Posted on 06/07/2012 5:20:46 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
The News of the Week in Review
Twenty News Questions – 9
The Strategic Area of the North Pacific (Map) – 10
Japan Challenges Us to Battle for Pacific (Baldwin) – 11
Industrial Objectives in Western Europe’s Air War (map) – 12
Shock of Big Air Raids Felt Throughout Reich (Axelsson) – 13
Desert War Still Indecisive (Levy) – 14
Answers to Twenty News Questions – 15
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/jun42/f07jun42.htm
Germans attacking Sevastopol
Sunday, June 7, 1942 www.onwar.com
Sevastopol under attack [photo at link]
On the Eastern Front... Sevastopol is again the object of heavy fighting because of its importance as the main Soviet naval port on the Black Sea. The Soviet Black Sea Fleet is supplying the besieged city. The Sevastopol garrison is comprised of 7 infantry divisions and 3 marine brigades. These forces are badly under strength. The Germans are attacking with 9 divisions, two of them manned by their Romanian allies.
In the Aleutian Islands... The Japanese take Attu Island.
In the Pacific... USS Yorktown, damaged during the Battle of Midway, is sunk by a Japanese submarine.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
June 7th, 1942
U.S.S.R.: A major German attack begins on Sevastopol. The Soviet Black Sea Fleet is involved in supplying the Russian defenders.
PACIFIC OCEAN: Throughout the night of 6/7 June, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-5) remained stubbornly afloat northeast of Midway Island. By 0530 hours, however, the men in the ships nearby noted that the carrier’s list was rapidly increasing to port. As if tired, the valiant flattop turned over at 0701 hours on her port side and sank in 3,000 fathoms (18,000 feet or 5,486 meters) of water in position 30.36N, 176.34W.
During the night of 6/7 June, the USAAF’s 7th Air Force dispatches a flight of four LB-30 Liberators from Midway Island for a predawn attack on Wake Island. The aircraft are unable to find the target and one LB-30 crashes into the sea killing all of the crew including Major General Clarence L Tinker, Commanding General, 7th Air Force. On 11 November 1943, the Oklahoma City Air Depot at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was renamed Tinker Field (now AFB) in memory of General Tinker.
(Jack McKillop)
TERRITORY OF ALASKA: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: At 0300 hours, the Japanese Army North Sea Detachment consisting of 1,143 men of the 301st Independent Infantry Battalion, the 301st Independent Engineer Company and a service unit, invade Attu Island in the Aleutian Islands. Attu Island, in the Near Island group of the Aleutian Islands, is the most western of the Aleutians. The island is a 338 square mile (875 square km) barren, windswept, mountainous island with the highest peak more than 3,000 feet (914 meters) located at 52-55 N, 172-30 E or 190 miles (306 km) northwest of Kiska Island invaded yesterday, 840 miles (1,352 km) west of Dutch Harbor attacked on 3 and 4 June, and 1,480 miles 2,382 km) west southwest of Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska.
There are 44 American civilians on the island when the Japanese invade, two white Government employees and 42 Atka Aleuts, the native people of the Aleutian Islands, all living in a prosperous settlement. The two whites are Mr. and Mrs. Charles Foster Jones who had moved to the island in the summer of 1941. Mr. Jones had been in Alaska for 40 years and he serves as a weather reporter and radio operator for the U.S. Weather Bureau. Mrs. Jones is a teacher, community worker and nurse who first began working for the Indian Service in 1928. The 42 Aleuts make their living from blue fox trapping and operate the Native Community on Attu which sells the pelts to a fur dealer in New York City. The Aleuts live in nine homes having from four to seven rooms each, all of which are well maintained and have heating and running water.
The Japanese that landed that morning are far from disciplined. They surround the village and begin firing indiscriminately at the inhabitants; one Aleut women is hit in the leg. After one soldier shots another, the firing stopped. The 44 Americans were handled roughly even though none had resisted and their houses were looted of food and personal belongs. Mr. Jones had destroyed the radio equipment and he was separated from his wife and was killed the next day. One story has it that he tried to escape and was shot dead; the Aleuts buried him in the churchyard. On 8 June, a high ranking Japanese officer landed and restored discipline to his troops and made them return the food they had stolen from the homes and the civilians were well treated from this point on.
After several days, Mrs. Jones was put on a ship returning to Japan and she was taken to Yokohama where she was housed in a hotel with 18 Australian nurses who had been captured earlier in the war. They were later moved to the Yacht Club where the 19 women lived for two years; because of her white hair, the Japanese respected Mrs. Jones and she was not allowed to work. On Christmas 1942, they received parcels from the British Red Cross; American Red Cross packages were received on Christmas 1943. Later in the war, American packages were received every few months. In early 1945, the women were moved to a Japanese house in the suburbs of Yokohama where they grew vegetables in a garden. On 3 July 1945, representatives of the Red Cross came to see them and the American government finally learned for the first time that Mrs. Jones was alive and a prisoner of the Japanese.
The Aleuts did not fare as well. They were taken to Japan and forced to dig clay for their captures and more than half of them died of malnutrition and tuberculosis. When liberated, Mrs. Jones and the Aleuts were returned to the U.S. The 24 surviving Aleuts were taken to Seattle, Washington and placed on a ship and returned to the island of Atka, the nearest inhabited island to Attu.
The Japanese renamed the island Atsuta. (Jack McKillop)
The IJN’s 500-man No. 3 Maizuru Special Landing Force landed on Kiska Island. During August 1942, the Japanese reinforced Kiska with another naval landing force consisting of 1,000 men in addition to 500 civilian construction workers.
The Japanese development of Kiska was much more extensive than the development of Attu, which was almost entirely IJA. The ordnance deployed on Kiska was superior to that on Attu, some heavy machine guns were mounted in concrete pill boxes, radar and two searchlights were installed, medical facilities were housed in well-equipped and underground hospitals.
A fairly well-developed road network was in place on Kiska and 60 trucks, eight sedans, 20 motorcycles and other vehicles operated over it. Two small bulldozers, tractors and rollers were used on the Salmon Lagoon airfield, which was never operational. There was a submarine base and four small subs were found there when the U.S. invaded. A seaplane base contained the wrecks of 40 fighter and reconnaissance float planes, two machine shops, a foundry and a saw mill. Water of power system were also available. The communications system consisted of three radio stations, a radio navaid station and a well-installed telephone system.
Starting in mid-September 1942, the IJA unit that had invaded Attu transferred to Kiska and by July 1943, there were about 7,800 troops on the island, half IJA and half IJN. (Jack McKillop)
U.S.A.: The Chicago Tribune imperils codebreaking operations by printing a report of the Battle of Midway under the headline “Navy had word of Jap plan to strike.”
German submarines sink two more unarmed U.S. merchant vessels in the Caribbean. U-159 sinks a freighter north of Columbia while U-107 sinks a freighter southeast of the Yucatan Channel. (Jack McKillop)
I’m bookmarking this..
I recently read a new biography of Admiral Nimitz. He was, according to the author, one of only a few major figures in WW2 who did not compose his own memoirs or authorize a journalist to do so on his behalf. Fortunately, the documentary evidence is all there for someone who wants to dig.
In his retirement years, he received a considerable level of public adulation, with ladies swooning over his lovely white hair. (I understand this, as I always have to praise Newt Gingrich’s hair, even when there’s nothing else nice to say.)
According to Herman Wouk's fictionalized account of the war Nimitz explained this by saying his memoirs could be summed up in two words: "We won."
That has the ring of non-fiction.
Those people better be careful or they're not going to be invited to the White House correspondent's dinner.
I wonder what the source was for this scoop. This snippet doesn't specifically mention code breaking. It just implies a good intelligence source.
I think that, on the one hand, Nimitz recognized that his contribution to winning the Pacific War was extremely important, but at the same time, the “big picture” was SO big that even the greatest individual leader was still a speck, like a super-carrier in the Pacific!
We went to the Museum of the Pacific War years ago, when we still lived in Texas. I’d love to visit it again.
Tax-chick, you are correct about Nimitz not publishing his memoirs. Associates of Gordon Prange interviewed Nimitz’s widow while working on “Miracle at Midway” (highly recommended btw). Nimitz’s widow said that Nimitz had told her that being truthful about events during the war would involve criticizing some other officers in the Navy. In his widow’s words, he couldn’t bring himself to hurt other people and that prevented him from publishing memoirs. In an age when Hollywood celebrities and reality TV stars are pushed on us as heroes, Chester Nimitz stands as an example of a real hero.
Page 7
Article about the General Heydrich assassination by Czech team. I advise everyone to watch the movie “Conspiracy” the HBO film and see how he coordinated the killing of millions of Jews and others in the Wansee meeting.
Just a WOW thing to see this in print from the day.
The article by the NYT reporter, Denney, is an interesting read. He is actually on our side, so the Times wouldn’t have him on the payroll nowadays.
Note that this is the fifth installment of a series. We are posting all eight parts from June 3 to June 10.
I just checked Denny's entry on the index by author my profile page. I posted stories Denny filed from Moscow from March 1938 to August 1939. How much earlier he was in Moscow I don't know. I also don't know if he was part of the NYT Red detachment or just doing straight reporting, such as it was possible to do in Stalin's home town.
If you haven't ever done so I recommend taking a look at his entry on the index. He has had a very interesting war so far.
There’s a West German movie about the Wansee conference as well. Both are chilling.
Branaugh nailed Heydrich in “Conspiracy”. When he threatens attendees at the conference, he just uses his eyes. Other excellent cast members are Colin Firth as Stuckart, and Stanley Tucci as Eichmannn.
The best Heydrich portrayal, although he didn’t really look much like him, was David Warner in “Holocaust.”
Hitler loved Heydrich, but the rest of the SS didn’t particularly mourn for him....there were rumors about possible Jewish blood, but he also had the goods on all of the Nazi bigwigs, so getting rid of him turned out to be “convenient” for many of the higher-ups, not the least of which was Himmler himself.
The book said that Nimitz believed very strongly that public wrangling among officers was detrimental to everyone in the Navy. He was very strict about not making critical statement about others, or allowing disputes among his subordinates.
A great man, and a credit to the State of Texas!
And I just requested “Miracle at Midway” from the library. Thanks for the suggestion! My father is a Naval War College graduate, and one of the texts they used in his course (1977-78) was a book about Midway written by two Japanese officers who were participants. I read it several times when I was a girl.
Just as in the movie, one can easily get all those Japanese officers and ships, with their similar names, mixed up!
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