Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

SUEZ MARU (November 29, 1943)
On the islands of Ambon and Hasuku in the Moluccas, Allied prisoners were dying daily through starvation, disease and beatings by their guards. In the past six months almost 400 had died and around 700 were too sick to work. The Japanese then decided to send the sick back to Java. A total of 640 men, including a number of Japanese sick patients, were taken on board the 4,645-ton passenger-cargo ship Suez Maru. In two holds, 422 sick British (including 221 RAF servicemen) and 127 sick Dutch prisoners, including up to twenty stretcher cases, were accommodated. The Japanese patients filled the other two holds.
Escorted by a minesweeper W-12, the Suez Maru set sail from Port Amboina but while entering the Java Sea and about 327 kilometres east of Surabaya, Java, Netherlands East Indies, the vessel was torpedoed by the American submarine USS Bonefish commanded by Cdr. Tom Hogan. The ship started to list as water poured into the holds drowning hundreds. Hundreds more, Allied and Japanese, managed to escape the holds and were struggling in the water. The Japanese mine sweeper W-12 started to pick up survivors, but only their own nationals, leaving the British captives behind. Between 200 and 250 men were floating in the sea. The minesweeper then made several slow circles around the survivors and minutes later machine-gun and rifle fire were directed towards the defenceless swimmers. Empty rafts and lifeboats were then rammed and sunk by the W-12. The minesweeper then picked up speed and sped off towards Batavia (Jakarta). They had rescued 93 Japanese soldiers and crewmen and 205 Japanese sick patients. Sixty-nine Japanese had died during the attack. Back at the site of the sinking only floating wreckage and an oil spill was all that was left of the Suez Maru. Of the 547 British and Dutch prisoners, there was only one survivor, a British soldier, Kenneth Thomas, who was picked up twenty-four hours later by the Australian minesweeper HMAS Ballarat. Over 90 percent of POW deaths at sea was the result of 'friendly fire'.

The USS Bonefish was sunk off Honshu on June 18, 1945, when on her 8th war patrol. All 86 crew were lost. The Bonefish was the last submarine to be sunk in World War 11.

[Peter Clare]

November 30, 1939
USSR attacks Finland

On this day in 1939, the Red Army crosses the Soviet-Finnish border with 465,000 men and 1,000 aircraft. Helsinki was bombed, and 61 Finns were killed in an air raid that steeled the Finns for resistance, not capitulation.
The overwhelming forces arrayed against Finland convinced most Western nations, as well as the Soviets themselves, that the invasion of Finland would be a cakewalk. The Soviet soldiers even wore summer uniforms, despite the onset of the Scandinavian winter; it was simply assumed that no outdoor activity, such as fighting, would be taking place. But the Helsinki raid had produced many casualties-and many photographs, including those of mothers holding dead babies, and preteen girls crippled by the bombing. Those photos were hung up everywhere to spur on Finn resistance. Although that resistance consisted of only small numbers of trained soldiers-on skis and bicycles!--fighting it out in the forests, and partisans throwing Molotov cocktails into the turrets of Soviet tanks, the refusal to submit made headlines around the world.
President Roosevelt quickly extended $10 million in credit to Finland, while also noting that the Finns were the only people to pay back their World War I war debt to the United States in full. But by the time the Soviets had a chance to regroup, and send in massive reinforcements, the Finnish resistance was spent. By March 1940, negotiations with the Soviets began, and Finland soon lost the Karelian Isthmus, the land bridge that gave access to Leningrad, which the Soviets wanted to control.

[Peter Clare]

TAKANAMI (November 30, 1942)
Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer which helped sink the USS Minneapolis was sunk by enemy gunfire about five miles south of Savo Island. Her captain, Cdr. Ogura Hasami and 211 members of his crew perished. There were 33 survivors who eventually reached Guadalcanal in a lifeboat

[Peter Clare]

December 1, 1944
Stettinius succeeds Hull as secretary of state

On this day in 1944, Edward R. Stettinius Jr. becomes Franklin Roosevelt's last secretary of state by filling the Cabinet spot left empty by the Cordell Hull.
Cordell Hull had served as FDR's secretary of state for 11 years and retired after Roosevelt's unprecedented election to a fourth term as president, in November 1944. Hull earned a reputation for negotiating extensive changes in U.S. tariff and trade practices, calling for the lowering of prohibitive tariff rates that choked U.S. foreign trade for decades and pushing Congress to pass legislation that would grant "most favored nation status" to qualified nations-a forerunner to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreement.
It was Hull who pursued closer relations with Latin America, promoting the Good Neighbor Policy that promised an end to U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of its southern neighbors. This had the effect of undoing decades of distrust between the United States and Central and South America and was essential to creating a united pan-American front against the fascist powers of Europe. Hull was less conciliatory toward Japan, refusing any relaxation of economic embargos against the Axis power until it had completely withdrawn from China and Southeast Asia.
In November 1944, having enjoyed the longest tenure of any secretary of state, and in ailing health, Hull retired to devote his time to the creation of an international peace organization, which would become the United Nations.
Needless to say, these were big shoes for Stettinius to fill. The industrialist, who had worked for General Motors and U.S. Steel, left private enterprise to join the war effort, accepting the chairmanship of the War Resources Board in 1939. In 1940, he went on to chair the National Defense Advisory Commission and a year later became supervisor of the Lend-Lease program, which distributed cash and war materiel to U.S. allies fighting the European war. In 1943, FDR appointed Stettinius undersecretary of state, and he finally replaced Secretary of State Hull upon Hull's retirement.
Stettinius' tenure in that Cabinet post was unremarkable, consisting mostly of implementing a foreign policy to which he contributed little in the way of original ideas. He did play an advisory role to FDR's participation at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Stettinius, like his predecessor, believed in the necessity of a postwar international peace organization and headed the U.S. delegation to the San Francisco conference that drafted the U.N. Charter.
Shortly after FDR's death, Harry S. Truman replaced Stettinius with James F. Byrnes, leaving Stettinius to become chairman of the first U.S. delegation to the United Nations. It was Cordell Hull, however, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the creation of the United Nations.

[Peter Clare]

HMAS ARMIDALE (December 1, 1942)
Australian minesweeper (corvette) one of fifty-six such vessels in the Royal Australian Navy during World War 11 was commissioned on June 11, 1942, and engaged in the re-supply and evacuation of troops and civilians from Betuno Bay in Timor prior to the Japanese takeover. The Armidale, part of the 24th Minesweeping Flotilla at Darwin, was sunk by a force of nine Japanese torpedo carrying bombers and four fighters 191 kilometres south-southeast of Dili in Portuguese Timor at 3.15 pm. She sank in less than five minutes. Casualties on board were 100 men lost out of a complement of 149. (Two officers and 38 ratings plus 58 Dutch soldiers and civilians) Some survivors endured eight days at sea before being rescued. Twenty-nine survivors managed to cling to a makeshift raft and drifted away from the sinking vessel but they were never seen again.

This was the highest loss of life on any Australian corvette during the entire war.

[Peter Clare]

December 2, 1942
Fermi produces the first nuclear chain reaction

On this day, Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born Nobel Prize-winning physicist, directs and controls the first nuclear chain reaction in his laboratory beneath the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, ushering in the nuclear age. Upon succesful completion of the experiment, a coded message was transmitted to President Roosevelt: "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world."
Following on England's Sir James Chadwick's discovery of the neutron and the Curies' production of artificial radioactivity, Fermi, a full-time professor of physics at the University of Florence, focused his work on producing radioactivity by 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 about his discovery, despite the enthusiasm of his fellow physicists. 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 leave Italy and 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 immigrated to 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 with the necessary equipment, which he called an "atomic pile," in a squash court in the basement of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. With colleagues and other physicists looking on, Fermi produced the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and the "new world" of nuclear power was born.

[Peter Clare]

2 December 1943.

German Ju88 bombers attacked Bari harbour, where there were 30 ships carrying military cargo.

The British cargo ships lost were Devon Coast 646t, Fort Athabaska 7,130t, Lars Kruse 1,807t, Testbank 5,085t.

US ships lost were the John Bascom 7,176t, John Harvey 7,176t, John L. Motley 7,176t, Joseph Wheeler 7,176t.

Italian ships lost were Barletta 1,975t, Cassala 1,795t and Frosinore 5,202t.

Norwegian ships lost were, Lom 7,268t, Norlom 6,412t and Ballsta.

Polish ships lost were Lwow 1,409t, and Puck 1,065t.

The Yugoslav ship Yug was also lost.

British ships damaged were the, Crista, Fort Lajoie and the Brittany Coast.

Other ships damaged were the Lyman Abbott (US) Odysseus (Neth) and the Vest (No).

Several of the ships were lost after they caught fire, either by bombs or by other ships exploding. Among the latter was the John Harvey; her ammunition cargo included 100 tons of mustard gas in 100lb bombs.

In the disaster, over 1,00 people died; more than 800 were taken to hospital, 628 of them suffering from exposure to the mustard gas.


Britains Sea War: John M. Young.

[Peter Clare]

USS COOPER (December 2-3, 1944)
During a US naval attack on Japanese shipping in Ormoc Bay, Leyte, the Cooper, accompanied by USS Allen M Sumner and the USS Moale, engaged two enemy ships, the Matsu class destroyers, Kuwa and Take. A torpedo from the Take hit the Cooper causing an explosion on her starboard side and breaking the ship in two. She sank within minutes taking the lives of 191 crewmen. There were 168 crew rescued by PBY Catalina flying boats and flown to the nearest naval base. This was the only naval engagement of the Pacific War in which US ships were fired upon simultaneously from the air, sea and from shore batteries in one short desperate four hour battle.

[Peter Clare]

December 3, 1944
Civil war breaks out in Athens

On this day, a civil war breaks out in Athens as communist guerillas battle democratic forces for control of a liberated Greece.
Germany had occupied Greece to bail out Italy after Italy's failed invasion threatened to leave Greece open to Allied occupation. When Germany arrived, various Greek resistance forces gave battle, but two stood out as particularly important: a communist-backed resistance movement called the National Liberation Front, and a liberal, democratic movement called the Greek Democratic National Army. While both of these factions operated from different ideological frameworks, they nevertheless occasionally cooperated in fighting the common German enemy. By early 1944 though, the communist-backed National Liberation Front had taken to the hills to create a provisional government, rejecting the legitimacy of both the Greek king and his government-in-exile. It also disregarded the one remaining rival for ultimate political supremacy in Greece-the Democratic National Army.
When Germany was forced to withdraw from Greece in October 1944, victorious British forces brought together the communist and democratic factions in order to establish a coalition government. But this government collapsed after the communist Liberation Front refused to disband its guerrilla forces. So, on December 3 war broke out between the communists and the democrats-with the National Liberation Front taking control of most of Greece, with the exception of the capital and Salonika.
The British fought against the communists with the Democratic National Army, which began to move more and more to the right politically as it struggled for survival and support. By February 1945, the National Liberation Front was forced to surrender and disband its guerilla army. One month later, a general election was held, and the democrats, now also royalists, won control of the government. The communists refrained from voting altogether, preferring to bide their time. When a plebiscite elected the Greek king back to his throne in September of the same year, the communists emerged from underground-and civil war broke out again. By this time, Britain, fed up and exhausted, left the negotiation for peace to the United States, which employed the Truman Doctrine of giving massive amounts of foreign aid to governments pledged to democracy in order to keep them out of the communist/Soviet orbit. It took time, but eventually the rejuvenated--and well-funded--Greek democrats were victorious

[Peter Clare]

JOSIF STALIN (December 3, 1941)
Russian troopship of 7,500 tons, severely damaged after hitting four mines during the evacuation of Soviet troops from the Hangö garrison in the Gulf of Finland. It is not known the exact number of soldiers lost but it is believed that around 4,000 troops were on board at the time. Rescue ships picked up 1,800 men from the sea but left about 2,000 still clinging to the floating wreck. Another vessel with a similar name, Josif Stalin, was sunk when crossing the Volga while evacuating civilians from the besieged city of Stalingrad. When midstream the ship was shelled by German guns and sank drowning over 1,000 people. A week before, a smaller steamer, the Borodino, met a similar fate and several hundred wounded soldiers and civilians were lost.