Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

November 25, 1941
A "war warning" is sent to commanders in the Pacific

On this day in 1941, Adm. Harold R. Stark, U.S. chief of naval operations, tells Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, that both President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull think a Japanese surprise attack is a distinct possibility.
"We are likely to be attacked next Monday, for the Japs are notorious for attacking without warning," Roosevelt had informed his Cabinet. "We must all prepare for trouble, possibly soon," he telegraphed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Kimmel's command was specifically at the mid-Pacific base at Oahu, which comprised, in part, Pearl Harbor. At the time he received the "warning" from Stark, he was negotiating with Army Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, commander of all U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, about sending U.S. warships out from Pearl Harbor in order to reinforce Wake and Midway Islands, which, along with the Philippines, were possible Japanese targets. But the Army had no antiaircraft artillery to spare.
War worries had struck because of an intercepted Japanese diplomatic message, which gave November 25 as a deadline of sorts. If Japanese diplomacy had failed to convince the Americans to revoke the economic sanctions against Japan, "things will automatically begin to happen," the message related. Those "things" were becoming obvious, in the form of Japanese troop movements off Formosa (Taiwan) apparently toward Malaya. In fact, they were headed for Pearl Harbor, as was the Japanese First Air Fleet.
Despite the fact that so many in positions of command anticipated a Japanese attack, especially given the failure of diplomacy (Japan refused U.S. demands to withdraw from both the Axis pact and occupied territories in China and Indochina), no one expected Hawaii as the target

[Peter Clare]

KUMANO (November 25, 1944)
Japanese heavy cruiser, a survivor of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. (in which Japan lost 26 ships, the US, 6 ships) The badly damaged vessel lost 56 officers and men killed and 99 wounded. The Kumano (Captain Hitomi Soichiro) managed to escape to Manila for repairs. On her next sortie she was hit by torpedoes from a US submarine but again made it home. Dubbed the 'ship with nine lives' her luck finally ran out on 25th November when, en route to Formosa, she was attacked by Avenger planes of Air Group 80 from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. Four direct hits by 500 lb bombs slowed the ship down but next came an attack with aerial torpedoes scoring 5 hits on the disabled ship. Listing at an angle of 45 degrees the order to abandon ship was given. The Kumano then turned turtle, her hull showing above the water. Survivors clinging to the hull and swimming in the water were subjected to strafing by the American planes. At 5:15pm she slid under the waves taking 440 men including her captain, out of a complement of 1,036, with her. In all, she had absorbed a total of eight torpedoes and six bombs before sinking

[Peter Clare]

November 26, 1941
Japanese task force leaves for Pearl Harbor

On this day in 1941, Adm. Chuichi Nagumo leads the Japanese First Air Fleet, an aircraft carrier strike force, toward Pearl Harbor, with the understanding that should "negotiations with the United States reach a successful conclusion, the task force will immediately put about and return to the homeland."
Negotiations had been ongoing for months. Japan wanted an end to U.S. economic sanctions. The Americans wanted Japan out of China and Southeast Asia-and to repudiate the Tripartite "Axis" Pact with Germany and Italy as conditions to be met before those sanctions could be lifted. Neither side was budging. President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull were anticipating a Japanese strike as retaliation-they just didn't know where. The Philippines, Wake Island, Midway-all were possibilities. American intelligence reports had sighted the Japanese fleet movement out from Formosa (Taiwan), apparently headed for Indochina. As a result of this "bad faith" action, President Roosevelt ordered that a conciliatory gesture of resuming monthly oil supplies for Japanese civilian needs canceled. Hull also rejected Tokyo's "Plan B," a temporary relaxation of the crisis, and of sanctions, but without any concessions on Japan's part. Prime Minister Tojo considered this an ultimatum, a!
nd more or less gave up on diplomatic channels as the means of resolving the impasse.
Nagumo had no experience with naval aviation, having never commanded a fleet of aircraft carriers in his life. This role was a reward for a lifetime of faithful service. Nagumo, while a man of action, did not like taking unnecessary risks-which he considered an attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor to be. But Chief of Staff Rear Adm. Isoruku Yamamoto thought differently; while also opposing war with the United States, he believed the only hope for a Japanese victory was a swift surprise attack, via carrier warfare, against the U.S. fleet. And as far as the Roosevelt War Department was concerned, if war was inevitable, it desired "that Japan commit the first overt act."

[Peter Clare]

ROHNA (November 26, 1943)
Seventeen year old British liner/troopship of 8,602 tons, carrying 2,193 passengers including 1,988 US troops, 7 Red Cross personnel and a crew of 198, sailed from Oran, Algieria, bound for Bombay, India, via the Suez Canal. She joined the convoy KMF 26 which consisted of 24 ships in six columns, four ships in each column and escorted by seven British destroyers. Between Algiers and Phillopville the convoy was attacked by around 30 Heinkel 177 bombers of 11/KG-40. The Rohnawas hit by a HS 293 'glider bomb' (the world's first guided missile) The troopship, crewed by Indian seamen under British officers and captained by an Australian naval officer, was owned by the British India Steam Navigation Company. The ship sank in less than 30 minutes taking 1,015 US troops and 102 crew members to a watery death. This was the largest loss of American lives at sea during WW11. Between 10.30 PM and midnight, rescue ships, including the minesweeper SS Pioneer, the Red Cross ship Clan Campbell and the Rohna's sister ship HMT Rajula, reported 'sailing through a sea of floating bodies'. Just over 900 survivors were rescued. Eight of the Heinkel 177s were shot down during the attack. Survivors were landed at Phillopville and taken care of by a British army unit. For reasons of national security details of this tragedy were kept secret for many years.

The British liner/troopship H.M.T. Rohna

For more on the Rohna survivors, see the The Rohna Survivors Memorial Association's website at http://www.rohna.org/.

[Peter Clare]

November 27, 1942
French scuttle their fleet

On this day in 1942, French Admiral Jean de Laborde sinks the French fleet anchored in Toulon harbor, off the southern coast of France, in order to keep it out of German hands.
In June 1940, after the German invasion of France and the establishment of an unoccupied zone in the southeast, led by Gen. Philippe Petain, Adm. Jean Darlan was committed to keeping the French fleet out of German control. At the same time, as a minister in the government that had signed an armistice with the Germans, one that promised a relative "autonomy" to Vichy France, Darlan was prohibited from sailing that fleet to British or neutral waters. But a German-commandeered fleet in southern France, so close to British-controlled regions in North Africa, could prove disastrous to the Brits, who decided to take matters into their own hands by launching Operation Catapult: the attempt by a British naval force to persuade the French naval commander at Oran to either break the armistice and sail the French fleet out of the Germans' grasp-or to scuttle it. And if the French wouldn't, the Brits would.
And the British tried. In a five-minute missile bombardment, they managed to sink one French cruiser and two old battleships. They also killed 1,250 French sailors. This would be the genesis of much bad blood between France and England throughout the war. General Petain broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain.
But two years later, with the Germans now in Vichy and the armistice already violated, Admiral Laborde finished the job the British had started. As the Germans launched Operation Lila, the attempt to commandeer the French fleet, Laborde ordered the sinking of 2 battle cruisers, 4 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, 1 aircraft transport, 30 destroyers, and 16 submarines. Three French subs managed to escape the Germans and make it to Algiers, Allied territory. Only one sub fell into German hands. The marine equivalent of a scorched-earth policy had succeeded.

[Peter Clare]

HMAS PARRAMATTA (November 27, 1941)
Australian Navy sloop, launched in June 1939, engaged in escort duties in the Mediterranean, was torpedoed and sunk 64 kilometres east-northeast of Tobruk, Libya, by the U-559 (Kptl. Hans Heidtmann). The destroyer was escorting a munitions ship 'Hanne' from Tobruk to Alexandria when attacked. Hit amidships by the torpedo and causing an explosion in the magazine, the sloop sank within minutes. Lost with the Parramatta were 138 crewmembers including her captain, Lt. Cdr. J. H. Walker. There were 49 survivors rescued by the destroyer HMS Avon Vale. The Parramatta carried a complement of 164 men. (The U-559 was sunk by depth charges from British destroyers on October 30, 1942, about 153 kilometres north-east of Port Said, Egypt. Seven men were killed, 38 survived)

[Peter Clare]

November 28, 1954
Enrico Fermi, architect of the nuclear age, dies

On this day in 1954, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, the first man to create and control a nuclear chain reaction, and one of the Manhattan Project scientists, dies in Chicago at the age of 53.
Fermi was born in Rome on September 1, 1901. He made his career choice of physicist at age 17, and earned his doctorate at the University of Pisa at 21. After studying in Germany under physicist Max Born, famous for his work on quantum mechanics, which would prove vital to Fermi's later work, he returned to Italy to teach mathematics at the University of Florence. By 1926, he had been made a full professor of theoretical physics and gathered around him a group of other young physicists. In 1929, he became the youngest man ever elected to the Royal Academy of Italy.
The theoretical became displaced by the practical for Fermi upon learning of England's Sir James Chadwick's discovery of the neutron and the Curies' production of artificial radioactivity. Fermi went to work on producing radioactivity by means of manipulating the speed of neutrons derived from radioactive beryllium. Further similar experimentation with other elements, including uranium 92, produced new radioactive substances; Fermi's colleagues believed he had created a new, "transuranic" element with an atomic number of 93, the result of uranium 92 capturing a neuron while under bombardment, thus increasing its atomic weight. Fermi remained skeptical, despite his fellow physicists' enthusiasm. He became a believer in 1938, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for "his identification of new radioactive elements." Although travel was restricted for men whose work was deemed vital to national security, Fermi was given permission to go to Sweden to receive his prize. !
He and his wife, Laura, who was Jewish, never returned; both feared and despised Mussolini's fascist regime.
Fermi left Sweden for New York City, Columbia University, specifically, where he recreated many of his experiments with Niels Bohr, the Danish-born physicist, who suggested the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. Fermi and others saw the possible military applications of such an explosive power, and quickly composed a letter warning President Roosevelt of the perils of a German atomic bomb. The letter was signed and delivered to the president by Albert Einstein on October 11, 1939. The Manhattan Project, the American program to create its own atomic bomb, was the result.
It fell to Fermi to produce the first nuclear chain reaction, without which such a bomb was impossible. He created a jury-rigged laboratory, complete with his own "atomic pile," in a squash court in the basement of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. It was there that Fermi, with other physicists looking on, produced the first controlled chain reaction on December 2, 1942. The nuclear age was born. "The Italian navigator has just landed in the new world," was the coded message sent to a delighted President Roosevelt.
The first nuclear device, the creation of the Manhattan Project scientists, was tested on July 16, 1945. It was followed less than a month later by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, Fermi, now an American citizen, became a Distinguished Service Professor of Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago, consulting on the construction of the first large-particle accelerator. He went on to receive the Congressional Medal of Merit and to be elected a foreign member of the Royal Society of London.
Among other honors accorded to Fermi: The element number 100, fermium, was named for him. Also, the Enrico Fermi Award, now one of the oldest and most prestigious science and technology awards given by the U.S. government, was created in his honor.

[Peter Clare]

SS NOVA SCOTIA (November 28, 1942)
Passenger/cargo ship of 6,796 tons launched in 1926 for the Warren Line, requisitioned and converted to a troopship in 1941, was en route from Aden to Durban, South Africa, carrying 780 Italian POW's and 130 South African military troops acting as guards, plus a crew of 127. It was sunk in the southern Indian Ocean 244 kilometers northeast of Durban by the U-177 (Korvkpt. Robert Gysae). Casualties amounted to a staggering 863 lives lost. The U-177 was sunk on February 6, 1944, by depth-charges from a US Liberator aircraft. Fifty of her crew died, there were 15 survivors.

[Peter Clare]

November 29, 1942
Coffee rationing begins

On this day in 1942, coffee joins the list of items rationed in the United States. Despite record coffee production in Latin American countries, the growing demand for the bean from both military and civilian sources, and the demands placed on shipping, which was needed for other purposes, required the limiting of its availability.
Scarcity or shortages were rarely the reason for rationing during the war. Rationing was generally employed for two reasons: (1) to guarantee a fair distribution of resources and foodstuffs to all citizens; and (2) to give priority to military use for certain raw materials, given the present emergency.
At first, limiting the use of certain products was voluntary. For example, President Roosevelt launched "scrap drives" to scare up throwaway rubber-old garden hoses, tires, bathing caps, etc.--in light of the Japanese capture of the Dutch East Indies, a source of rubber for the United States. Collections were then redeemed at gas stations for a penny a pound. Patriotism and the desire to aid the war effort were enough in the early days of the war.
But as U.S. shipping, including oil tankers, became increasingly vulnerable to German U-boat attacks, gas became the first resource to be rationed. Starting in May 1942, in 17 eastern states, car owners were restricted to three gallons of gas a week. By the end of the year, gas rationing extended to the rest of the country, requiring drivers to paste ration stamps onto the windshields of their cars. Butter was another item rationed, as supplies were reserved for military breakfasts. Along with coffee, the sugar and milk that went with it were also limited. All together, about one-third of all food commonly consumed by civilians was rationed at one time or another during the war. The black market, an underground source of rationed goods at prices higher than the ceilings set by the Office of Price Administration, was a supply source for those Americans with the disposable incomes needed to pay the inflated prices.
Some items came off the rationing list early; coffee was released as early as July 1943, but sugar was rationed until June 1947.

[Gotthard Heinrici]

Thanks for keeping up this valuable thread Peter, it really is a treasure to read!