Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

MOMI (January 5, 1945)
Japanese destroyer, sunk by an aerial torpedo from a plane of the American Escort Carrier Force during the US invasion of Luzon in the Philippines. The destroyer sank west of Manila Bay with all hands, a death toll of 210 souls.

[Peter Clare]

CITTA' DI PALERMO (January 5, 1942) Italian passenger ship (5,413 tons) built in 1930 and converted to an auxiliary cruiser, left Brindisi for Patras escorting the motor vessel Calino. On board the Palermo were around 600 Italian troops. At 08:00 hrs. when three miles north-west of Cape Dukato she was struck by two torpedoes launched from HMS Proteus. The Palermo took only six minutes to sink. There were a few survivors but almost all on board went down with the ship.

[Peter Clare]

January 6, 1942
Roosevelt commits to biggest arms buildup in U.S. history

On this day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces to Congress that he is authorizing the largest armaments production in the history of the United States.
Committed to war in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had to reassess its military preparedness, especially in light of the fact that its Pacific fleet was decimated by the Japanese air raid. Among those pressing President Roosevelt to double U.S. armaments and industrial production were Lord William Beaverbrook, the British minister of aircraft production, and members of the British Ministry of Supplies, who were meeting with their American counterparts at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Beaverbrook, a newspaper publisher in civilian life, employed production techniques he learned in publishing to cut through red tape, improve efficiency, and boost British aircraft production to manufacturing 500 fighters a month, and he felt the U.S. could similarly beef up armament production.
Spurred on by Lord Beaverbrook and Prime Minister Churchill, Roosevelt agreed to the arms buildup. He announced to Congress that the first year of the supercharged production schedule would result in 45,000 aircraft, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, and 8 million tons in new ships. Congressmen were stunned at the proposal, but Roosevelt was undeterred: "These figures and similar figures for a multitude of other implements of war will give the Japanese and Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished."

[Peter Clare]

USS ST AUGUSTINE (January 6, 1944)
Built as a luxury steel hulled yacht in 1929 and once owned by Barbara Hutton the Woolworth heiress. It was sold to the US Navy in 1940 and converted to a naval patrol vessel for coastal defence and convoy escort duties. While on escort duty during a full westerly gale off the coast of Delaware she was in collision with the Trinidad bound oil tanker the SS Camas Meadows which struck the Augustine on her starboard side when off Cape May, New Jersey. The vessel sank within four minutes taking to the bottom 115 men of her 145 man crew.

[Bodston]

Monday 6 January 1941, Cairo

British Headquarters in Egypt announced:
British advanced units are now approaching the area of Tobruk. We have already taken more than 30,000 (Italian) prisoners around Bardia (Libya). Large quantities of tanks, guns, matériel and supplies of all kinds have fallen into the hands of British troops.

[Bodston]

Wednesday 6 January 1943

Daily Keynote from the Reich Press Chief
The Minister (Goebbels) explains, concerning his statement yesterday about measures Germans take (to mobilise) for total war, that our propaganda of course must avoid creating a basically defensive attitude in the German people. On no account are we to give large coverage to slogans, like "Life or Death" or "Fortress Europe," which have undesirable connotations. Since the war started, our propaganda has (the Minister says) taken the following erroneous development:
1st war year: We have won.
2nd war year: We shall win.
3rd war year: We must win.
4th war year: We cannot be defeated.
A development of this kind is disastrous and must on no account continue. Instead the German public must be made aware that we not only mean to win and must win, but also, especially, that we are able to win because we will have everything needed for victory as soon as work and production in our homeland are devoted completely to the war effort.

[Peter Clare]

January 7, 1945
Monty holds a press conference

On this day, British Gen. Bernard Montgomery gives a press conference in which he all but claims complete credit for saving the Allied cause in the Battle of the Bulge. He was almost removed from his command because of the resulting American outcry.
On December 16, 1944, the Germans attempted to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge (so-called because the Germans, in pushing through the American defensive line, created a "bulge" around the area of the Ardennes forest) was the largest battle fought on the Western front. The German assault came in early morning at the weakest part of the Allied line, an 80-mile stretch of poorly protected, hilly forest that the Allies believed was too difficult to traverse, and therefore an unlikely location for a German offensive. Between the vulnerability of the thin, isolated American units and the thick fog that prevented Allied air cover from discovering German movement, the Germans were able to push the Americans into retreat.
Fresh from commanding the 21st Army group during the Normandy invasion, and having suffered an awful defeat in September as his troops attempted to cross the Rhine, Montgomery took temporary command of the northern shoulder of American and British troops in the Ardennes. He immediately fell into a familiar pattern, failing to act spontaneously for fear of not being sufficiently prepared. Montgomery was afraid to move before the German army had fully exhausted itself, finally making what American commanders saw as only a belated counterattack against the enemy. As the weather improved, American air cover raided German targets on the ground, which proved the turning point in the Allied victory. Monty eventually cut across northern Germany all the way to the Baltic and accepted the German surrender in May.
Montgomery had already earned the ire of many American officers because of his cautiousness in the field, arrogance off the field, and willingness to disparage his American counterparts. The last straw was Montgomery's whitewashing of the Battle of the Bulge facts to assembled reporters in his battlefield headquarters-he made his performance in the Ardennes sound not only more heroic but decisive, which necessarily underplayed the Americans' performance. Since the loss of American life in the battle was tremendous and the surrender of 7,500 members of the 106th Infantry humiliating, Gen. Omar Bradley complained loudly to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who passed the complaints on to Churchill. On January 18, Churchill addressed Parliament and announced in no uncertain terms that the "Bulge" was an American battle-and an American victory.

[Peter Clare]

SS AQUARIUS (January 7, 1943)
The 6,094 ton Aquarius was sunk near Tjebia Island, Sumatra, by aerial bombing whilst on passage through the Durian Straits. Of the estimated 1,100 persons on board there were only three survivors. Picked up by the New Zealand launch ML-310, commanded by Lieutenant H. Bull, they were taken to Pulau Jeadia where unfortunately all three died.

[Peter Clare]

SS BENALBANACH (January 7, 1943)
The Ben Line 7,152-ton passenger/cargo ship launched in June, 1940 and sunk north-west of Algiers when the convoy she was part of was attacked by a single enemy aircraft. She was carrying 389 men of Motor Transport unit and a crew of 74 from the Clyde to Bona, North Africa. This was her second trip to the Allied landing area conveying troops and equipment. The Benalbanach was hit by two torpedoes launched from the aircraft. The ship caught fire, blew up and sank almost immediately taking the lives of 57 crewmembers and 353 service personnel. Her commander, Captain D. MacGregor, died in the water just as he was about to be rescued.

[Bodston]

Wednesday 7 January 1942

The German Wehrmacht High Command announced:
In tenacious house-to-house fighting in the Crimea, our rapidly acting troops have mauled enemy forces that landed in Eupatoria (Black Sea port in western Crimea) under the protection of warships. A smaller enemy group which landed southwest of Feodosia (eastern Crimea) has been wiped out by Rumanian forces.