Posted on 12/07/2012 5:02:38 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate
Just what the Bronco Bama evil regime needs: a Wicked food administrator. What was good enough for old FDR should be good enough for BHO.
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/dec42/f07dec42.htm
Panzers stop Red Army advance
Monday, December 7, 1942 www.onwar.com
On the Eastern Front... Soviet attacks to gain bridgehead over the River Chir threaten the airbases being used to supply General Paulus’ Army trapped in front of Stalingrad. The German 11th Panzer Division stops the Soviet advance but suffers considerable losses.
In New Guinea... The Japanese counterattacks threaten the American positions. The Americans ultimately hold.
In the Solomon Islands... American PT Boats force a Japanese supply convoy to turn back before landing their supplies on Guadalcanal. The convoy is escorted by 7 destroyers led by Captain Sato.
They should have shot Wickard, and sent Filburn to Congress.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
December 7th, 1942
GERMANY: The Gestapo arrests over 700 young people, alleged members of a group called “Edelweiss Pirates”.
U.S.S.R.: Soviet forces attack at the River Chir. Their goal are the German airfields that are supplying Stalingrad. These attacks are stopped by the German 11th Panzer Division, but the Germans absorb serious losses.
SINGAPORE: Changi: A beautiful shinto shrine, built by PoWs is unveiled in the camp.
NEW GUINEA: US forces hold against stiff Japanese counterattacks at Bun.
George Welch, who is credited with shooting down four Japanese planes during the attack on Pearl Harbor shoots down two Vals and a Zeke flying a P-39, becoming an ace exactly one year after his first victories.
Welch was credited with shooting down 4 Japanese planes during the attack on Pearl Harbor . He would go on to score 16 victories and become a test pilot for North American Aviation.
All of Welch’s victorys were multiples: 7 Dec. 41: 4; 7 Dec. 42: 3; 21 Jun 43: 2; 20 Aug 43: 3; 2 Sep 43: 4. (Skip Guidry and Tom Carlson)
SOLOMON ISLANDS: Captain Sato leads a Tokyo Express run to Guadalcanal tonight. US P(atrol) T(orpedo) Boats (PT 36, PT 37, PT 40, PT 43, PT 44, PT 48, PT 59, and PT 109) force his destroyers to retire.
U.S.A.: The USS New Jersey BB-62 is launched from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. This battleship is one of the Iowa class.
One year after the “day of infamy” at Pearl Harbor, the US Navy today launched 15 ships, including the biggest battleship ever built. The huge USS New Jersey slid down the ways at the Philadelphia Navy Yard almost on the hour of last December’s attack.
Elsewhere in America, an aircraft carrier, two destroyers, a submarine, six minesweepers, two escort craft, a destroyer tender and what the navy called a “special” ship were launched. All this was a tangible demonstration of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s message to the people: that the day of surprise was a year ago, the period of defence is over and the offensive is under way. “Coral Sea, Midway, the Solomons, New Guinea and North Africa are shining examples of [our] power,” the president said. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the chief of the Pacific Fleet, said that victory has been assured over the Japanese because the “sea lane across the greatest of oceans has been made safe. The optimism is tempered by official statistics: 58,307 casualties in the year, a massive 35,822 of which occurred in the Pacific theatre. Many are classified as missing and presumed to be prisoners of war. More than one million US servicemen are now in action.
Corvette HMCS Oakville arrived New York for duty under USN Commander Eastern Frontier, New York-Guantanamo convoys, Dec 42 - Feb 43. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: When U-515 sinks the British liner CERAMIC only one man a Royal Engineer, survives.
Nimitz seemed to have a good grasp on the situation.
Could someone please explain to me how Switzerland was able to stay neutral during the war? Right next to Germany? Were the Germans using Switzerland banking system to move money and if so was this the only reason they were allowed to keep their neutrality?
Thank you very much for this wonderful series.
Some of my deepest memories of WWII was my 2 brothers were drafted , one in March 42 and then the other in May 42. Food rationing and food stamps stand large in my mind of the period...
Didn't have time to create a proper thread for this but I wanted to get these out to everyone.
Page 9, 13 year-old Marine who fought on Guadalcanal is exposed and sent back to the states.
My dad joined the army Air corps at 16. After boot camp he was discovered and given an honorable discharge.
He waited over a year then joined the Navy. His shipmates were puzzled at how such a young kid could have an honorable discharge from the Army and didn’t give him the razzing that was reserved for the other newbie youngsters on board.
“In what has to rank as one of the strangest tales ever to come out of the Guadalcanal campaign, Bob related to me the story of the youngest Marine in history — in fact, the youngest person ever to have enlisted and served in the United States Armed Forces. There was a boy named George W. Holle, Jr. who joined the Marine Corps on October 28, 1941, shortly after his twelfth birthday. Bob had known this boy on Guadalcanal. Most of the enlisted men knew he wasn’t seventeen, but not too many knew he was only thirteen. Still, he did his job like everyone else.
Holle’s father had died when he was 10, and he had been living with his stepmother on a farm near Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He was a big kid, well over six feet tall, and he always kept the company of older boys. As the war loomed, Holle followed the lead of the older boys in the area when they left for Milwaukee to enlist. His stepmother, a widow, was destitute in the last days of the depression, and he figured he could get three square meals a day and send his checks back home. Holle, enlisting before Pearl Harbor, reportedly “sent [his mother] and urgent telegram pleading that she would not reveal his age.” (2)
Holle’s actual age was made known a year or so later when his stepmother sought out social security death benefits for her late husband — she had to list her dependents and their professions and ages on the forms. She listed her thirteen-year old son as a Marine fighting in the South Pacific. Once the Chicago papers picked up the story, word got back to the commanding officers on Guadalcanal and Holle was sent back home. He immediately went on tour with the USO and became a celebrity in his own right. Holle even flirted with Hollywood mogul Jack Warner who had discussed making a movie about his life. Holle was a handsome boy, an all-American looking sort who became a killer like all the rest of the young Marines on Guadalcanal. “
http://www.thetigerisdead.com/tokyorose.html
“Could someone please explain to me how Switzerland was able to stay neutral during the war?”
I always heard it was because every Swiss male was armed, all the border rail tunnels were rigged with explosives and mountain passes heavily defended.
I like the ad on page 6 for the Philadephia Whiskey. Nice to know that it’s affordable so I can enjoy it “regularly and often.”
Not that they are promoting alcoholism or anything.
I can’t imagine any responsible publication having that kind of ad today.
Bump fro later reading
Thank you! It makes a lot of sense. I guess the Germans thought they could take care of Switzerland after they finished with the rest of Europe. Thanks again.
“. . . in 1912 the German Kaiser asked what a 1/4 million Swiss would do against 1/2 a million germans, the Swiss replied that they would shoot twice and go home.”
FWIW, from http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090802093542AAO10vg
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