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February 10th, 1942

UNITED KINGDOM: The first meeting of the Pacific War Council in London begins. Represented are Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Holland.

FRANCE: Fifteen bombers of RAF Bomber Command attack the German fleet at Brest visually during the night without loss. (Jack McKillop)

GERMANY: RAF Bomber Command attacks five cities visually during the night without loss: (1) 34 bombers attack Bremen; (2) six attack Emden; (3) and one bomber each attacks Borkum, Cruxhaven and Wilhelmshaven. (Jack McKillop)

U-953, U-954 laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)

CHINA: An 1,100 man US Army defence force occupy Canton with an infantry, coast artillery and AA battalion, followed by one pursuit and one light bomber squadron. Is is assigned APO number SF 914. (Gordon Rottman)

BURMA: The 46th Brigade, Indian 17th Division, which has recently relieved the Indian 16th Brigade along the Salween River in the Martaban area, begins a fighting withdrawal from Martaban toward Thaton, since the Japanese have bypassed Martaban. (Jack McKillop)

SINGAPORE: General Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander in Chief American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, visits Singapore and orders the island held and all remaining RAF personnel withdrawn to the Netherlands East Indies. During the visit he falls off a sea wall, injuring his back. The Japanese deepen their penetration to the supply depot area. The Australian Imperial Force Malaya, which is further reinforced in the Western Area, begins withdrawing from the Causeway sector at 0430 hours and fall back to the line Kranji-Jurong. Between 1900 and 2000 hours, Japanese infantry and tanks attack the Australian 2/29th Battalion and since the battalion lacks anti-tank weapons, the Japanese break through the line and head down the road towards Bukit Timah. (Jack McKillop)

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: On Bataan, the I Corps is rapidly reducing Big Pocket while South Sector forces are compressing the Japanese in the Anyasan-Silaiim area. (Jack McKillop)

NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES: On Borneo, a Japanese landing force takes Banjarmasin and a nearby airfield on the south coast. The Japanese are only 280 miles (451 kilometres) from Java and their planes soon will dominate the Java Sea. (Jack McKillop)
USAAF 5th Air Force LB-30 Liberators bomb and damage the Japanese seaplane carrier HIJMS Chitose in Makassar Strait south of Celebes Island. (Jack McKillop)

PACIFIC OCEAN: LINE ISLANDS: A small U.S. Army defence force arrives on Christmas Island. The force consists of 2,000 troops (one each infantry, coast artillery and antiaircraft artillery battalions) plus the USAAF 7th Air Force’s 12th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor) with P-39Airacobras. (Jack McKillop)

MIDWAY: The Japanese submarine HIJMS I-69 shells Midway but is immediately bombed and damaged by F2A Buffaloes of Marine Fighting Squadron Two Hundred Eleven (VMF-211) based on the island. (Jack McKillop)

AUSTRALIA: Commander Alvord Sydney Rosenthal RAN of HMAS Nestor is awarded the first bar to his DSO, for ‘skill and enterprise’ in sinking U-127 on 15 December, 1941 off Cape St. Vincent. (G. A. Mackinley)

CANADA: Corvette HMCS Timmins commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)

U.S.A.: New York: The impounded French liner Normandie capsizes after catching fire; Axis sabotage is suspected.

Chesterfield Radio broadcasts the RCA Victor band leader Glenn Miller and his orchestra receiving the first ever gold record awarded for the 1,200,000th sale of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”. A figure reached in less than a year. (Jack McKillop)

Washington: Secretary of War Henry Stimson writes in his diary: “The second generation Japanese can only be evacuated either as part of a total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits, or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or even trust the citizen Japanese. This latter is the fact but I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our constitutional system to apply it.”

C. February 10, 1942: Attorney General Francis Biddle is advised by agency lawyers that removal of people of Japanese descent from Pacific Coast areas would be a legal exercise of the President’s war powers. (Scott Peterson) More...

The US Navy’s Second Joint Training Force is renamed to Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet. (Gordon Rottman)

ATLANTIC OCEAN: Canadian corvette HMCS Spikenard is torpedoed and sunk by U-136 off Iceland; 57 crewmen are lost. (Jack McKillop)

SS Victolite (11,410 GRT) Canadian Imperial Oil Shipping Company tanker was torpedoed and subsequently sunk northwest of Bermuda in position 36.12N, 067.14W, by gunfire from U-564, ObLtzS Reinhard Suhren, Knight’s Cross, Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. There were no survivors from her crew of 47. Victolite was sailing in ballast alone from Halifax to Uruguay to load diesel fuel. The ship exploded when hit, due to the explosive vapours in her empty tanks.

In the frigid North Atlantic waters between Iceland and Ireland lies Convoy SC-67: 22 merchant ships bound for Liverpool at five to eight knots in good weather—and the weather on this trip is miserable. The merchantmen are organized in a rectangle of seven columns, three to four ships deep, and spread across almost a mile and a half of frontage. They are escorted by Task Force 4.1.15, six Canadian corvettes that zigzag along the fringes of the convoy listening and watching for submarines. So far there has been no sign of U-boat activity and this is the last night of escort duty for the corvettes; in the morning the convoy will reach the Mid-Ocean Meeting Point, where a British escort group takes over. The starboard side of the convoy is screened by the senior corvette, HMCS Spikenard (Lieutenant-Commander Herbert G. Shadforth), stationed well ahead of the starboard column of merchantmen, followed by HMCS Louisburg, keeping station 2,000 yards abeam of the lead merchantman, and HMCS Dauphin (Lieutenant R.A.S. MacNeill) nearly three miles behind Spikenard and astern of the last ship in the column to prevent straggling. Miles away on the port wing, set out in similar order, are HMC Ships Chilliwack, Lethbridge and Shediac. The weather is foggy and very cold, and there is no moon. At 2230 hours, Chilliwack picks up U-boat noise and goes to action stations to attack the contact. At the same instant, all hell breaks loose in the starboard column, where a torpedo strikes the Norwegian tanker Heina, which immediately bursts into flames. The lookout in Louisburg sees the torpedo whizz past her port side, missing by a few feet, while the ASDIC operator locates a contact. Louisburg turns on the torpedo track and starts hunting the U-boat. Meanwhile, peering through the fiery glow from Heina, Lt MacNeill spots what may be another explosion. His first priority is rescuing the crew of Heina, however, for the next two hours he and his crew struggle with scramble nets and Carley floats to pluck the merchant sailors from the oily water. When Shediac eventually arrives to help, Lt MacNeill sends her to search for the victim of that possible second explosion. He thinks it may be Spikenard. Throughout the night, with its alarms and dangers, not one ship in the convoy risks a wireless message—any radio signal would immediately attract a U-boat. The convoy cannot stop, and the escorts’ first duty is to protect the group, so their search for Spikenard continues only as long as it takes to return to their screening stations. They all try and fail to contact the missing corvette by radio-telephone, but the device is so crude that the most likely reason for her continued silence is equipment failure. Spikenard is still missing at dawn, but there is still hope; she could be looking for the British escort group. At 1100 hours, when they reach the rendezvous, HMS Gentian strikes out on the convoy’s track and, late in the afternoon, she encounters a Carley float with eight Spikenard matelots, all nearly dead from hypothermia. When they are finally able to talk, their story is terrifying. At 2230 hours, when Chilliwack picked up the first contact, Spikenard went to action stations and began to accelerate. When the torpedo that missed Louisburg struck Heina, a second torpedo hit Spikenard between the bridge and forecastle, blowing open her side and top deck. Flames from the initial explosion engulfed the bridge, the wireless office and one of the boats, and then became infinitely worse when it reached the mast, where several drums of gasoline were lashed. The impact set off the ship’s whistle, and its eerie shriek filled the air as Spikenard settled and sank, all in five minutes. The final blow was the explosion of a depth charge or perhaps the boiler, which smashed the remaining boat and one of the Carley floats. The eight men on the second Carley float had no flares, and their voices disappeared in the wind’s howl when they called to the two corvettes that passed them by during the night. Gentian found them purely by chance. (Dave Shirlaw)