January 1942 Explained
The following events occurred in January 1942:
- The Declaration by United Nations was agreed upon during the Arcadia Conference in Washington, D.C. Representatives of 26 Allied nations pledged to employ their "full resources" until victory was won and not to make any separate peace agreements with Axis powers.
- An explosion at Sneyd Colliery in Burslem, Staffordshire, killed 57.[1]
- The Oregon State Beavers defeated the Duke Blue Devils 20–16 in the 28th Rose Bowl game. The venue was moved from Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, to the Blue Devils' home stadium in Durham, North Carolina, due to fears about a Japanese attack on the U.S. West Coast.
- During a driving rainstorm, the Fordham Rams edged the Missouri Tigers 2–0 in the Sugar Bowl.
- The Alabama Crimson Tide beat the Texas A&M Aggies 29–21 in the Cotton Bowl Classic.
- The Georgia Bulldogs beat the TCU Horned Frogs 40–26 in the Orange Bowl.
- The Tulsa Golden Hurricane beat the Texas Tech Red Raiders 6–0 in the Sun Bowl.
- The comedy film The Man Who Came to Dinner starring Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley and Jimmy Durante premiered at the Strand Theatre in New York City.
- Born:
- U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the State of the Union Address to Congress. "In fulfilling my duty to report upon the State of the Union, I am proud to say to you that the spirit of the American people was never higher than it is today—the Union was never more closely knit together—this country was never more deeply determined to face the solemn tasks before it", the president began. "The response of the American people has been instantaneous, and it will be sustained until our security is assured ... We have not been stunned. We have not been terrified or confused. This very reassembling of the Seventy-seventh Congress today is proof of that; for the mood of quiet, grim resolution which here prevails bodes ill for those who conspired and collaborated to murder world peace. That mood is stronger than any mere desire for revenge. It expresses the will of the American people to make very certain that the world will never so suffer again."[11]
- Japanese troops landed at Brunei Bay in British Borneo.[12]
- Australia declared war on Bulgaria.
- Died: Henri de Baillet-Latour, 65, Belgian aristocrat and the third president of the International Olympic Committee
- The Battle of Moscow ended in strategic Soviet victory.
- Joseph Stalin ordered a general offensive along the entire front, over his generals' recommendations that he concentrate his forces.[13]
- The Battle of Bataan began.
- U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented Congress with the biggest budget ever seen up to that time. It called for the expenditure of $77 billion over the next 18 months, $56 billion of which was for the war effort.[14] The plan called for the production of 125,000 aircraft, 75,000 tanks, 35,000 guns and 8 million tons of shipping by the end of 1943.[15]
- Born: Vasily Alekseyev, weightlifter, in Pokrovo-Shishkino, Ryazan Oblast, USSR (d. 2011)
- The Battles of Rzhev began on the Eastern Front.
- Adolf Hitler had Generaloberst Erich Hoepner sacked for ordering his forces to pull back on the Eastern Front without approval. Hitler not only had Hoepner removed from command but deprived him of his pension and the right to wear his uniform as well.[16]
- German submarines and were commissioned.
- Born:
- In combat in the Battle of Bataan, 2nd Lt. Alexander R. Nininger was killed as he led his Philippine Scouts unit and attacked Japanese positions. A 1941 graduate of West Point, "Sandy" Nininger would posthumously receive the first Medal of Honor of World War II.
- The Battle of Tarakan ended in Japanese victory.
- In North Africa, the British took Sallum after a 56-day siege when the Germans ran out of ammunition.
- was sunk in the Mediterranean by torpedoes from the British submarine .
- The Roosevelt Administration created a National War Labor Board to prevent strikes and reconcile wages with control over inflation and the war economy.[24]
- Joe Louis reported for duty at Camp Upton. A large contingent of reporters turned up to make photographs and newsreel film of the boxing champion in uniform.
- The Battle of Manado ended in Japanese victory.
- Representatives of Allied governments in exile signed the declaration on Punishment for War Crimes in London declaring that one of their principal war aims would be to ensure that those responsible for war crimes would be brought to justice.[25]
- In the United States, the Sikorsky R-4 helicopter had its first flight.
- Heinkel test pilot Helmut Schenck became the first person to escape from an aircraft using an ejection seat when his control surfaces iced up and became inoperative.
- The third Battle of Changsha ended in a Chinese victory.
- The Germans launched Operation Southeast Croatia, a counter-insurgency operation in the southeast portion of the Independent State of Croatia.
- The British cargo ship Empire Bay was bombed and sunk off Middlesbrough by a Dornier Do 217.
- was depth charged and sunk by the British destroyer between Portugal and the Azores.
- was depth charged and sunk by Fairey Swordfish aircraft in the Mediterranean northwest of Mersa Matruh.
- surfaced so close to New York Harbor that the rides at Coney Island could be seen silhouetted against the evening sky. Captain Reinhard Hardegen expected the U.S. east coast to be blacked out after more than a month at war and was surprised to see the glow in the sky from Manhattan's millions of lights.[26]
- Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb insisted he either be relieved of command or given freedom to direct his forces as he wanted. Hitler chose the former.
- The ninth Pan-American Conference opened in Rio de Janeiro.
- Mahatma Gandhi named Jawaharlal Nehru as his successor.
- President Roosevelt sent a letter to baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis saying that baseball should continue in wartime. "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going", Roosevelt wrote. "There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before."[27]
- was commissioned.
One Heinkel He 111 medium bomber raided the Free French-controlled Fort Lamy in French Equatorial Africa. The plane bombed the fort unchallenged but then ran low on fuel and had to make an emergency landing, leaving the crew stranded some 120 miles from their airstrip in southern Libya until a Junkers Ju 52 transport aircraft arrived a week later with fuel.
- The Battle of Muar ended in Japanese victory.
- The Japanese landed on Mussau Island.[36]
- 5,300 Japanese troops commanded by Major General Tomitarō Horii steamed into Rabaul Harbor during the night.
- German submarine was commissioned.
- Died:
- The Battle of Balikpapan ended in a Japanese victory on land but a tactical Allied victory at sea.
- German forces relieved an encirclement of the garrison at Sukhinichi.[37]
- Peru broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan.
- The British cargo ship Empire Wildebeeste was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by .
- The American submarine was accidentally rammed and sunk in the Gulf of Panama by the submarine chaser . 46 men were lost.
- A committee assigned by President Roosevelt on December 18, 1941 to investigate the Pearl Harbor attack issued its report, putting the blame on Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short for failing to coordinate their defenses appropriately or taking measures reasonably required in the light of the warnings they had been given. Both men would receive death threats as a result of the report.[38]
- German submarines, and were commissioned.
- The Japanese landed at Lae, capital of New Guinea.
- During the Battle of Borneo, the Japanese 56th Mixed Infantry Group captured the seaport city of Balikpapan.[39]
- The Japanese puppet regime in Thailand declared war on the Allies.[40]
- Britain, New Zealand and South Africa declared war on Thailand.
- Uruguay severed diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan.
- The was sunk by naval mines off the coast of Belgium.
- The Kholm Pocket was formed when German troops were encircled by the Red Army around Kholm south of Leningrad.
- Australia ordered full mobilization.
- Born:
- The Battle off Endau ended in Japanese victory. The British destroyer was sunk.
- Japanese troops in Borneo occupied Singkawang.
- Hermann Göring visited Italy for high-level talks lasting through February 5.
- was torpedoed and sunk 240 miles west of Midway Atoll by the . This marked the first time in the war that a United States Navy submarine sank an enemy warship.
- The British oil tanker Harpa struck a mine and sank in the Singapore Strait with the loss of 39 out of 40 crew.
- Born: Steve Wynn, American business mogul
- Died: Wilhelm Spies, 28, German Luftwaffe ace (shot down on the Eastern Front)
January 30, 1942 (Friday)
- The Battle of Ambon began on the island of Ambon in the Dutch East Indies.
- Rommel retook Benghazi by noon. Just as he entered the city, he received a message from Benito Mussolini suggesting that he should launch an offensive to take Benghazi. Rommel sent back a curt response: "Benghazi already taken." 1,000 men of the 4th Indian Division were still trapped in the city and surrendered when it fell.[46]
- Adolf Hitler made a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast on the ninth anniversary of the Nazis coming to power. He declared, "We are fully aware that this war can end only either in the extermination of the Teutonic peoples or in the disappearance of Jewry from Europe." Hitler predicted that "the outcome of this war will be the annihilation of Jewry."[47]
- The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey ship Pathfinder was beached at Corregidor after taking indirect damage from Japanese bombing.
- Qantas Short Empire shootdown
A Short Empire flying boat airliner was shot down by Japanese aircraft off the coast of West Timor. 13 of the 18 passengers and crew were killed.
- The Irish government claimed that its neutrality was being violated by the American troop presence in Northern Ireland. An official statement declared that the United States had recognized a "Quisling government" in Northern Ireland by sending troops there and that the British were making a new attempt to force Ireland into the war on the side of the Allies.[48]
- In the United States, the Emergency Price Control Act made the Office of Price Administration an independent agency.
- was commissioned.
- Born: Marty Balin, singer, songwriter and member of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, in Cincinnati (d. 2018)
- Died: Frederick W. A. G. Haultain, 84, English-born Canadian lawyer, politician and judge
- The Malayan Campaign ended in a Japanese victory. The retreating British set off two explosions destroying the Johor–Singapore Causeway.
- The British destroyer was sunk off Newfoundland by .
- The German cargo ship was mistaken for a British ship, torpedoed and sunk north of the Azores by German submarine .
- was commissioned.
- Born:
Notes and References
- News: Burslem service marks Sneyd Pit disaster . January 18, 2015 . . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: Sandler, Stanley . 2001 . World War II in the Pacific: An Encyclopedia . limited . New York . Garland Publishing . 830 . 978-0-8153-1883-5 .
- Book: Mitcham, Samuel W. . 2008 . The Rise of the Wehrmacht: Vol. 1 . Westport, Conn. . Praeger Security International . 553–554 . 978-0-275-99641-3 .
- Book: Lingeman, Richard J. . 2002 . Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street . Borealis Books . 460 . 978-0-87351-541-2 .
- Book: Yenne, Bill . 2014 . The Imperial Japanese Army: The Invincible Years 1941–42 . Osprey Publishing . 124 . 978-1-78200-932-0 .
- Book: 1989 . Mercer . Derrik . Chronicle of the 20th Century . London . Chronicle Communications Ltd. . 561 . 978-0-582-03919-3 .
- Web site: War Diary for Sunday, 4 January 1942 . Stone & Stone Second World War Books . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: Perry, Mark . 2007 . Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace . New York . Penguin Press . 60 . 978-1-59420-105-9 . registration .
- Web site: War Diary for Monday, 5 January 1942 . Stone & Stone Second World War Books . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: A Timeline of Diplomatic Ruptures, Unannounced Invasions, Declarations of War, Armistices and Surrenders . Doody . Richard . The World at War . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: State of the Union Address - January 6, 1942 . Peters . Gerbhard . Woolley . John T. . The American Presidency Project . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: War Diary for Tuesday, 6 January 1942 . Stone & Stone Second World War Books . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: Megargee, Geoffrey P. . 2006 . War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers . 140 . 978-0-7425-4482-6 .
- News: January 7, 1942 . 56 Billions for War! . . Brooklyn . 1 .
- Book: Davidson . Edward . Manning . Dale . 1999 . Chronology of World War II . London . Cassell & Co. . 98 . 0-304-35309-4 .
- Book: Weinberg, Gerhard L. . 1995 . Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History . Cambridge University Press . 65 . 978-0-521-56626-1 .
- Book: Agawa, Hiroyuki . John Bester . The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy . 1969 . 1st English . 1979 . Kodansha International . 285 . New York . 0-87011-355-0 .
- Web site: Joe Louis . . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: Port Swettenham . The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: Mead, Chris . 2010 . Joe Louis: Black Champion in White America . Mineola, N.Y. . Dover Publications . 213 . 978-0-486-47182-2 .
- Book: Evans . Peter . Gardner . Ava . 2014 . Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations . Simon & Schuster . 141 . 978-1-4516-2770-1 .
- Book: 1993 . Hanson . Patricia King . The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1941–1950 . Berkeley and Los Angeles . University of California Press . 55 . 0-520-21521-4 . registration .
- News: January 12, 1942 . Nazis' Retreat at Winter Line . . 1 .
- Book: Venn, Fiona . 1998 . The New Deal . London and New York . Routledge . 98 . 978-1-135-94290-8 .
- Web site: Statement on Punishment of War Crimes . . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: Jaffe, Steven H. . 2012 . New York at War: Four Centuries of Combat, Fear, and Intrigue in Gotham . Basic Books . 241 . 978-0-465-03642-4 .
- Web site: President Franklin Roosevelt Green Light Letter – Baseball Can Be Played During the War . . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: War Diary for Friday, 16 January 1942 . Stone & Stone Second World War Books . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: 1990 . Chronology and Index of the Second World War, 1938–1945 . Research Publications . 102–103 . 978-0-88736-568-3 .
- Web site: Manhattan Project Chronology . Atomic Archive . February 1, 2016 . October 30, 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20081030013430/http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/mp/chronology.shtml . dead .
- Web site: War Diary for Monday, 19 January 1942 . Stone & Stone Second World War Books . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: War Diary for Tuesday, 20 January 1942 . Stone & Stone Second World War Books . February 1, 2016 .
- News: January 20, 1942 . Rogers Hornsby Voted into Baseball Hall of Fame . Lewiston Evening Journal . Lewiston, Maine . 8 .
- Book: Diamond, Jon . 2015 . New Guinea: The Allied Jungle Campaign in World War II . Stackpole Books . 2 . 978-0-8117-1556-0 .
- Web site: IJN Submarine I-124: Tabular Record of Movement . Imperial Japanese Navy Page . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: Events occurring on Thursday, January 22, 1942 . 2011 . WW2 Timelines . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: War Diary for Saturday, 24 January 1942 . Stone & Stone Second World War Books . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: Johnson, William Bruce . 2006 . The Pacific Campaign in World War II: From Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal . Routledge . 76 . 978-1-134-00382-2 .
- Web site: The capture of Balikpapan, January 1942 . Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942 . February 1, 2016 . July 26, 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110726051615/http://www.dutcheastindies.webs.com/balikpapan.html . dead .
- Web site: Thailand declares war on the United States and England . . February 1, 2016 .
- Web site: The conquest of Borneo Island, 1941–1942 . Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942 . February 1, 2016 . November 11, 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20221111194622/https://warfare.gq/dutcheastindies/borneo.html . dead .
- Web site: All Our Yesterdays: US Troops in Northern Ireland . January 2, 2013 . . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: 2007 . Kennedy . David . The Library of Congress World War II Companion . Simon & Schuster . 536 . 978-1-4165-5306-9 .
- News: January 30, 1942 . Americas Break With Axis Powers . . 1 .
- Web site: War Diary for Thursday, 29 January 1942 . Stone & Stone Second World War Books . February 1, 2016 .
- Book: Mitcham, Samuel W. . 2007 . Rommel's Desert War: The Life and Death of the Afrika Korps . Mechanicsburg, Penna. . Stackpole Books . 978-0-8117-4152-1 .
- Book: 1999 . Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany's Crimes Against the Jewish People . limited. Yale University Press . 160 . 978-0-300-14409-3 .
- News: January 31, 1942 . Dublin Government Says U.S. Recognizing 'Quislings' by Sending Troops . . San Bernardino, California . 2 .