October 27th, 1942 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Prime Minister Winston Churchill sends a message to Australian Prime Minister John Curtin commenting on the opening of the “great battle in Egypt,” noting that “you will have observed with pride and pleasure the distinguished part which the 9th Australian Division are playing in what may be an event of the first magnitude.”
Submarines HMS Spirit, Vivid and Voracious laid down.
Minesweeper HMS Onyx launched.
In the North Sea during the night of 27/28 October, five RAF Bomber Command lay mines in the Kattegat, the broad arm of the North Sea between Sweden and Denmark.
NETHERLANDS: Two RAF Bomber Command bombers lay mines in the Frisian Islands.
GERMANY: A 17-year-old youth is executed for listening to foreign news broadcasts.
During the day, two RAF Bomber Command Mosquitos bomb the U-boat yards at Flensburg.
U-1161 laid down.
BALTIC SEA: The submerged U-339 collided with the cruiser Nürnberg.
FINLAND: Finnish submarine Iku-Turso (Kapteeniluutnantti Eero Pakkala) torpedoes and sinks the Soviet submarine Shtsh 320 in Gulf of Finland.
U.S.S.R.: German forces continue to gain ground between the Red October and Barrikady Factories in Stalingrad. Those parts of Stalingrad still held by Soviet forces are strongly held and fortified. The Soviet policy at Stalingrad has been to feed new divisions in slowly, gaining experience. In the Moscow area new divisions are committed as a unit. Faulty intelligence allows the Germans to assume the northern policy is followed in Stalingrad. They therefore overestimate losses and underestimate remaining strength.
The German forces are now within firing distance of Soviet landing jetties on the west bank of the Volga. The Soviet-held strip is only 300 yards deep on average.
XII Squadriglia MAS removed from Lake Ladoga and transported to Tallinn via Helsinki.
EGYPT: Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, Commander of German-Italian Panzer Forces in Africa, mounts an intended major counterattack by the 21st Panzer Division to push the attacking British forces back into the German minefields. They are held off by a small British force at Kidney Ridge and lose 50 Panzers in the Battle of El Alamein. This leaves the the axis forces with just 81 operational tanks.
El Aqqaqir: Lt-Col. Victor Buller Turner (1900-72), Rifle Brigade, led an attack which knocked out 50 out of 90 tanks, helping, despite a head wound, to man a six-pounder gun himself. (Victoria Cross)
U.S. Army, Middle East Air Force B-25 Mitchells, with fighter escorts, bomb Matruh and attack motor transports, tanks, and other ground targets. Axis reinforcements brought up from the south, counterattack Kidney Ridge and are repulsed; the British Eighth Army continues regrouping for an assault.
In the MTO 1st Lt. Lyman Middleditch Jr., 64th FS/57th FG, USAAF, becomes the first USAAF fighter pilot in the ETO or North Africa to score a triple victory when he downs three Bf 109s. Middleditch will end the war as an ace with five victories. (Skip Guidry)
INDIA: British General Archibald Wavell, Commander in Chief India, and U.S. Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell, Commander in Chief US China-Burma-India Theater of Operations, Chief of Staff to Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and Commander in Chief Northern Area Combat Command (NCAC), agree that Stilwell shall conduct an offensive in the Hukawng Valley of northern Burma and occupy the area Myitkyina-Bhamo and make contact with Chinese forces from Yunnan. The Americans are to be responsible for construction of the Ledo Road to Myitkyina; the road is eventually to link with Burma Road.
CHINA: Peking: Wang Ching-wei, the leader of the Chinese puppet government in Nanking, today made an official visit to Peking. He attended the third national convention of the Hsin-min-hui [New People's Society], north China's central collaborationist political organization.
Though Wang Ching-wei is officially leader of the puppet "central" government of occupied China, in the north the Hsin-min-hui is effectively in control. The organization's purpose is simple: the inculcation of a Japanese philosophy of life, based on Confucian principles, in the people of the region.
NEW GUINEA: Australian troops are held up on the Kokoda Track. Engineers work to repair the bridges over Eora Creek which are washed away by heavy rains overnight.
USAAF Fifth Air Force A-20 Havocs hit trails in southeast Papua New Guinea, around Alola, Isurava, and Abuari.
D'ENTRECASTEAUX ISLANDS: USAAF Fifth Air Force P-39 Airacobras escort Australian Hudsons in a strike against small craft at Ferguson Island.
PACIFIC OCEAN:
The abandoned aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), damaged by bombs and torpedoes and attempted scuttling yesterday, is sunk by Japanese destroyers HIJMS Akigumo and Makigumo at 0135 hours, about 398 nautical miles (737 kilometers) east of Henderson Field, Guadalcanal Island, Solomon Islands, in position 08.38S, 166.43E. The USN now has only four aircraft carriers in commission.
At 2200 hours in the South China Sea, the USN submarine USS Tautog (SS-199) sinks a Japanese transport/cargo ship about 124 nautical miles (229 kilometers) east-southeast of Saigon, French Indochina, in position 10.20N, 108.43E. (Skip Guidry)
ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: Six USAAF Eleventh Air Force B-24 Liberators flying an attack on the Japanese-held Kiska Island submarine base turn back due to weather; a weather aircraft flies reconnaissance over Gareloi, Segula, Kiska, and Attu Islands.
CANADA: Minesweeper HMCS Milltown arrived Halifax from builder Port Arthur, Ontario.
U.S.A.: LST-325 is launched.
Minesweepers USS Triumph and Logic laid down.
Destroyer USS Stephen Potter laid down.
Destroyer USS Aulick commissioned.
Minesweeper USS Strive commissioned.
Destroyers USS Bush and Spence launched.
Submarines USS Lapon and Balao launched.
Minesweeper USS Caravan launched.
The Army Air Forces School of Applied Tactics (AAFSAT) is established at Orlando, Florida, tasked with testing and demonstrating tactical unit organization, equipment and techniques; training of select USAAF, Army and Navy personnel in air tactics and doctrine; and training of air intelligence officers and air inspectors.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-627 (Type VIIC) which had left Kiel for its first combat patrol on 15 Oct is sunk 12 days later south of Iceland, at position 59.14N, 22.49W, by depth charges from a British Fortress aircraft (Sqdn. 206/F). 44 dead (all crew lost). (Alex Gordon)
U-436 damaged SS Frontenac, Gurney E Newlin and sank HMS LCT-2281, SS Sourabaya in Convoy HX-212.
U-509 sank SS Pacific Star and SS Stentor in Convoy SL-125.
U-604 sank SS Anglo Mærsk (already torpedoed the previous day) in Convoy SL-125.
After an explosion during torpedo loading on U-67 one man was killed. [Matrosenobergefreiter Heinz Hartmann] .
The same day 3 men were washed overboard from the U-706, 2 men died but the third was saved by U-463. [Leutnant zur See Erich Eichmann, see right, Matrosenobergefreiter Ralf Köhler].
U-117 laid some mines off Iceland, but no sinkings resulted from this field.