UNITED KINGDOM: The Royal Navy launches its first X-craft, or midget submarine; it is just 50 ft long and five feet nine inches broad.

Submarine HMS Muskallonge commissioned.

Frigate HMS Essington laid down.

ASW trawler HMS Bombardier commissioned.

GERMANY: Berlin: Finland and Germany sign a trade agreement.

Rastenburg: The Germans have recaptured the city of Kharkov after bitter street fighting. A special communiqué from Hitler's headquarters last night claimed that three picked divisions of Waffen-SS, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the Totenkopf and the Das Reich, strongly supported by the Luftwaffe, have retaken the city in an encircling attack from the north and west.

The Red Army high command has not yet confirmed the loss of Kharkov, saying that only "heavy fighting continues in the area", but it has uttered Stalingrad-style orders to the defenders, and the newspapers have issued a rallying call: "We can and must hurl back the onslaught at Kharkov and on the Donets no matter what the cost."

North of Kharkov, a new German attack is developing against Bielgorod, the fortress town on the railway to Kursk, and there is every indication that the Germans intend to try to recapture Kursk.

The German successes stem from the counter-offensive launched by von Manstein on 22 February when he caught the Russians by surprise while they were over-extended in their great advance to the west following their great victory at Stalingrad.

One of the first actions of the German troops on entering Kharkov was the murder of 200 people in a hospital. Afterwards they set light to the building.

U-1230 laid down.

GREECE: Athens: The Nazis began by allocating 20 trains for the deportation of Jews from Greece. These carried off only 11,000 and more trains had to be found for the more than 50,000 that remained. They are being rounded up in repeated sweeps that extend to the Aegean Islands. No Jewish community, no matter how small is safe: the three Jews among the 2,000 people on the island of Samothrace have shared the fate of their brethren on the mainland.

Jews from Salonika arriving at Auschwitz are to be used for experiments conducted by Professor Karl Clauberg, a prominent German gynaecologist, who claims that he can sterilize a thousand women a day with the use of X-rays. The experiments are backed by Himmler, who says that everybody involved must be pledged to secrecy. Clauberg's associate, the surgeon Dr Johann Kremer, writing of life at Auschwitz, has noted in his diary: "Excellent food. We had sour duck livers, with stuffed tomatoes, tomato salad etc."
But some Greek Jews are believed to have escaped, fleeing to the hills to join the partisans or being smuggled across the Aegean to Turkey in the hope of reaching Palestine.

MEDITERRANEAN SEA: At 1845, Ocean Seaman in Convoy ET-14 was torpedoed and badly damaged by U-380 about 60 miles west of Algiers. The ship was taken in tow by destroyer USS Paul Jones and beached the next day near Algiers, where she was declared a total loss. The master, 48 crewmembers and ten gunners were picked up by minesweeper HM MMS-133 and the British SS Eildon and landed at Gibraltar and Oran.

BURMA: Irrawaddy: Two Chindit columns under Major Mike Calvert and Major Bernard Fergusson, have crossed the Irrawaddy river and plan to destroy the Gokteik Gorge railway viaduct. Soon they will be joined by the main Chindit force.

Since 13 February, when the Chindit commander, Brigadier Orde Wingate, issued a biblical "we stand on the threshold of battle" order of the day, the 3,000 Chindits have been "stirring up a hornet's nest" in Japanese -occupied northern Burma, marching with pack mules and supplied from the air. So far they have been remarkably successful in spite of the well-known difficulties of their controversial commander, a gunner by training, a guerrilla by experience and  a manic-depressive by inclination. Numerous vital railway bridges have been destroyed, and thousands of Japanese troops have been diverted from moves against India and China to find the Chindits.

But the terrain on the east bank of the Irrawaddy is very different from the jungle of the west bank: treeless hills and coverless lowland, hemmed in on three sides by rivers. It is here that three Japanese divisions are now gathering to attack the Chindits.

PACIFIC OCEAN: US submarine Triton (SS-201), commanded by George K. Mackenzie, Jr., is sunk by a Japanese destroyer north of Admiralty Island. All hands are lost. (Joe Sauder)