December 10th, 1942 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM:
Destroyer HMS Roebuck launched.
Submarine HMS Surf launched.
ASW trawlers HMS Bream and Colstream launched.
GERMANY: Chancellor Adolf Hitler replaces Colonel General Franz Halder with Colonel General Kurt Zeitzler as chief of staff of the Oberkommando des Heeres (high command of the German Army or OKH).
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: Luftwaffe LT Sta (See) 222 loses one of its massive Blohm und Voss Bv 222 flying boats (V8) when it is shot down by RAF Beaufighters between Italy and Tripoli when flying in company with the V1 and V4 flying-boats. (21)
U.S.S.R.: Little ground is gained at Rzhev by a small German counterattack.
TUNISIA: British and Free French defenders drive off a strong German attack on Medjez el Bab when German tank-infantry columns attack Medjez el Bab from the northeast and east and are repulsed. The Medjez garrison of four French battalions has been reinforced by the British 1st Guards Brigade (--). During the night of 10/11 December, the 11th Brigade of the British 78th Division and Combat Command B of the U.S. 1st Armored Division begin a withdrawal to the Bdja area to refit, Combat Command B sustaining heavy loss of equipment as it withdraws.
NEW GUINEA: Papua: Australian troops of the 39th Battalion, 21st Brigade, 7th Division, yesterday took Gona, a key Japanese defensive position on the north Papuan coast from which the Japanese launched their ill-fated campaign to take Port Moresby. The savagery of the action against the fanatical resistance of the Japanese garrison at Gona is indicated by the 638 bodies found after the battle.
The four Australian battalions of the 21st Brigade assigned to take Gona have suffered dangerously high casualties. Already sharply reduced in numbers by earlier battle casualties and high illness rates from heat exhaustion, malaria and other tropical disease, they suffered a further 530 killed and wounded, more than 40%.
The Japanese remaining on the coast northwest of Gona, now greatly depleted in strenth by air attacks as well as pressure of the Australians, are ordered to establish a defensive perimeter around Napapo and await reinforcements.
On the Sanananda front, a Allied supply party reaches the roadblock and finds the garrison in desperate need of relief.
On the Urbana Force (two battalions of the U.S. 126th and 128th Infantry Regiments, 32d Infantry Division) front, the 3d Battalion, 127th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 32d Infantry Division, begins the relief of the 2d Battalion, 126th Infantry Regiment, which by now is also greatly understrength.
The Warren Force (based on U.S. 128th Infantry Regiment, 32d Infantry Division) continues to bombard and probe the Japanese line in an effort to soften it.
The Australian 2/6th Independent Company is detached and returns to the Australian 7th Division. The Japanese are again supplied by air. Australian Brigadier George Wootten, General Officer Commanding 18th Brigade, 7th Division, reports to General Thomas Blarney, Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Military Forces and Commander of Allied Land Forces, Southwest Pacific Area.
Six Australian (A-20) Bostons bomb Japanese positions at Buna.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: Eleven USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses escorted by eight P-38 Lightnings attack ships in Faisi Harbor on Shortland Island; one tanker is hit; six Zeke fighters (Mitsubishi A6M, Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighters) are claimed destroyed, five by P-38s and one by a B-17.
TERRITORY OF ALASKA: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: The USAAF Eleventh Air Force weather aircraft which crashlanded on Atka Island yesterday is sighted on the west end of the island, its fuselage broken off aft of the wings. The crew, later brought back, is unharmed except for light injuries to Lieutenant General William Lynd, who was observing weather conditions in the Aleutians for General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Commanding General, USAAF. General Lynch sustained a cracked collar bone. A PBY lands and rescues the crew. An uneventful reconnaissance covers Attu, Kiska and the Semichis Islands. Four B-26 Marauders and six P-38 Lightnings abort a bomb run to Kiska due to weather.
U.S.A.: The War Relocation Authority (WRA) establishes a "Citizens" Isolation Camp" at Moab, Utah, located about 195 miles (314 kilometers) southeast of Salt Lake City, for recalcitrant Japanese-American inmates. This camp, and one at Leupp, Arizona, are designed to hold troublesome individuals from the Japanese Relocation Camps in the western part of the U.S. It was found that in each relocation camp, a small number of men, mostly young Kibei (a person born in the U.S. of Japanese immigrant parents and educated chiefly in Japan) became uncooperative and caused trouble and had to be separated from the general camp population. In June 1943, it is decided to move the prisoners from these two camps to Tule Lake, California, a former relocations camp that had been converted to house the trouble-makers, dissidents and renunciants. After they are moved, the camps at Moab and Leupp are closed.
Auxiliary escort carrier USS Core (ACV-13) is commissioned.
Corvette USS Alacrity commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: