August 5th, 1942 (WEDNESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Destroyer HS Adrias (ex-HMS Border) commissioned.
Minesweeper HMS Gozo laid down.
Frigate HMS Tay commissioned.
Corvette HMS Milfoil launched.
GERMANY: U-188, U-304, U-415 commissioned.
FINLAND:
Finnish s/s Pohjanlahti sunk at Uzava south from Ventspils by sub S 7.U.S.S.R.:
Voroshilovsk (Stavropol) falls to German Panzers moving south towards the Maikop oilfields; on the Stalingrad front, Panzers capture Kotelnikovo.EGYPT: Major General Lewis H.
Brereton, Commanding General U.S. Army Middle East Air Force, in his first
strategic estimate of the Middle Eastern war, indicates that the 3 major
objectives for the Allied Air Forces are to assist in the destruction of General
Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps by support to ground troops, secure sea and air
communications on and over the Mediterranean, and carry out a sustained air
offensive against Italy and against oil installations at Ploesti, Romania and in
the Caucasus, if the latter should fall under Axis control.
CHINA: Japanese aircraft again
attack the U.S. airfield at Kweilin; notified well in advance by the Chinese
warning net previously set up under Brigadier General Claire L Chennault while
he was head of the American Volunteer Group (AVG), P-40s meet the Japanese over
the target, shooting down 2;and another is downed by ground fire.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses bomb Tulagi and Guadalcanal; 1 B-17 is lost.
The USN light cruiser USS Boise (CL-47) which departed Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii on 27 July tasked to proceed towards the Japanese home islands and transmit enough radio traffic to simulate a task force, launches 2 SOC Seagulls to search for enemy ships. The aircraft become lost and cannot find the ship. Radio silence is broken in order to give the aircraft a bearing which compromises the mission and the ship begins withdrawing to Pearl Harbor. My source states that the Japanese believed that a task force was near the home islands.
CANADA: Minesweeper
HMCS Sault Ste Marie (ex
HMCS The Soo) launched Port Arthur,
Ontario.
Corvette HMCS Pictou damaged in collision
in fog off St John's with SS Hindager.
U.S.A.: A twilight military relief baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants is played at the Polo Grounds in New York City. The Dodgers' shortstop Pee Wee Reese hits a grand slam home run in the top of ninth inning, making the score Dodgers 5, Giants 1, but the hit doesn't count because of the 2110 hours government curfew. The game ends up as a 1-1 tie with the Giants and, the contest will be the last wartime twilight game played.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-Boats return to large scale operations on the main north Atlantic routes with attacks beginning on convoy SC-94 today. These attacks will continue through the 13th. The convoy loses 11 ships and 2 U-Boats are sunk, 4 are damaged.
While U-598 was refuelling in the Middle Atlantic from U-463 one of her men drowned (Maschinenmaat Willi Bredereck) during maintenance work on the hydroplanes and propellers.
At 1145, the unescorted and unarmed Draco was taken under
fire by U-155 about 325 miles
east of Barbados. Several warning shots were fired, after which the crew
abandoned ship in two lifeboats. The CO
later questioned the crew. One lifeboat made it to Suriname while the occupants
of the other lifeboat were picked up by the British motor tanker Athelbrae.
At 1613, the Arletta, a straggler from Convoy ON-115, was torpedoed and sunk by
U-458 SSW of Cape Race. The
master, 29 crewmembers and six gunners were lost. The first officer William H.
Duncan and four crewmembers were rescued after 15 days by the USCGC Menemsha and
landed at Boston, Mass on 25 August.
The Spar was in convoy SC-94 (position 12), which was separated into several
smaller convoys due to fog on 3 August 1942. The section Spar was part of failed
to notice the signals for a course change, became separated and rejoined the
main convoy on 5 August. But before rejoining,
U-593 fired three torpedoes at
1848 on three ships, observed a hit on the second ship and heard one detonation
on the first vessel.
Kelbling reported a ship of 5000 grt sunk and one of 4000 grt damaged.
In fact only the Spar was hit by one torpedo in the engine room, which probably killed three of four men on watch. The survivors abandoned their ship in two lifeboats and were picked up by one of the escorting corvettes (HMS Nasturtium or HMCS Orillia).