Posted on 09/04/2012 4:15:03 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/sep42/f04sep42.htm
German 1,000 plane raid on Stalingrad
Friday, September 4, 1942 www.onwar.com
Aerial view of a German bombing raid on Stalingrad [photo at link]
On the Eastern Front... The Luftwaffe mounts a raid on the city of Stalingrad utilizing over 1,000 aircraft. To the south of the city, German forces reach the Volga River.
In the Solomon Islands... At Guadalcanal, the Japanese receive additional reinforcements. Off the coast, two older American destroyers utilized as transports are sunk by Japanese destroyers.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
September 4th, 1942
UNITED KINGDOM: Belfast: Police clash with IRA gunmen in street battles.
Corvette HMS Cornel is launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
GERMANY: U-241 and U-548 are laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
HUNGARY: Soviet planes bomb Budapest in the war’s first air raid on the Hungarian capital. (Jack McKillop)
U.S.S.R.: The Germans attack at Stalingrad, splitting Soviet 64th Army and driving to the Volga at Krasnoarmeisk. The city has been under continuous bombardment by over 1000 Luftwaffe aircraft for 24 hours.
RAF No. 144 Squadron equipped with Hampden Mk. Is flies from Britain to Africa and, Russia, to provide protection for Arctic convoys. Nine of the Hampdens are lost, either running out of fuel and being forced to crash land in Sweden, or, in one case, being accidentally shot down by Soviet aircraft as they approach the Russian coast. Even in the water, the Soviets keep firing on the crew, until their shouts of “Angliski!” over the radio are recognized. One Hampden is forced to land in Norway and the crew is captured before they can burn the plane which contains secret documents about the imminent convoy PQ 18. (Jack McKillop)
Black Sea Fleet and Azov Flotilla: GB “Rostov-Don” and GB “Octyabr” exploded by crew to prevent capturing, on Kuban river (Sergey Anisimov)(69)
GREECE: Colonel David Sutherland is part of a 12-man Special Boat Service unit which is making a raid on the occupied island of Rhodes.
At midnight the unit is landed by the Greek submarine Papanikolis; they had no radio, and were instructed to live off the land for the next fortnight. With three Royal Marines and two Greeks, Sutherland successfully blew up three Italian aircraft and a fuel dump, as well as starting a dozen fires.
But the enemy then pursued them closely over the barren mountains, and mined the beaches after discovering the SBS’s boats hidden in a grotto.
Most of the raiding party were killed; Sutherland and Marine John Duggan had to hide in a cleft of rock without food or water for a day while suffering agonising cramp as one of their pursuers sat smoking only a few feet away.
Finally reaching the shore, Sutherland contacted the submarine Traveller. Although it was five days since they had eaten (a tin of sardines each), the two men swam out to sea to the discouraging sound of engines dying away, unaware that this came from the Italian patrol boat which was hunting them. As they climbed aboard the submarine, it was forced to crash-dive, and they had to be revived with mugs of pusser’s rum as the patrol boat dropped depth charges.
Sutherland was awarded the Military Cross and Duggan the Military Medal.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: U.S. Army, Middle East Air Forces): B-24 Liberators, in conjunction with the RAF and the RN, attack a convoy at sea; 2 merchant ships are reported sunk and 1 left burning.
The Italian torpedo boat Polluce is sunk off Tobruk by British bombers.
EGYPT: Operation Beresford ends with the New Zealanders withdrawing, being overextended. 132 Brigade has lost 700 men while 6 Brigade, in a diversionary attack, has lost 159 men, including Brigadier George Clifton, who is taken POW. He makes nine escape attempts, succeeding the final time. (Jack McKillop)
USAAF B-25 Mitchells and RAF Bostons, repelling counterattacks during the Alam-el-Halfa, Egypt, battle, hit troop concentrations and vehicles, while P-40s, operating with the RAF, escort bombers and engage in combat over the battle area, claiming 1 fighter destroyed. (Jack McKillop)
NEW GUINEA: Cpl. John Alexander French (b.1914), Australian Military Forces, eliminated three machine guns before dying of wounds. (Victoria Cross)
USAAF OPERATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA (5th Air Force): In New Guinea, P-40s bomb and strafe forces in the Milne Bay area at Goroni, Wagga Wagga, Ahioma, and north of Lilihoa.
Australian ground forces pushing east along Milne Bay reach Goroni and the Japanese begin evacuating Milne Bay, the first defeat of a Japanese amphibious landing in WWII. (Jack McKillop)
PACIFIC OCEAN: USN submarines sink five Japanese ships: (1) USS Growler (SS-215) sinks an ammunition ship in Formosa Straits, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) northeast of Keelung, Formosa; (2) USS Guardfish (SS-217), operating off the northeast coast of Honshu, Japan, sinks two merchant cargo ships and a passenger cargo ship off Kuji Bay, Iwate Prefecture; and (3) USS Pompano (SS-181) sinks a guardboat northeast of Honshu, Japan. (Jack McKillop)
AUSTRALIA: Brisbane: To strengthen the war effort, the Australian government is moving to cut down on “fun and games” in the domestic scene. In a national broadcast here last night, the prime minister, John Curtin warned that should Port Moresby and Darwin fall to the Japanese, Australia faced a bloody struggle on its own soil. Austerity measures to be brought in are intended to restrict horse and dog races, raise the tax on all entertainments, reduce the drinking of alcohol, smoking and the eating of expensive meals, check black-marketeering and deglamourize activities described in gossip columns.
TERRITORY OF ALASKA: USAAF OPERATIONS IN ALASKA (11th Air Force): In the Aleutians, 2 B-24 liberators and a P-38 Lightning bomb and patrol Nazan and Kuluk Bays on Atka Island, but bombing of Kiska Island is cancelled due to weather. (Jack McKillop)
U.S.A.: Tug HMCS North Shore commissioned New Orleans, Louisiana. Sailed to Canada with civilian crew. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: An unidentified German U-boat comes across a lifeboat containing 19 survivors of U.S. freighter SS California, sunk by Italian submarine Reginaldo Giuliani on 13 August and provides rations and navigational assistance before departing. (Jack McKillop)
U-171 sinks SS Amatlan. (Dave Shirlaw)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/2012/09/day-1100-september-4-1942.html
Day 1100 September 4, 1942
Solomon Islands. US Marine 1st Raider Battalion lands from high speed transport ships (converted WWI-era destroyers) USS Gregory and USS Little on Savo Island, just North of Guadalcanal, to sweep for Japanese troops. Finding none, they re-embark on USS Gregory and USS Little too late to return to Tulagi so the Raiders are dropped at Lunga Point, Guadalcanal, and the old destroyers lie offshore. Japanese attempt to bring artillery and heavy equipment to Guadalcanal on barges (as this cannot be done on the fast destroyers brining troops) but they are sunk off Santa Isabel Island US aircraft from Henderson Field (known as Cactus Air Force). In the evening, Japanese destroyers Yudachi, Hatsuyuki, and Murakumo run down the Slot and lands 1000 troops of Ichiki and Aoba Detachments at Taivu, Guadalcanal.
Radio Selection: Interview with Senator Harry S. Truman
http://ia701200.us.archive.org/0/items/1942RadioNews/1942-09-04-KMBC-Senator-Truman-Interview.mp3
"This flyer, issued by the chief of the SS and police in the Kraków district of Poland, announced that the deportation of the Jews in and around Sanok would begin on September 5, 1942.
Lack of cooperation in any way would be punished by summary execution by firing squad.
The deportation was a success from the point of view of the Nazis, as 8,000 Jews from the Sanok region died in the Belzec death camp from September 5 to 10."
"The story of the Holocaust in the Balkans is complex as well as tragic.
While more than 550,000 Jews from Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Bulgaria were killed, the circumstances surrounding their deaths and chances for individual survival varied from country to country.
"The killing operations in Romania were particularly barbarous.
German, Romanian, and Ukrainian forces swept through the Romanian territories of Bukovina and Bessarabia, slaughtering every Jew within their grasp.
The city of Odessa in Transnistria (a Ukrainian territory acquired by Germany and Romania in 1941) was home to 180,000 Jews.
In February 1942, however, it was proclaimed "cleansed of Jews."
"In the traditional Romanian territories known as the Regat, the campaigns against the Jews followed a typical pattern: anti-Jewish violence, property seizures, and the creation of ghettos.
A conflict between the Romanian government and the Germans, however, limited the number of Jews deported to Belzec.
All told, upwards of 420,000 Romanian Jews perished during the Holocaust.
"With the division of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Jews in the territory became governed by Hungary, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, and the independent state of Croatia, led by the Fascist Ante Pavelic.
After Pavelic's Ustasa movement gained power with the help of Hitler, the Croats slaughtered more than a half-million Serbs (including the child pictured) and moved against the Jews as well.
More than 80 percent of Yugoslavia's 80,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and the Ustasa.
"The fate of Greek Jewry hinged on the Italians.
When Italy capitulated to the Allies in September 1943, German troops occupied Greece.
Although deportations to Auschwitz were delayed until March 1943, 80 percent of Greece's Jewish population was killed.
"The only Balkan-Jewish communities that sidestepped the Nazi whirlwind were located in Bulgaria. Bulgarian government officials were generally antisemitic but opposed the murder of Jews, and thus resisted German demands to initiate deportation procedures.
Ultimately, however, the Bulgarian government agreed to deport the approximately 9000 foreign Jews who lived in areas acquired from the division of Greece.
However, aggressively public, pro-Jewish campaigns mounted by physicians, writers, attorneys, and members of the Orthodox clergy were effective in persuading the Bulgarian citizenry that the antisemitic, collaborationist plans of the Bogdan Filov government were wrong.
Bulgarian officials confiscated the possessions of the nation's Jews, but 78 percent of Bulgaria's 65,000 Jews survived the war."
"Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (left), head of the Lódz Jewish Council, confers with Hans Biebow, the German head of the ghetto administration.
Rumkowski sought vainly throughout 1942 to limit deportations and to turn the ghetto into an irreplaceable factory.
Unaware that deportees were sent directly to their deaths at Chelmno, Rumkowski prepared his deportation list, hoping to buy time for those remaining.
By the end of September, over 70,000 people had been deported.
The chronicler of the ghetto wrote on September 25: 'There is [almost] no one in the ghetto over the age of 65 or under the age of 10.' "
"On September 4, 1942, fears of a renewed deportation from Lódz came to pass when Jewish Council leader Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski announced that 25,000 Jews under the age of ten and over 65 must be resettled outside the ghetto.
From September 5 to 12 alone, at least 14,000 Jews were deported in the infamous Gehsperre (ban on movement) action.
The ghetto chronicle called this period "eight days that seem an eternity!"
This photograph shows a woman and child--probably mother and daughter--kissing through the fence in the ghetto's prison."
"In the 1930s and 1940s, in order to keep Jews out of Palestine and because of the high degree of antisemitism in the Foreign and Colonial Offices, the British government ordered all aliens to register with the police.
After France fell to the Germans, the British government ordered the internment of about 30,000 "enemy aliens" on British soil, most of whom were Jewish. About 8000 of them were deported to Canada and Australia.
No matter that they were officially classified as the least dangerous of refugees; governments and native peoples treated the "enemy aliens" like pariahs.
"Internment and deportations ceased only after several hundred deportees were killed when their ship, the Arandora Star, was torpedoed and sunk in July 1940.
Jews on another ship, the Dunera, were abused by the crew.
"The few Jews who arrived in Australia had to report to the police.
They could not travel without police permission and could not own radios."
Not so much an interview as Truman reading a prepared statement. And his reading made it sound like it was written by someone else. All the same, I can't imagine a Democrat of today saying the things Truman did. Especially about labor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.