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June 25th, 1942

UNITED KINGDOM: Destroyer HMCS Huron launched Newcastle-on-Tyne. (Dave Shirlaw)

GERMANY: 1,000 RAF bombers raid Bremen. (Jack McKillop) This includes the Avro Manchesters on their last Bomber Command operation.

FINLAND: Lt. Lauri Pekuri of the Finnish Air Force makes a successful forced landing of his Brewster Buffalo (BW-372) on a lake in Russian Karelia. 56 years later the Buffalo is recovered. (Tony web455@aol.com)

U.S.S.R.: The Russians retreat from Kupyansk on the Oskol River east of Kharkov.

The Italian Naval flotilla is ready to begin operations on Lake Ladoga. The 12th Flotilla was part of the Naval Detachment “K” under Finnish operational control, together with the German 31st Kuestminenboot Flotilla with four small KM boats (numbers 3, 4, 8, and 22) and the German Einsatzabt Fahre Ost with 7 heavy and 6 light armed motor pontoons, 8 transport pontoons, and 7 small infantry transport boats.* The only Finnish boat was the torpedo boat “Sisu.”

The German pontoons were supported by an air detachment of 15 fighters and 7 recon planes, and the Finnish Air Force allocated their 3rd Air Regiment (with Fokker and Fiat planes). During the first day of operations MAS 526 is rammed by the Sisu and then run aground on Mokerikki islet. It will remain out of commission until October. (Arturo Lorioli)

ITALY: There is a heavy Allied bombardment of Messina, Sicily. (Glenn Steinberg)
EGYPT: General Sir Claude Auchinleck, the C-in-C of British forces in the Middle East, takes direct command in the desert relieving a “tired” Lt-Gen Ritchie. Ritchie had proposed to hold a defensive line at Mersa Matruh. “The Auk” decided against this and is withdrawing further into Egypt, preparing to fight a mobile war in the desert near an obscure railhead called El Alamein.

JAPAN: US diplomatic staff have waited in the harbour at Yokohama since June 17 on-board the Asama-Maru (not at the pier) until June 25. The Asama Maru picks up additional passengers at Hong Kong Saigon, and Singapore. The Italian liner Conte Verdi transports Americans from places in China. The Asama Maru reached Lourenco Marques on July 23, the Conte Verdi two hours later and the Gripsholm late that afternoon. The exchange began the next day and involved some 2,768 westerners and an equal number of Japanese.

PACIFIC OCEAN: The aircraft carrier USS Saratoga (CV-3) ferries Army and Marine aircraft to Midway Island to bolster the air defenses that were devastated in early June. Included are 25 Curtiss P-40s of the 73d Fighter Squadron, 18th Fighter Group and 18 Douglas SBD Dauntlesses of Marine Scout Bombing Squadron Two Hundred Forty one (VMSB-241). (Jack McKillop)

PBY-5 Catalinas of USN Patrol Squadron Seventy One (VP-71) based at Noumea, New Caledonia, bomb Japanese installations on Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands. (Jack McKillop)

TERRITORY OF ALASKA: In the Aleutians, the 11th Air Force dispatches two B-17 Flying Fortresses and four B-24 and one LB-30 Liberators to fly bombing and weather missions over Kiska Island, bombing the north side of the harbor. (Jack McKillop)

CANADA: Corvette HMCS Moose Jaw repairs completed Saint John New Brunswick. (Dave Shirlaw)

USA: Preliminary investigation of early warning radar in the U.S. has proceeded to the point that the Coordinator for Research and Development requests development be initiated on airborne relay and associated shipboard processing and display equipment. Interest in early warning radar had arisen when Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King remarked to Dr. Vannevar Bush, head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, that US Navy ships need to see over the hill, i.e., beyond the line of sight.

Canadian and American representatives meet to discuss the construction of facilities in Canada that will be used to transport supplies to Alaska and Lend Lease aircraft to the USSR. (Jack McKillop)

Washington: A major-general who has yet to hear a shot fired in anger has been appointed commander of US forces in Europe. Dwight David Eisenhower was born in 1890 to a Texas family of the pacifist River Brethren religious sect; he joined the army at 21 and graduated from West Point in 1915.

He became commander of a tank training centre and later served in the Panama Canal Zone and the Philippines. Six months ago, at the time of Pearl Harbor, he was in the US war department’s planning division. Despite his lack of field experience, he is highly thought of by Roosevelt and his colleagues.

Washington: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill conclude their conference in Washington, D.C. One of the agreements is to conduct joint U.S.-British research and development of an atomic bomb. (Jack McKillop)

The agreement signed on 21 June by Lieutenant General Henry H “Hap” Arnold, USAAF; Air Chief Marshall Sir Charles F Portal, RAF; and Rear Admiral John H Towers, USN dealing with US air commitments and provisions for a strong air force for Operation BOLERO (the buildup of US armed forces in the UK for an attack on Europe) is approved by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). (Jack McKillop)

German submarine U-701 torpedoes a Norwegian freighter off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The ship is beached and later salvaged. (Jack McKillop)

"Washington: A major-general who has yet to hear a shot fired in anger has been appointed commander of US forces in Europe.
Dwight David Eisenhower was born in 1890 to a Texas family of the pacifist River Brethren religious sect; he joined the army at 21 and graduated from West Point in 1915."

Eisenhower's great-3 grandfather Hans Nicholas migrated from Karlsbrunn in the Saarland of Germany.
For anyone familiar with the major highway that runs from Mannheim through Kaiserslautern to Saarbrucken, you stay on it into France, then turn north back into Saarbrucken to find Karlsbrunn.
The Eisenhowers, like many other Pennsylvania Dutch moved to Switzerland then to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania (1741) for reasons that are always described as "religious persecution."
And that's not surprising, since as Anabaptist Mennonites they were rejected by both Catholics and what are now called "mainline" Protestants.

Eisenhowers became River Brethren -- today officially the Brethren in Christ (BIC) church founded around 1778 near Lancaster, PA -- and were part of a large migration (train loads of families) organized in the 1880s to Kansas.
At some point the Eisenhowers left the pacifist Mennonite BIC church, and Dwight was not rebaptised until 1953, in the Presbyterian Church.
Unlike Mennonites, Presbyterians are highly noted for their military contributions to the American Revolutionary War.

Eisenhower served under MacArthur in the Philippines (studying "dramatics" he said, MacArthur said Eisenhower was the best clerk he ever had), then under Patton and finally under General George Marshall who recommended him to FDR.
Doubtless what all those men recognized were Eisenhower's quick intelligence and adept diplomatic skills.

I'm a huge Eisenhower fan (with apologies to Taft folks), at least in part because his family background is quite analogous to mine. ;-)