Churchill complains to the Ministry of Labour and CIGS about the slow progress on the installation of the latest and best guns at Dover. He tries to unblock the bureaucratic log jam which is holding up progress.

Churchill replies to Wavell's refusal of another South African division:

... I thought you wanted to have a large strategic reserve in the Delta...there is no need to send another division to swell the troops in Kenya. ... How can you expect me to face the tremendous strain upon our shipping, affecting as it does all our food and import of munitions, to carry divisions from England to the Middle East when a South African division would have less than half the distance to come?

ALBANIA: Italy mounts an unsuccessful counter-attack on the town of Klisura, captured by the Greeks two weeks ago.  

LIBYA: Italian forces withdraw from Mechili, south of Derna, in Cyrenaica. Careless opposition from British 4th Armoured Division allows many to escape.

KENYA Cunningham writes a letter to Wavell proposing to capture the port of Kismayu around 12 February. The discovery of water at Hagadesu has released just enough transport to make it possible.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: At 0212, the burning and abandoned Lurigethan was torpedoed and sunk by U-105. The ship had been bombed and damaged on 23 January in convoy SL-61 by a German Fw200 aircraft from KG 40. The survivors were picked up by corvette HMS Arabis, which stayed near the ship to wait for a tug.