de Gaulle, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was pleased with the French general's appeal to his countrymen's patriotism and the creation of the Empire Defense Council, which would organize necessary resources for military operations. Churchill believed it would "have a great effect on the minds of Frenchmen on account of its scope and logic. It shows de Gaulle in a light very different from that of an ordinary man."