January 12th, 1942 (MONDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Destroyer HMS Venus laid down.
GERMANY: Berlin: Hitler orders the battle cruisers GNEISENAU and Scharnhorst to sail from Brest to Norway.
U-649 is laid down.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: U-374 (Type VIIC) is sunk in the western Mediterranean east of Cape Spartivento, in position 37.50N, 16.00E, by torpedoes from the British submarine HMS Unbeaten. 43 dead, but 1 survivor taken into captivity. (Alex Gordon)
At 0157, U-77 sighted two destroyers off Tobruk and fired at 0238 hours a spread of four torpedoes of which one hit the stern of HMS Kimberley. The explosion blew her stern off and immediately stopped the vessel, which was missed by a coup de grāce at 02.45 hours. HMS Heythrop towed the destroyer to Alexandria. After temporary repairs towed in February 1942 to Bombay, where she was repaired and returned to service in January 1944.
TUNISIA: Tangiers: A German plan to detect Allied shipping movements in the Mediterranean by sending an infra-red beam across the Straits of Gibraltar is foiled when British agents blow up the transmitter.
LIBYA: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, General Officer Commanding Panzer Gruppe Africa, adopts his subordinates' plan to prepare a surprise counteroffensive against the British. Neither the German nor the Italian High Command are informed of the plans. As a result, British codebreakers who are reading top-secret German messages with their Enigma machine can't warn the unprepared 8th Army.
U.S.S.R.: Friedrich Mennecke writes to his wife: "Since the day before yesterday, a large delegation from our Aktion [`T4“ Osteinsatz], headed by Herr Brack, is on the battlefields of the East to help in saving our wounded in the ice and snow. They include doctors, clerks, male nurses and female nurses from Hadamar and Sonnenstein, an entire detachment of 20-30 persons! This is top secret! Only those who could not be spared for carrying out the most urgent tasks of our Aktion were excluded." (84)
Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, Commander in Chief Army Group South suffers a heart attack at his HQ in Poltava. (Jeff Chrisman)
MALAYA: The Japanese take Port Swettenham and Kuala Luxmpur, the Malaysian capital, when elements of the Japanese 25th Army enter the city. This completes the first phase of Japan's planned conquest of Malaya.
The consequences for Singapore are grave. Despite attempts to burn them, huge quantities of supplies have fallen into Japanese hands, and the possession of the airfields in the area will facilitate the intensification of the air bombardment against Singapore's bases and installations.
The fall of Kuala Lumpur has followed swiftly on the collapse five days ago of the 11th Indian Division on the Slim River. Shortly afterwards, General Wavell visited the III Indian Corps, whose main supply base was at Kuala Lumpur, and ordered its withdrawal to Johore for rest and re-organization.
The exodus from Kuala Lumpur began on 10 January. All day and all night an interminable convoy of every description of vehicle carrying civilians and military rolled south. Little silent groups of Malays, Indians and Chinese gazed in wonder from the roadside as the humbled white tuans departed, leaving them to the Japanese.
The Japanese army embarked on the conquest of Malaya when they landed at Kota Bahru, on the north-eastern coast. The landing began on 8 December, two hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Shortly after the Kota Bahru landing elements of the 5th Japanese Division went ashore at Singora and Patani, in southern Thailand. The British defenders in Malaya and Singapore comprised two Indian divisions in northern Malaya and the 8th Australian Division in the south, together with the Singapore fortress and mobile formations.
The RAF committed to Malaya 476 aircraft, many of which were obsolescent, such as the Wildebeest biplane. However, 64 modern bombers, including Blenheims, and six Catalina flying boats arrived, while 51 Hurricanes are on their way to the region. The RAF planned to deploy 336 first-line planes, but the plan came to nothing owing to the speed of the Japanese advance. In any case these 336 planes would still have been outnumbered 2-1 by Japanese aircraft.
By 12 December the Japanese had routed the British positions at Jitra, taking 3,000 prisoners. On 26 December a heavy engagement was fought north of Ipoh, and when Japanese tanks succeeded in "hooking" around Indian positions the road to Kuala Lumpur - and beyond it to Singapore - was open.
Eight RAAF Brewster Buffalo fighters intercept 27 Japanese bombers after they had bombed Singapore. Seeing the fighters, the bombers went into a shallow dive and outran the fighters. One RAAF pilot put it, “Bombers outpacing fighters. You’ve got to bloody-well laugh.”
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: On Bataan, the Japanese exert strong pressure against the II Corps, particularly on the west, while taking up positions for a concerted assault. The 51st Division, Philippine Army (PA), is hard hit and gives ground, some of which is regained after reserves are committed. In the center, the Japanese push back the outpost line of the 41st Division (PA). On the east coast, the Japanese regain positions on the south bank of the Calaguiman River; to meet threat there, the 21st Infantry (PA) is released from reserve to assist the 57th Infantry, Philippine Scouts. In the I Corps area, a Japanese detachment moves by boat and seizes undefended Grande Island in Manila Bay.
EAST INDIES: On Tarakan Island, Dutch Borneo, the Japanese 2nd Kure Special Naval Landing Force advances rapidly to the Tarakan airfield and occupies it. During this first fighting, the Japanese manage to capture a group of about 30 Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger (KNIL) or Royal Dutch Indies Army soldiers. When this group refuses to tell the Japanese how to get to the main city of the island, they are bayoneted. Only one man survives this massacre and he manages to drag himself to a hospital where he recovers.
AUSTRALIA: Three
USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses arrive in Australia after flying a new southern
ferry route from Hawaii.
The Japanese submarine HIJMS I-121 mines Clarence Strait, the body of water
connecting Van Diemen Gulf and the Timor Sea, off Australia's Northern
Territory, at the approaches to Darwin, the Asiatic Fleet's main logistics base.
U.S.A.: Washington DC: Charles Lindbergh the celebrated aviator meets with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. Stimson tells him that his speeches decrying the war between the 'white races', mean that he could not be considered for a position of command and that in fact those speeches had raised doubts as to his loyalty to the country. Stimson then called in the Assistant Secretary of War for Air, Robert A. Lovett, to see if Lindbergh could help the government in a position of non-command.
The Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) approve U.S. plans to garrison the islands along the proposed ferry route from Hawaii to Australia. Local defence forces are to be based at American Samoa, Bora Bora, Canton Island, Christmas Island, the Fiji Islands and Palmyra Island. The CCS also approves the deployment of a USAAF fighter squadron to New Caledonia Island in the New Hebrides Islands.
The wartime Office of Price Administration said standard frankfurters would be replaced by "victory sausages", consisting of a mixture of meat and soy meal. (Mike Ballard)
President Franklin D. Roosevelt reinstates World War I President Woodrow Wilson's National War Labor Board (NWLB) in an attempt to forestall labor-management conflict during World War II. The evolution of the NWLB illustrates the complexity of developing labor policy in the rapidly changing early-war years. It was formed in 1940 as the National Defense Advisory Board; later it became the Labor Division of the Office of the Production of Management (OPM), which morphed into the National Defense Mediation Board (NDMB) until 1942 when Roosevelt renamed the unit the National War Labor Board. The NWLB is made up of political, business and labor leaders and is tasked with providing labor-policy recommendations. Although the NWLB is established to mediate between parties involved in industrial disputes, Roosevelt also gives the board power to intercede and impose settlements in order to preempt any pause in production. In October 1942, Roosevelt issues the "Order Providing for the Stabilization of the National Economy," which expands the NWLB's control over wages and prices by stipulating that any adjustment of wages has to be cleared through it.
Minesweeper USS Zeal laid down.
The U.S. and Mexican governments establish a joint defense commission to coordinate defense planning between the two countries.
CARIBBEAN SEA: USS S-26 (SS-131) is sunk in a collision with a submarine chaser in the Gulf of Panama.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: During heavy weather in the North Atlantic a lookout on U-654 broke his arm.
SS Yngaren sunk at 57N, 26W - Grid AL 1938 by U-43.
HMCS Red Deer, a Bangor-class minesweeper, rescued survivors from the British merchantship SS Cyclops, 125 miles south-east of Cape Sable. Cyclops was the first ship sunk in the German U-boat campaign against the East Coast of North America, known as Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat). She was sunk by U-123, Kptlt. Reinhard Hardegen, CO.