http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/aug42/f02aug42.htm
Luxury liners transporting troops
Sunday, August 2, 1942 www.onwar.com
Troops on board the Queen Mary [photo at link]
In the Atlantic... US troops are now being transported to the UK in the passenger liners Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, and Nieuw Amsterdam. These vessels are too fast for standard escorts. Their routes across the Atlantic are based on Admiralty intelligence on U-boat concentrations.
In North Africa... Churchill visits the British 8th Army. The Prime Minister leaves convinced that more resources are required to defeat the Axis forces.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
August 2nd, 1942
POLAND: Unaware of their destiny, lured by German promises of extra bread and jam, many Jewish families are volunteering for deportation “to the east” from the Warsaw Ghetto rail terminus. Others are rounded up by brutal Ukrainian and German SS guards. Resistance is punished by death. Only those working for German factories in the ghetto are spared the transports.
Crammed 200 to a goods van, 60 wagons to each train, many suffocate in the airless heat as the train trundles the 50 miles to Treblinka station. There it waits for Polish rail workers to uncouple the wagons. Franciszek Zabecki, a railman, alleges some appalling atrocities: “One mother threw a small child wrapped up in a pillow from the wagon, shouting “Take it, there’s some money to look after it”. An SS man ran up, unwrapped the pillow, seized the child by its feet and smashed its head against a wagon wheel. This took place in full view of the mother, who howled with pain ...”
The wagons are shunted into the death camp 20 at a time. Whip-wielding Nazi guards sort the human cargo into men, women and children. Forced to strip, the deportees walk naked down a lane to camp’s three has chambers. Twenty minutes later, they are all dead. The empty wagons go back to Warsaw to pick up another load. It is estimated that the Treblinka camp is murdering 40,000 Jews a week.
U.S.A.: Destroyer USS McKee launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
CARIBBEAN SEA: Between 0048 and 0109 on 20 Jul 1942, U-66 laid one CGC, two MRB and three TMB mines in the entrance of Port Castries, St Lucia. On 29 July, a USCG cutter was damaged by a mine detonation and on 2 August the HM MTB-339 and MTB-342 were also damaged by mine detonations. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: SS Treminnard sunk by U-160 at 10.40N, 57.07W.
At 0927, the unescorted Flora II was torpedoed and sunk by U-254 60 miles SE of Vestmannaoerne, Iceland. The master, 24 crewmembers, four gunners and one passenger were picked up by the Icelandic trawler Juni and landed at Reykjavik.
At 0612, the unescorted Maldonado was stopped by U-510 with gunfire and sunk by a coup de grâce.
Destroyer HMCS Hamilton sighted and attacked a U-Boat; forcing it to submerge. (Dave Shirlaw)