September 18th, 1942 (FRIDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Destroyer HMS Musketeer commissioned.
FRANCE: Paris: 116 people are executed in retaliation for recent attacks on German soldiers.
GERMANY: Berlin: Himmler today agreed that Germany's "asocials" should be handed over to forced labour without proper sustenance or medical help - in effect, worked to death. In the concentration camps, "asocials" wear coloured triangular badges to identify the different categories of outcast: homosexuals (pink), pacifists (purple), political offenders (red), criminals (green), anti-socials (black) and Jews (yellow Star of David). Poles, Russians, Czechs and gypsies have been added to the list since 1939.
A policy for dealing with undesirables was introduced soon after Hitler came to power, when it was decided that, in the interests of racial purity, the mentally deficient should be sterilized. Then at a Nuremburg party rally a speaker suggested that Jews should be sterilized also. Hitler promised that, in the event of war, euthanasia not sterilization would be introduced; at such a time the church would be unable to speak against it.
In the first two years of the war, up to 80,000 Germans identified as "useless elements" were exterminated. This took place without the publication of a formal decree. When the justice ministry pressed for the text of the Fuhrers decree, all it received was a photocopy of a handwritten note from Hitler to the head of the Reich chancellery. The note ordered chancellery officials to give "duly appointed physicians" powers to "order the mercy killing of incurables". On the basis of this note, euthanasia institutes were set up. These were later to provide the models for the extermination camps for Jews.
Though camp warders initially were ex-soldiers, ex-criminals and the generally unemployable who had joined the SS, intellectuals now serve in the camps, carrying out "scientific" experiments. Prostitutes have been sent to Dachau for tests on reviving frozen human guinea-pigs by the body heat of others.
U.S.S.R.: Stalingrad: Soviet marines fend off ten German attacks from their positions in the city grain silo.
The Germans, fighting their way yard by bloody yard through the piles of rubble which were once Stalingrad in a war of grenades, bayonets and rifle butts, have been thrown off the Mamaev Kurgan, the raised Scythian burial ground which dominates the river crossings of this bridgeless city.
It was General Rodimitsev's 13th Guards Division, ferried across the Volga by night, which stormed the burial ground. Everything now depends on the ferries and other small boats which cross the river at night, lit up by the glow of burning buildings and illuminating shells, with the river erupting in waterspouts as the shells and bombs whistle around them.
They bring in ammunition and reinforcements and carry out the wounded to the safety of the east bank. Many are sunk or riddled with machine-gun fire as they head into the inferno. But they keep on coming, providing the only lifeline to Stalingrad's defenders.
The city is so shattered that the fighting is concentrated around individual buildings. The central station has changed hands four times in three days. General Vasily Chuikov, the abrasive new commander of the battered 62nd Army has set up his HQ in the Krasny Oktyabr factory.
The Germans have command of the air, and some of the bravest people in this battle are the pilots of the flimsy Polikarpov P-2 biplanes which stagger through the shell-rent night sky to bomb the Germans. One squadron is crewed exclusively by women pilots.
The 92nd Rifle Brigade (CO, Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel M.S. Batrakov; military commissar, Regimental Commissar S.N. Shapin) is transferred from the General Headquarters reserve to the 62nd Army as reinforcements. Today the 92nd Brigade enters combat in the city's central district. (Russell Folsom)(215, Chap. 3)
White Sea: Convoy PQ-18 reached the safety of the White Sea today with 27 of its original 40 ships intact. Despite the losses, it was the biggest convoy yet to reach Russia. It sailed for Russia on 2 September, after a month in which convoys to the USSR were halted. Following the disastrous July convoy PQ-17, when only 11 out of 36 merchantmen arrived in Russia, Churchill wrote to Stalin suggesting that convoys should be suspended until the longer nights of autumn. Reluctantly, the Soviet leader agreed.
PQ-18 was the most heavily protected convoy so far, with around 50 naval vessels deployed in either the escort or covering forces, including 20 destroyers and the carrier HMS Avenger. The German navy had difficulty getting close to the convoy, and air attacks account for most of the 13 convoy ships lost.
The worst day was 13 September. Forty German torpedo-bombers sank eight ships in as many minutes in a stunning assault. The day before, U-boats sank two of the ships in the starboard column. Five torpedo-bombers were shot down and the destroyer HMS FAULKNOR sank U-88 with a blitz of depth charges. In all, the Germans lost 20 aircraft and two U-boats. The escort will return with surviving ships of earlier convoys, including PQ-17.
General Horii begins pulling his Japanese Army units back from Buna and Gona on New Guinea. He has supply difficulties. A US Fifth Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress bombs Salamaua while a B-25 Mitchell strafes pack trains on the Kokoda trail in the Andemba-Wairopi-Kokoda area.
MADAGASCAR: Tamatave, the main port of the French colony of Madagascar, has been taken by the British - a day after the island's Vichy governor, M. Annet, rejected General Sir William Platt's surrender terms.
The British fleet arrived off Tamatave at dawn. When the Vichy authorities refused to surrender, it bombarded the port. Three minutes later the white flag was raised. By the time that the 29 Brigade had landed most of the Vichy troops had withdrawn.
With the taking of Tamatave - a week after landing at Majunga, on the west coast - Allied forces are pressing on to the capital Tananarive from east and west, against mainly Malgache and Senegalese troops, through an inhospitable terrain where malaria knocks down more troops than bullets.
NEW GUINEA: General Horii begins pulling his Japanese Army units back from Buna and Gona. He has supply difficulties.
A US Fifth Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress bombs Salamaua while a B-25 Mitchell strafes pack trains on the Kokoda trail in the Andemba-Wairopi-Kokoda area.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: The 7th Marines arrive at the Lunga Perimeter held by the 1st Marine Divison on Guadalcanal. These are the first new unit committed to the Guadalcanal Campaign since the 1st Marine Division (re-inforced) landed on Guadalcanal on August 7. US strength on the island now numbers about 23,000.
CANADA: Minesweeper HMCS Milltown commissioned.
U.S.A: The designation of all USAAF Air Forces is changed from a number to a name, e.g., 1st Air Force to First Air Force, 2d Air Force to Second Air Force, etc.
The German submarine U-455 lays mines off Charleston, South Carolina.
Submarines USS Gurnard and Scamp commissioned.
Destroyers USS Edwards and Gillespie commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The Vichy French sloop Dumon D'Urville takes off 42 survivors of the sunken British passenger ship Laconia from the Italian submarine Capellini.