April 20th, 1942 (MONDAY)
FRANCE: Paris: Corporal Rohland is severely wounded at metro Molitor, later dying.Rennes: Resistants attempt to assassinate the leading French fascist
Jacques Doriot.
VICHY FRANCE: The new head of the Vichy
France government, Pierre Laval, today fawned on Hitler and attacked Britain
that but sought friendship with the United States. Speaking on the very day that
the Nazis shot 30 hostages in Rouen in reprisal for an attack on a German troop
train, Laval called Hitler "a conqueror who did not abuse his
victory". The gigantic battle that Germany was waging against
"Bolshevism". he said, had given a new meaning to the war. But Laval
took care not to attack the United States, which he hopes to influence.
The Japanese conquest of the central Philippines is nearly complete as Cebu and Panay are conquered. Small U. S. and Filipino garrisons have fled into the hills of Leyte, Samar, Negros and Bohol.
AUSTRALIA: USAAF Major General George H Brett assumes command of the Allied Air Forces, which has units based in northern and eastern Australia, with advanced facilities in the Port Moresby, New Guinea, area.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Unarmed U.S. freighter SS West Imboden, her presence advertised by an accidental fire in her stack, is torpedoed by German submarine U-752 about 200 miles (322 km) off Nantucket lightship and abandoned as she is being shelled by the U-boat. U-752 nears one of the lifeboats and asks about casualties. "That's good," one German officer responds when told that the American merchant sailors have come through unharmed.