UNITED KINGDOM: In England, 7 8th Air Force P-38s arrive in the UK via the North Atlantic route, this being the first time single-seater USAAF aircraft have flown this route.

Minesweeper HMS MELITA is laid down.

ENGLISH CHANNEL: ASW trawler HMS MANOR is sunk by German motor torpedo boats.

GERMANY: RAF bombers raid the U-boat base at Wilhelmshaven.

U-227 launched.

U-345 and U-976 are laid down.

U-630 is commissioned.

NETHERLANDS: Amsterdam: The Jewish Frank family, including 13-year-old Anne, who keeps a diary, go into hiding from the Nazis.

NORWAY: U-209 lost two men during an accident on the landing place in the harbour of Bergen. The boat went on its next patrol on 17 July. [Funkgefreiter Edmund Kiepulski, Funkgefreiter Alfons Kuklinski].

MEDITERRANEAN SEA: Six US Army, Middle East Air Force (USAMEAF) B-24s dispatched against shipping are attacked by fighters; one B-24 is lost and the others return to base without bombing targets.

The Italian submarine PERLA is intercepted and seriously damaged by depth charges from corvette HMS HYACINTH. The boat is forced to the surface and captured off Beirut.  Towed to the Lebanese port, the Perla is repaired and renamed P-712. In 1943 it was transferred to the Greek Navy where it served until 1947.

EGYPT: El Alamein: Nine days after launching what he hoped would be his final, all-out and successful assault on the British army, Erwin Rommel - now a field marshal - appears to have met his match in desert tank warfare.

General Sir Claude Auchinleck has taken command of the Eighth Army and has succeeded in repelling several powerful assaults between El Alamein and the impenetrable Qattara Depression. Unfortunately, the "Auk's" subordinates have not followed orders to "give the enemy no rest."

U.S.A.: The First Special Service Force is activated at Camp William Henry Harrison, near Helena, Montana. Consisting of some 2,300 men, the Force was organized into three regiments of about 600 men each, plus a service battalion. Each regiment was divided into two battalions of three companies each. Its Soldiers would carry a variety of U.S. small arms and wear U.S. Army uniforms. Its heaviest weapons would be 60mm mortars and light machine guns. It had earlier been determined that the Canadian Army would participate in the project. The Canadian volunteers, who made up about one third of the unit, were rigorously screened before arrival at Camp William Henry Harrison. Some of the American volunteers were hardly volunteers. Per long-standing custom, many commanders used Frederick's call for Soldiers to man this new unit as an opportunity to rid themselves of their less-desirable troops, to include some who reported to Montana from post stockades and arrived under armed guard. On the other hand, many of these garrison Soldier troublemakers would prove themselves to be ideal combat Soldiers in the unorthodox Devil's Brigade. The training that all members of the Force received was intense and extensive. The unfit were weeded out.
Those who withstood the rigorous training became experts in small unit and individual combat, demolitions, amphibious operations, and mountain warfare. They became airborne-qualified. They also got used to using the Weasel, the specially-designed vehicle intended for the snows of Norway. They would never use it there because the Norwegian operation, the reason for the Force's creation, was cancelled. (Mike Yared)

ATLANTIC OCEAN: Two German submarines sink armed U.S. merchant vessels in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.

U-67 sinks a tanker 60 miles (96.6 km) west of Southwest Pass, Louisiana.

At 1624, the unescorted Santa Rita was hit by one torpedo from U-172, while steaming on a nonevasive course at 16 knots about 700 miles NE of Puerto Rico. Lookouts had spotted the wake but it was too late and the torpedo struck on the port side between #3 hatch and the engine room. The explosion killed one officer and two crewmen on watch below, wrecked the engines and opened a hole 30 feet in diameter that caused the flooding of the #3 hold. Ten minutes after the hit, the most of the eight officers, 44 crewmen, two passengers and nine armed guards (the ship was armed with one 5in and some .50cal and .30cal guns) abandoned ship without orders in the two starboard lifeboats, but one of them capsized and one crewman drowned. The master, chief officer and ten men in a third boat followed them. The U-boat then surfaced and fired some machine gun burst to warn the survivors and fired four rounds from the deck gun into the superstructure and destroyed the radio room. Some Germans boarded the abandoned vessel, searched her and placed scuttling charges on board. They returned to the U-boat after two hours with some foodstuffs. The ship sank capsizing at 20.30 hours after the charges detonated and seven more shells were fired into the hull. The master was questioned by Emmermann and then taken on board as prisoner of war. 32 survivors in two lifeboats were picked up on 11 July by the USS Livermore and Mayo and landed at Port of Spain, Trinidad. The other lifeboat with 27 survivors was taken in tow by a US Army Air Force crash boat after being spotted on 25 July by an aircraft and landed at Borenquen Point, Puerto Rico. The master Henry R. Stephenson was landed on 21 July in Lorient, taken to Wilhelmshaven and from there to the POW camp Milag Nord near Bremen. He was repatriated on the Swedish motor merchant Gripsholm in January 1945 through a Red Cross exchange of prisoner of war. (Dave Shirlaw and Jack McKillop)

At 2305, the unescorted Cape Verde was torpedoed and sunk by U-203 east of Grenada. One crewmember and one gunner were lost. The master, 31 crewmembers and eight gunners landed at the Bay of St Vincent, Windward Islands on 14 July.

At 1601, the Nicholas Cuneo was stopped by U-571 with 20-mm gunfire across her bow and sunk with 43 shells from the deck gun after the crew had abandoned ship.

At 0247, the unescorted Empire Explorer was torpedoed and sunk by gunfire by U-575 west of Tobago. Three crewmembers were lost. The master, 66 crewmembers and eight gunners were picked up by HM MTB-337 and landed at Tobago. U-575 reported the ship under her former name Inanda.

SS Triglav sunk by U-66 at 26.47N, 48.10W.