Posted on 02/13/2012 4:45:11 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Dash
Channel Dash
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/feb42/f13feb42.htm
Soviet advances meeting German resistance
Friday, February 13, 1942 www.onwar.com
Soviet infantry fighting from trenches in the snowOn the Eastern Front... The Soviet winter offensive continue to meet increasing German resistance. Despite this, their spearhead have reached Belorussia.
From Germany... The official cancellation of Operation Sea Lion— the invasion of Britain — is announced. Previously it had merely been postponed.
http://www.channeldash.org/index.html
The Channel Dash Association
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/13.htm
February 13th, 1942
FRANCE: During the night of the 13-14th, RAF Bomber Command dispatches 28 bombers to Le Havre but they encounter icing and thick cloud and only meagre bombing results were claimed. There are no losses. (Jack McKillop)
GERMANY: Operation Sealion is formally cancelled. This is the plan for the cross channel invasion of England. While postponed many times, this cancellation makes it final.
During the night of the 13-14th, RAF Bomber Command dispatches 39 bombers to Cologne and 18 to Aachen but all encountered icing and thick cloud and only meager bombing results were claimed. There are no losses. (Jack McKillop)
Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the German Navy, brings a new plan to Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Raeder proposes that the Germans drive through Libya, into Egypt, and keep on going through Iraq, Iran, and all the way to India, thus drying up Britain’s oil supply, hooking up with the Japanese, and winning the war. To do so, the German will have to divert more resources to the Mediterranean, starting with massive supplies to North Africa. To do that, the Germans will have to invade Malta. Hitler orders the Luftwaffe’s Air Fleet 2 to hammer Malta and knock out its airfields and will to resist. General Erwin Rommel, commanding the Afrika Korps, who will lead the drive to India, thinks it’s a great idea. (Jack McKillop)
U-482 laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.S.R.: The Soviet winter offensive continue to meet increasing German resistance. Despite this, the Soviet spearhead has reached Belorussia. (Jack McKillop)
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: Submarine HMS Tempest is depth charged for 7 hours by Italian gunboat Circe and has to be scuttled in the Gulf of Taranto at 39 11N 17 47E with 39 casualties. 24 survive. The scuttled submarine sinks just after the Italians secure a towrope. (Alex Gordon)(108)
SINGAPORE: After escaping from the fall of Singapore, river gunboat HMS Scorpion is sunk by gunfire from IJN destroyers in the Banka Strait off Berhala Island, Sumatra. Little is known about her fate but it is believed that there might have been 20 survivors. (Alex Gordon)(108)
The 85,000-man British army is now penned inside a 28-mile (45 kilometer)-long perimeter surrounding Singapore City. The Japanese main thrusts are against the western part of the South Area. British forward units pull back during the night of the 13-14th, to cover the Alexandra area, where the main ordnance depot and ammunition magazine are located. The Japanese seize or damage most of the reservoirs, leaving the city with only seven days supply of water. Allied forces are in full retreat, with hordes of deserters causing chaos. Troops on duty have had barely an hour’s sleep in days, and are exhausted. The famed 15-inch (38,1 cm) guns have been destroyed or captured. Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, General Officer Commanding Malaya Command, signals General Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander in Chief American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) Command, that he doesn’t think he can fight for more than two days. Wavell orders Percival to fight on. Meanwhile, the advancing Japanese themselves are desperately short on ammunition, and General YAMASHITA Tomoyoki commanding the 25th Army, is down to his last rounds. All remaining British shipping, small ships and other light craft, sail from Singapore during the night of the 13-14th. Some personnel are withdrawn in these vessels among them Rear Admiral, Malaya, and Air Officer Commanding, Far East. (Jack McKillop)
British officers take time to court-martial one of their own, New Zealand-born Captain Patrick Heenan of the Indian Army, on a charge of treason. Heenan is charged with leaving RAF supplies intact on bases as British troops retreated, enabling advancing Japanese air units to take advantage of them. He has also given information about Malaya’s defenses to the Japanese for years. Heenan is convicted and executed by firing squad at sundown. (Jack McKillop)
Ugaki speaks in his diary: “Enormous numbers of transports have been sailing to the south from Singapore in the last few days, escorted by a fair number of cruisers and destroyers. The British have experienced evacuations at Norway, Dunkirk, or at Crete in Greece... In spite of our fairly big air strength, attacks against these vessels seem to be rather mild.” (Ed Miller)
NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES: On Java, Lieutenant General John Lavarack, General Officer Commanding 1st Australian Army, tells General Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander in Chief American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, the he has drafted a recommendation that the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) should not be landed in the East Indies. Wavell asks him to wait until tomorrow until he can prepare a recommendation and then both are forwarded to the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the British and Australian War Offices. Wavell also suggests that there were “advantages in diverting one or both divisions of the AIF to Burma or Australia.” (Jack McKillop)
An RAF reconnaissance plane sights a large concentration of Japanese shipping north of Bangka Island, at the same time many boats, full of British and Australian troops, were fleeing Singapore and found themselves among the enemy vessels. The launch carrying Rear-Admiral Spooner, Rear Admiral, Malaya, and Air Vice-Marshal Pulford, Air Officer Commanding, Far East, is driven ashore on a small uninhabited island north of Bangka Island. Two months later disease and starvation forced the survivors to surrender; the two flag officers were not among them and are never seen again. (Jack McKillop)
Submarine USS Seadragon ends her first war patrol at Surabaya. Due to the continuous Japanese air raids on this Dutch base she left for Tjilatjap 21 Feb 1942. Later she was ordered to Fremantle where she arrived Mar 1942.
Submarine USS Salmon ended her first war patrol at Tjilatjap, Java.
Submarine USS Sturgeon ends her second war patrol at Surabaya. Due to the Japanese air attacks on that base she departed for Tjilatjap shortly afterwards.
(Dave Shirlaw)
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Japanese dive bombers raid the Bataan peninsula, killing their own men by mistake.
On Bataan, the I Corps, after searching entire area of Big Pocket without finding any live Japanese, turns its full attention to the salient, Upper Pocket, in the main line of resistance. Elements released from the Big Pocket assault force join in the battle. In the South Sector, troops complete destruction of Japanese troops in the Silaiim area. (Jack McKillop)
PHOENIX ISLANDS: Chartered U.S. passenger ship SS President Taylor, transporting 900 Army troops to occupy Canton Island, runs aground on a reef off her destination, and becomes stranded. (Jack McKillop)
TERRITORY OF HAWAII: Pearl Harbor: The superstitious Admiral Halsey refuses to take Task Force 13 out as scheduled; renumbered Task Force 16, it will sail tomorrow.
CANADA and U.S.A.: The governments of the two countries approve the construction of a U.S. Military Highway through Canada to Alaska. (Jack McKillop)
CANADA: Patrol vessel HMCS Seiner commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.: A Congressional subcommittee recommends immediate evacuation of all Japanese-Americans from strategic areas on the West Coast. The US Army has already drawn up plans to move the Japanese-Americans east of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. They send a letter to Roosevelt in which they recommend the “immediate evacuation of all persons of Japanese lineage” aliens and citizens alike from the entire strategic area of California, Washington, and Oregon. (Jack McKillop and Scott Peterson) More...
Japanese sub I-17 shells oil depot at Goleta, California, to no effect. (Patrick Holscher)
USS PC-555 and PC-562 laid down.
USS PC-552 launched.
USS YMS-113 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Walter_Heath_Pulford
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_John_Spooner
http://www.dutcheastindies.webs.com/index.html
Welcome to the Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942 website
"At the Minsk (Belorussia) Ghetto, Nazis execute Jewish leaders deported from Hamburg, Germany, three months earlier."
"One hundred thousand ghettoized Jews lived in Minsk, Belorussia, when mass shootings began in the city in 1941.
In 1942 the Germans brought in gas vans, although the shootings continued as well. On March 2 the ghetto's nursery (or orphanage) was liquidated; the children were buried alive as SS officers tossed them candy.
On March 31 the Germans raided the ghetto in an attempt to arrest Resistance leaders.
As a result, much of the ghetto, including the synagogue pictured here, burned."
The Channel Dash is a tactical success for the Germans by getting three major surface warships back relatively safely to German waters (the Gneisenau’s mine damage will not be repaired and she is headed for the scrap yard).
Strategically, it is a confession by the Germans that they will never again send surface ships into the North Atlantic. To that extent, Britain has won a victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Indeed.
However, Churchill suffered political fallout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Dash
In Britain, the mood was sombre. An editorial in The Times of London read: “Vice Admiral Ciliax has succeeded where the Duke of Medina Sidonia failed. Nothing more mortifying to the pride of our seapower has happened since the seventeenth century. [...] It spelled the end of the Royal Navy legend that in wartime no enemy battle fleet could pass through what we proudly call the English Channel.”
This is the second time now that there has been a report of a “Yawata” class carrier being sunk. The first was mid January when one was reported sunk by a submarine. The interesting thing is that after action report states that the carrier struck in this raid took three 500lbs bomb hits and one torpedo hit but does not report it “destroyed”. As far as I know, the first Japanese carrier the U.S. fleet actually did sink was the Shoho, but I may be wrong on that account.
You are correct; Shoho is our first victim as an IJN flattop, and Shoho was only a light carrier, not a fleet carrier. The IJN light carrier were considered little better than escorts for invasion fleets, and only out of necessity were put into the battle fleets in late 1942 after Midway.
But for their better speed, the IJN CL’s were more analagous to our escort carriers.
As for the “Yawata class” I would venture that by now, we have sunk all of the ones the Japanese built.
I’m actually even a bit unclear on what the Yawata class carrier is to be perfectly honest.
Near as I can tell they might be the Taiyo class escort aircraft carriers since the Unyo was a Taiyo class that was converted from the merchant Yawata Maru. That would place the class in which they are reporting on at three carriers that they have claimed two being sunk.
In reality the Unyo will not be sunk until September of 1944 when it is attacked by the submarine USS Barb. The other two will also go down in 1943 or 1944.
Maybe someone with a little more insight on naval matters knows more about this Yawata class.
Cougar;
For all things IJN I rely on the Combined Fleet website. I’ve “communicated” with some of the guys who contribute there and they are really into the Nihon Kaigun (as the Japanese called their navy). They do know their stuff.
Try this link on the Unyo/Yawata class:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/ships/taiyo
It looks like Yawata Maru became Unyo, but the conversion wasn’t complete until sometime in 1942. US intelligence must have caught wind of the conversion of this and other liners and classed them all upon Yawata, without yet knowing the names to be given to the new ships. Or they did and didn’t want to compromise it in their press releases. So my take is that any liner converted to an escort carrier became lumped into the “Yawata class.” And it appears there were only three of them.
What always baffled me was that the Japanese hit upon a very effective aircraft carrier design in the “crane sisters:” Shokaku and Zuikaku. They were fast, modern and carried more planes than any other Japanese carrier. It would have made sense to put the design into as much mass production as they could. But they didn’t. It would be like the USA building two Essex class carriers instead of 24.
They never followed up on TAIHO, either, building just the one.
Bump.
I use combinedfleet.com too, but I’ve never contacted them. Interesting to know.
I’d be interested to see the naval intelligence that led to this classification.
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