December 3rd, 1941 (WEDNESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Destroyer HMS Tenacious laid down.
Anti-Aircraft cruiser HMS Charybdis commissioned.
GERMANY: U-389, U-420 laid down.
SWITZERLAND: Eggs and products based on eggs are rationed. (William Jay Stone from http://www.geschichte-schweiz.ch/en/worldwar2.html)
BALTIC SEA: Finnish Submarine Vetehinen makes a surface attack on a 7-ship convoy shooting both bow and stern torpedoes. Enemy artillery fire was heavy, no hits on either side.
U.S.S.R.: Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau, who was commanding the German Sixth Army, succeeds Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of Army Group South. Von Rundstedt is fired by Hitler because he demanded he should be allowed to withdraw from Rostov.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Brereton returns from his trip to Australia and is instructed by MacArthur "> MacArthur to plan on leaving on 8th December for another trip, this time a 5,733-mile journey to Djakarta, Singapore, Rangoon, and Chunking, to co-ordinate defensive measures with the Dutch, British, and Chinese, and to receive a report on Japanese air activities from Claire Chennault, commander of the American Volunteer Group.
Hart
personally briefs Lieutenant John Walker Payne, Jr, Captain of the USN Yacht
USS Isabel
(PY-10)
and assigns his ship to the “Defensive Information Patrol”.
Payne sails the same day.
(Marc Small)
The men of the 5th Air Base Group at Del Monte field, are joined by two ordnance companies and a second contingent is due on December 10th with ammunition and 110,000 US gallons (91,594 Imperial gallons or 416,395 litres) of aviation fuel.
AUSTRALIA: Minesweeper HMAS Pirie launched.
CANADA: Minesweeper HMCS Red Deer arrived Halifax from builder Montreal, Province of Quebec.
U.S.A.: Roosevelt again meets with British Ambassador, Lord Halifax, and indicates the US would enter the war on the British side the British if they were attacked by Japan, but did not explicitly promise this. (Marc Small)
The Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. sends the following message to Tokyo: "Judging from all indications, we feel that some joint military action between Great Britain and the United States, with or without a declaration of war, is a definite certainty in the event of an occupation of Thailand."
Submarine USS Halibut launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Unarmed 6,725 ton U.S. freighter SS Sagadahoc is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-124 in the South Atlantic about 375 nautical miles (694 kilometers) south-southwest of St. Helena Island in position 21.50S, 07.50W. One man of the 37-man crew is lost. (Jack McKillop & Dave Shirlaw)