Saturday, February 22, 2003

February 22-28, 1942 News by jwxspoon @ 8:46

February 22nd, 1942...In Burma, the Japanese advance and nearly overwhelm the 17th Indian Division on the Sittang River, the last barrier before Rangoon.

February 23rd, 1942...The US, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, sign a Mutual Aid Agreement. To mark this, six American bombers smack the Japanese base at Rabaul.

In Java, Allied forces evacuate their headquarters to Ceylon.

"We Americans have been compelled to yield ground," President Roosevelt says on radio. "But we will regian it. We and other United Nations are committed to the destruction of the militarism of Japan and Germany. We are daily increasing our strength. Soon we, and not our enemies, will have the offensive; and we, not they, will win the final battles; and we, not they, will make the final peace."

The 17th Indian Division retreats from the Sittang River in Burma, having lost 40 percent of its strength. 17th Division can only muster 80 officers and 3,404 enlisted men, of whome only 1,420 still have their rifles. In Rangoon, British authorities move to push supplies up to China or destroy them on the spot to prevent the Japanese from seizing them. Exploding fuel tanks and ammo dumps tell yet another story of Allied failure against the Japanese. The British send the 7th Armored Brigade to Rangoon to try and restore the situation.

In Russia, Soviet troops capture Dorogobuzh on the Dniepr. Copy editors across the US and Britain go crazy trying to spell these names. Nazi reports that day say that east of Minsk is a partisan camp of more than 500 men, armed with heavy machine guns and anti-tank guns. Partisan defiance is everywhere: in another village, Partisans hold a dance. In the Cherven region, partisans "have strict orders not to start any action, only to attack and destroy German search parties."

In the North Sea, the British submarine HMS Trident puts a 1936 Mark 14 torpedo through the fantail of the German cruiser Prinz Eugen, neatly sawing it off. Once again, German ships and crews pay for the design flaw of weak fantails. 50 members of her crew and Todt Organization workers being transported to do forced labor, die.

Eugen becomes a dockyard case for months, and never returns to the Atlantic. Instead Eugen becomes part of the Baltic Sea squadron, and sets several records for most shells fired in support of ground troops. In 1945, Eugen rams the light cruiser Leipzig, putting the latter out of the war. Eugen survives these various battles and embarrassments to be surrendered intact to the Royal Navy in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1945. The British hand her over to the US Navy, who commission her as USS Prinz Eugen (IX-300). With a mixed German-American crew, Eugen sails to the United States, where some of her guns and equipment are removed for examination. Eugen then sails to Bikini Atoll, where the empty ship is expended in the atomic bomb tests. Today the wreck lies in the water near Kwajalein Atoll.

February 24th, 1942...Aircraft from USS Enterprise plaster Wake Island early in the morning, hammering fuel tanks and Japanese positions. The Americans try to avoid bombing Wake's islet Peale Island, because American PoWs are being held there for interrogation. The Americans only lose one plane. The Japanese lose three seaplanes, a patrol boat, and their entire store of gasoline, denying its use as an effective base.

Britain's toughest battleship, HMS Warspite, does target practice off Sydney, Australia, impressing the locals no end. Even so, Winston Churchill is in a gloomy mood, writing King George VI: "Burma, Ceylon, Calcutta and Madras in India, and part of Australia, may fall into enemy hands."

A 10-day battle in Russia wraps up at Staraya Russa with the Soviets surrounding a German corps.

February 25th, 1942...Having done it to Wake, Vice Adm. William Halsey takes USS Enterprise to attack marcus Island, 650 miles west of Wake, and 1,000 miles east of Tokyo. This raid is designed to irritate the Japanese further.

A Dutch PBY Catalina spots Japanese forces moving to invade Java. Admiral Helfrich, the top Allied seadog on the spot, despatches his mixed force of Australian, British, Dutch, and American ships, called ABDA Force, to deal with this menace. In command is Dutch Adm. Karel Doorman. This force has fine ships, the US heavy cruiser USS Houston and the Royal Navy's HMS Exeter, but no cohesion...Signalmen must grapple with four different types of flag codes, for example.

RAF aircraft and Flying Tigers defeat the Japanese over Rangoon, enabling the British to bring in the only reinforcements available, the partially trained 63rd Indian Infantry Brigade.

February 26th, 1942...RAF snooper planes locate Hitler's toughest battleship, the 35,000-ton Tirpitz, in Trondheimfjord, Norway. The ship's captain, Karl Topp, lacking anything military to do, is busy building a rest camp, Tipito, on an island in Trondheimfjord, to give his crew somewhere to go between duty days.

America's oldest aircraft carrier, USS Langley, along with the tanker USS Pecos, is sunk by Japanese aircraft off Java. Langley is a seaplane tender now, so she can't launch the 32 P-40 fighters in her hold. The same day, US ships sink the Japanese submarine I-23. She is the first one of the Japanese ships to attack Pearl Harbor to be sunk. Eventually all will be sunk.


February 27th, 1942...Adm. Karel Doorman gets word at 2:27 pm (Java time) that the Japanese are coming. His target is 41 transports escorted by two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and 14 destroyers. Doorman has two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and nine destroyers. But Doorman's ships have poor communications, tired crews, and have never worked together before. And nobody on the Allied side knows that the Japanese have a secret weapon, their Type 93 Long Lance Torpedo, which can cut the waves at 36 knots for 44,000 yards.
At 4:20 p.m., ABDA force spots its opponents dead ahead. Doorman does a columnwise 20-degree turn to port to avoid having the enemy "cross his T," but the Japanese get the first shots. Initially damage on both sides is negligible, but at 5:08 p.m., HMS Exeter is hit by an 8-inch shell that puts six of her eight boilers out of action. Exeter, which suffered similar damage at the hands of Hitler's Graf Spee in 1939, staggers out of line. The Japanese cut loose torpedoes, and one hits the Dutch destroyer Kortenaer, cutting it in two, and sinking it.
The Allied officers, thinking Kortenaer was hit by a submarine, launch depth charges, and confusino begins to reign. Two British destroyers sprint into attack, and the Japanese sink one of them, HMS Electra. Doorman orders the destroyer Witte De With to escort Exeter out of battle, and re-forms his ships. When the Japanese reload their torpedo tubes and attack again, the Allies put a few shells through the destroyer Aasagumo, putting her out of action.
As the sun sets over the Java Sea, Doorman decides to use darkness to shake off the Japanese destroyers and hit his objectives, the transports. The American destroyers fire 24 torpedoes at the Japanese, with little effect. That's because American Mark 14 torpedoes are often duds, that fail to explode even when they hit the target. Even so, HMAS Perth, an Australian light cruiser, puts a hit into the Japanese cruiser Haguro.
Doorman tries again by night. As the American destroyers have no more torpedoes, he sends them back to Java. At 9:25, the British destroyer HMS Jupiter hits a minefield and explodes. Running out of ships, Doorman sights two Japanese cruisers, Nachi and Haguro, at 11 p.m., and the Japanese fire 12 torpedoes, which sink the Dutch light cruiser Java, and the flagship De Ruyter, sending Doorman to the bottom. Perth and Houston flee. Only one Japanese transport has been sunk, no warships. The Japanese proceed to invade Java.

That evening, the British have more success with Operation Biting. C Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, under Major John D. Frost, drops that night on a German radar station at Bruneval on the French coast. Among the paratroopers is RAF Flight Sgt. W.C.H. Cox, whose mission is to dismantle parts of the German Freya radar set and bring it home to Britain for study. Evacuation is to be by sea.
The raid is a complete success. British losses are two, German six, but Cox brings home key German radar components and a radar operator for interrogation. The raid boosts British morale and the moon-faced Frost's career, as he goes on to lead 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment at Primasole Bridge and Arnhem Bridge, and retire a Major General.

February 28th, 1942...Japanese troops invade Java, and their firepower and aircraft overwhelm the King's Netherlands Indies Legion
defenders. The transport Sea Witch brings the Dutch defenders 27 crated P-40 fighters, but the Dutch have no time to assemble the planes, they simply dump them into the harbor to prevent the Japanese from taking them.

The defeated Allied ships that survived the Java Sea battle have to flee Java. HMS Exeter, joined by destroyers HMS Encounter and USS Pope, is repaired late in the day, and heads south.
At 2 p.m., light cruiser HMAS Perth and heavy cruiser USS Houston try to slip through Sunda Strait during darkness. They instead run into the Japanese invasion force. For an hour and a half, Houston and Perth slug it out against superior forces. On Perth alone, 352 Sailors die when the ship sinks at 12:20 a.m. on March 1st. Houston holds out for another 15 minutes, gutted by torpedoes, out of ammunition, two-thirds of her crew dead. As the survivors clamber off the sinking cruiser, a Navy bluejacket bugler stands on the sloping fantail sounding Abandon Ship.

The end of the month is a time for taking stock, and World War II proves no exception. Nazi U-boats claim 65 Allied sinkings off the Eastern seaboard of the United States for the month of February. Leningrad notes the deaths of more than 100,000 people from starvation.

This news courtesy of David Lippman's excellent site, "World War Two Plus 55". See the direct link for more details.