10 February 1939

THE NETHERLANDS: The Dutch government announces the decision to build three battlecruisers, with technical assistance from Italy, for the defence of the Netherlands East Indies. The ships are never completed.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Prague: The Nazis order the closing down of all Jewish-owned textile, clothing and leather goods stores, and warned that Baron von Neurath, the "Reich Protector" of Bohemia-Moravia, may order all other Jewish businesses to shut. Von Neurath has also ordered the sale of all jewellery, gold, platinum, silver and works of art owned by Jews. The measures are seen here as part of a plan to eliminate Jews from the economic life of what used to be Czechoslovakia.

FINLAND: The Finnish Prime Minister Risto Ryti and Foreign Minister Väinö Tanner visit the GHQ at Mikkeli to tell of the peace probes. The military leadership recommends starting the negotiations.

U.S.S.R.: Stalin agrees to sign a trade treaty to supply Germany with grain, oil and raw materials.

SPAIN: Six German merchant ships leave Vigo to run the British blockade. Allied warships intercept four, one runs aground off northern Norway and one, the passenger liner SS Wangoni, reaches Kiel on 1 March.

GIBRALTAR: U.S. freighter SS West Chatala is detained for several hours by British authorities but is released to continue her voyage.

Minesweeper HMAS Bathurst laid down.

Destroyer HMAS Warramunga laid down.

Sloop HMAS Warrego launched.

U.S.A.: Washington: President Roosevelt condemns the USSR, saying that the US backs Finland.

"In The Mood" by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra reaches Number 1 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in the U.S. This song, which debuted on the charts on 21 October 1939, was charted for 28 weeks, was Number 1 for 13 weeks and was ranked Number 1 for the year 1940.

Tom and Jerry, the cat and mouse friends/enemies, make their debut in MGM's "Puss Gets the Boot" although Tom is known as Jasper and Jerry is unnamed.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: The neutral Silja left Gibraltar on 5 February and was reported missing thereafter. At 2059, U-37 fired one torpedo at a steamer, which was struck in the aft part and broke in two. The stern sank immediately and the foreship followed after a few minutes. This must have been the Silja.

SS Burgerdijk was stopped by U-48 and the crew was ordered to abandon ship. At 1845, ship torpedoed and sunk.

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: USAT Etolin docked at Manila with 24 personnel for the 17^th and 20^th Pursuit Squadrons. Elizalde informs Quezon that he had attempted, and failed, to get the Philippines included under Lend-Lease. (Marc Small)

U.S.A.: The 104th AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion (Mobile) is activated at Birmingham, Alabama as Sep CA Bn AA-AW. (Jean Beach)

Submarine USS Growler laid down.

USS SC-508 laid down.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-93 was attacked in the North Atlantic by an RAF Whitley aircraft with two bombs. The boat was damaged badly and had to return to base.

At 0633, U-37 fired two torpedoes at a big tanker in convoy HG-53 west of Gibraltar but missed and heard later two detonations. Clausen thought that he had hit two other ships in the convoy. In fact, the Brandenburg was hit twice and sank immediately. The master and 22 crewmembers were lost.

At 1435, the Canford Chine, a straggler from convoy OG-52 since 8 February, was torpedoed and sunk by U-52 SSW of Rockall. The master and 34 crewmembers were lost.

UNITED KINGDOM: The first meeting of the Pacific War Council in London begins. Represented are Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Holland.

FRANCE: Fifteen bombers of RAF Bomber Command attack the German fleet at Brest visually during the night without loss.

GERMANY: RAF Bomber Command attacks five cities visually during the night without loss: (1) 34 bombers attack Bremen; (2) six attack Emden; (3) and one bomber each attacks Borkum, Cruxhaven and Wilhelmshaven.

CHINA: An 1,100 man US Army defence force occupy Canton with an infantry, coast artillery and Anti-Aircraft battalion, followed by one pursuit and one light bomber squadron. Is is assigned APO number SF 914. (Gordon Rottman)

BURMA: The 46th Brigade, Indian 17th Division, which has recently relieved the Indian 16th Brigade along the Salween River in the Martaban area, begins a fighting withdrawal from Martaban toward Thaton, since the Japanese have bypassed Martaban.

SINGAPORE: General Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander in Chief American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, visits Singapore and orders the island held and all remaining RAF personnel withdrawn to the Netherlands East Indies. During the visit he falls off a sea wall, injuring his back. The Japanese deepen their penetration to the supply depot area. The Australian Imperial Force Malaya, which is further reinforced in the Western Area, begins withdrawing from the Causeway sector at 0430 hours and fall back to the line Kranji-Jurong. Between 1900 and 2000 hours, Japanese infantry and tanks attack the Australian 2/29th Battalion and since the battalion lacks anti-tank weapons, the Japanese break through the line and head down the road towards Bukit Timah.

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: On Bataan, the I Corps is rapidly reducing Big Pocket while South Sector forces are compressing the Japanese in the Anyasan-Silaiim area.

NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES: On Borneo, a Japanese landing force takes Banjarmasin and a nearby airfield on the south coast. The Japanese are only 280 miles (451 kilometres) from Java and their planes soon will dominate the Java Sea.
USAAF 5th Air Force LB-30 Liberators bomb and damage the Japanese seaplane carrier HIJMS Chitose in Makassar Strait south of Celebes Island.

PACIFIC OCEAN: LINE ISLANDS: A small U.S. Army defence force arrives on Christmas Island. The force consists of 2,000 troops (one each infantry, coast artillery and antiaircraft artillery battalions) plus the USAAF 7th Air Force’s 12th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor) with P-39Airacobras.

MIDWAY: The Japanese submarine HIJMS I-69 shells Midway but is immediately bombed and damaged by F2A Buffaloes of Marine Fighting Squadron Two Hundred Eleven (VMF-211) based on the island.

AUSTRALIA: Commander Alvord Sydney Rosenthal RAN of HMAS Nestor is awarded the first bar to his DSO, for 'skill and enterprise' in sinking U-127 on 15 December, 1941 off Cape St. Vincent. (G. A. Mackinley)

U.S.A.: New York: The impounded French liner Normandie capsizes after catching fire; Axis sabotage is suspected.

Chesterfield Radio broadcasts the RCA Victor band leader Glenn Miller and his orchestra receiving the first ever gold record awarded for the 1,200,000th sale of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". A figure reached in less than a year.

Washington: Secretary of War Henry Stimson writes in his diary: "The second generation Japanese can only be evacuated either as part of a total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits, or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or even trust the citizen Japanese. This latter is the fact but I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our constitutional system to apply it."

C. February 10, 1942: Attorney General Francis Biddle is advised by agency lawyers that removal of people of Japanese descent from Pacific Coast areas would be a legal exercise of the President's war powers. (Scott Peterson) More...

The US Navy's Second Joint Training Force is renamed to Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet. (Gordon Rottman)

ATLANTIC OCEAN: Canadian corvette HMCS Spikenard is torpedoed and sunk by U-136 off Iceland; 57 crewmen are lost.

SS Victolite (11,410 GRT) Canadian Imperial Oil Shipping Company tanker was torpedoed and subsequently sunk northwest of Bermuda in position 36.12N, 067.14W, by gunfire from U-564, ObLtzS Reinhard Suhren, Knight's Cross, Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. There were no survivors from her crew of 47. Victolite was sailing in ballast alone from Halifax to Uruguay to load diesel fuel. The ship exploded when hit, due to the explosive vapours in her empty tanks.

In the frigid North Atlantic waters between Iceland and Ireland lies Convoy SC-67: 22 merchant ships bound for Liverpool at five to eight knots in good weather—and the weather on this trip is miserable. The merchantmen are organized in a rectangle of seven columns, three to four ships deep, and spread across almost a mile and a half of frontage. They are escorted by Task Force 4.1.15, six Canadian corvettes that zigzag along the fringes of the convoy listening and watching for submarines. So far there has been no sign of U-boat activity and this is the last night of escort duty for the corvettes; in the morning the convoy will reach the Mid-Ocean Meeting Point, where a British escort group takes over. The starboard side of the convoy is screened by the senior corvette, HMCS Spikenard (Lieutenant-Commander Herbert G. Shadforth), stationed well ahead of the starboard column of merchantmen, followed by HMCS Louisburg, keeping station 2,000 yards abeam of the lead merchantman, and HMCS Dauphin (Lieutenant R.A.S. MacNeill) nearly three miles behind Spikenard and astern of the last ship in the column to prevent straggling. Miles away on the port wing, set out in similar order, are HMC Ships Chilliwack, Lethbridge and Shediac. The weather is foggy and very cold, and there is no moon. At 2230 hours, Chilliwack picks up U-boat noise and goes to action stations to attack the contact. At the same instant, all hell breaks loose in the starboard column, where a torpedo strikes the Norwegian tanker Heina, which immediately bursts into flames. The lookout in Louisburg sees the torpedo whizz past her port side, missing by a few feet, while the ASDIC operator locates a contact. Louisburg turns on the torpedo track and starts hunting the U-boat. Meanwhile, peering through the fiery glow from Heina, Lt MacNeill spots what may be another explosion. His first priority is rescuing the crew of Heina, however, for the next two hours he and his crew struggle with scramble nets and Carley floats to pluck the merchant sailors from the oily water. When Shediac eventually arrives to help, Lt MacNeill sends her to search for the victim of that possible second explosion. He thinks it may be Spikenard. Throughout the night, with its alarms and dangers, not one ship in the convoy risks a wireless message—any radio signal would immediately attract a U-boat. The convoy cannot stop, and the escorts’ first duty is to protect the group, so their search for Spikenard continues only as long as it takes to return to their screening stations. They all try and fail to contact the missing corvette by radio-telephone, but the device is so crude that the most likely reason for her continued silence is equipment failure. Spikenard is still missing at dawn, but there is still hope; she could be looking for the British escort group. At 1100 hours, when they reach the rendezvous, HMS Gentian strikes out on the convoy’s track and, late in the afternoon, she encounters a Carley float with eight Spikenard matelots, all nearly dead from hypothermia. When they are finally able to talk, their story is terrifying. At 2230 hours, when Chilliwack picked up the first contact, Spikenard went to action stations and began to accelerate. When the torpedo that missed Louisburg struck Heina, a second torpedo hit Spikenard between the bridge and forecastle, blowing open her side and top deck. Flames from the initial explosion engulfed the bridge, the wireless office and one of the boats, and then became infinitely worse when it reached the mast, where several drums of gasoline were lashed. The impact set off the ship’s whistle, and its eerie shriek filled the air as Spikenard settled and sank, all in five minutes. The final blow was the explosion of a depth charge or perhaps the boiler, which smashed the remaining boat and one of the Carley floats. The eight men on the second Carley float had no flares, and their voices disappeared in the wind’s howl when they called to the two corvettes that passed them by during the night. Gentian found them purely by chance.

FRANCE: The Lorient district is evacuated after becoming the target of heavy Allied bombings.

U-519 (Type IXC) Missing in the Bay of Biscay since 31 Jan, 1943. There is no explanation for its loss. 50 dead (all hands lost). 4 Feb, 1943 believed attacked by (British Wellington aircraft, Squadron 172/L) This is the most probable fate for this aircraft. The U-boat was possibly lost in this attack. (Note the German list of sinkings put this at 10 February.) (Alex Gordon)

In the morning 3 Soviet divisions (72nd Rifle, 43rd Rifle and 63rd Guard) supported by 60 tanks and 400 guns advanced on 262nd Spanish Regiment of the "Spanish Blue Division". By 10.00 the battle had turned into chaos with disorganized attackers assaulting isolated pockets. Despite heroic defensive fighting by this regiment of Spanish volunteers, by 10.30 II-262 HQ was overrun and Krasni Bor fell in Soviet hands.

The battle ended the next day. The Soviets had lost no less than 7000 men (some sources quote up to 11000 soviet casualties), the Blue Division some 2500 (60% of men involved). Losses such as these, in a one day battle, in such a reduced area (some 7 x 5 Kms.) were not usually heard in WWII.

The sacrifice of the 262nd Regiment was a main event in stopping a general offensive aimed at the elimination of the threat against Leningrad and, if possible, to encircle a whole German Corps. (Ernesto Sassot)

MEDITERRANEAN SEA: At 2325, U-81 fired a spread of four torpedoes at the Saroena, which was escorted by an armed trawler and observed a hit in the stern that set the tanker on fire. Two Chinese crewmen and three gunners panicked and jumped overboard, two of them drowned. She was beached after four hours near Beirut and the crew reached the shore. After the fire was extinguished, the ship was refloated on 12 February and after temporary repairs towed to Port Said, where further repairs were made before the ship went to Calcutta for permanent repairs and then returned to service.

INDIAN OCEAN: At 0219, the Queen Anne in convoy CA-11 was torpedoed and sunk by U-509 eight miles SSW of Cape Agulhas, South Africa. Three crewmembers and two gunners were lost. The master and 17 survivors were picked up by HMS St. Zeno and landed at Capetown. 22 survivors made landfall at Bredasdorp near Cape Agulhas.

INDIA: The Indian leader Mahatma Ghandi began a 21-day hunger strike today. He is protesting against his imprisonment in the palace of the Aga Khan at Poona and against the British government's policy of interning all members of the All-India Congress Party. He plans to eat nothing and drink only fruit juice mixed with water, but not to fast "unto death". The viceroy, the Marquess of Linlithgow, described Ghandi's action as "political blackmail" for which there is no justification.

NEW GUINEA: US troops reach the Kumusi river mouth, poised for a fresh offensive against Japan.

NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES: Submarine USS Gudgeon picked up 28 men from Timor, Netherlands East Indies and took them to Fremantle.

TERRITORY OF HAWAII: Submarine USS Searaven ends her 6th war patrol at Pearl Harbor. She is ordered to the Mare Islands Navy Yard for an overhaul.

PACIFIC OCEAN: Submarine USS Pickerel torpedoes and sinks Amari Maru off Sanriku in position 40.10N, 142.04E.

While on the outward journey to the Caribbean, U-108 was damaged by an RAF 202 Sqn Catalina and was forced to return, reaching Lorient on 24 Feb. She only managed to set out again on 1 April.

U-872, U-1009, U-1203 commissioned.

U-880, U-1303 launched.

SPAIN: U-193 arrived in El Ferrol for repairs.

BURMA: Japanese troops take the Ngakyedauk Pass, cutting off the 7th Indian Division at Sinzweya.

The 1/7th Gurkhas fighting for "Bare Patch" move around the Japanese flank and by 2.20pm the Japanese, now denied water and almost completely surrounded, begin pulling out. Just over an hour later, the position is clear of Japanese. (Daily Telegraph, 21.10.2003, p.27)

Submarine USS Spearfish torpedoes and damages the Japanese transport ship Tatsuwa Maru (6345 BRT) SW of Formosa in position 21.53N, 119.13E.

Submarine USS Pogy torpedoes and sinks destroyer Minekaze and Malta Maru some 85 miles NNE of Formosa in position 23.12N, 121.30E.

CANADA: Frigate HMCS Antigonish launched Esquimalt, British Columbia.

Minesweeper USS Pochard laid down.

Minesweeper USS Caution commissioned.

USS PC-1180 commissioned.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-545 Kl. IXC/40 is Scuttled west of the Hebrides, in position 58.17N, 13.22W, after crippling damage from 4 depth charges dropped by a British Wellington aircraft (Sqdn. 612/O). 1 dead and 56 survivors.

U-666 Kl.VIIC Listed as missing in the North Atlantic. There is no explanation for its loss. 51 dead (all hands lost).

[U-545 was in fact attacked by two aircraft. The other one, a Canadian Wellington (Sqdn 407), was shot down during the attack.

GERMANY: The Germans open the Schwammenauel Dam to slow the US 1st Army. This makes it impossible to bridge the Roer river.

For ten days now, Marshal Zhukov has been halted on the Oder river after securing a small bridgehead at Kustrin, some 40 miles short of Berlin. The halt has caused disappointment in Moscow, where it was hoped that the German capital would be captured this month.

There are, however, good reasons for Zhukov's reluctance to attack. He has suffered heavy casualties in his storming advance across Poland, has begun to outrun his supply lines and has had to divert strong forces to deal with the Festung [fortress] city of Poznan. At the same time "General Mud" has come to the aid of the Germans with a thaw turning the battlefield into a quagmire and melting ice on the Oder. Zhukov therefore needs time to reorganize, resupply and prepare for a river crossing.

He is also conscious of the presence of strong German forces along his exposed northern flank in Pomerania. These forces, named Army Group Vistula, are commanded by SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, a man with no military training. His appointment reveals how little Hitler trusts his generals.

Nevertheless, Himmler, the most feared man in Germany, is under orders to strike at Zhukov in five days time. The Russian high command, however, has already given Marshal Rokossovsky orders to strike into Pomerania to clear away the danger. This morning the Russians headed north.

NORWAY: In a daring move, U-995 entered the Soviet-held harbour at Kirkenes and fired at the Norwegian freighter Idefjord, but missed.

BALTIC SEA: The German cruise ship General von Steuben, carrying over 5,000 passengers and crew including at least 1,000 German evacuees from East Prussia, is sunk by two torpedoes from the Soviet submarine, S-13. 4,500 go down with the ship. there are 659 survivors. The S-13 had left the Finnish port of Hangö and returned to Turku (Åbo). (Peter Kilduff and Mikko Härmeinen)

HUNGARY: Budapest falls to the Soviet Army. The Germans fought for 2 months to hold this city. The city was also defended by numerous foreign volunteer formations, including thousands of Hungarian forces in many Waffen-SS units.

Submarine USS Bluegill ends her 4th war patrol when she returns to Fremantle.

Submarine USS Bream ends her 4th war patrol at Fremantle.

JAPAN: US B-29 bombers destroyed the Nakajima aircraft plant at Ota, near Tokyo, today in the largest daylight raid yet over the Japanese mainland. Out of the 84 B-29s that took off from US airbases on the Mariana Islands, 12 were lost over the target area as Japanese fighters put up heavy opposition, suffering 21 losses in the fight.

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: 2nd Lt. Louis Curdes, USAAF, 4th FS (Commando), 3rd FG (Commando), shoots down an American C-47 which is attempting to land on a Japanese-held airstrip in the Batan Islands, a chain of small islands north of Luzon. The aircraft force landed and thirteen crew and passengers are rescued. One of the passengers was a nurse that he later married. An American flag was added to the German, Italian and Japanese flags painted on his P-51D. (Stuart Kohn)

Corvette HMCS Bittersweet completed refit at Halifax.

Corvette HMCS Smiths Falls departed Halifax for workups at Bermuda.

LCdr. A.H. Higgs relieves LCdr. T.S. Baskett as Commanding Officer of USS Tautog.