04 October 1941
South Atlantic : British anti-submarine trawler HMS Lady Shirley forced German submarine U-111 to the surface with depth charges 225 miles west of Tenerife, Canary Islands. U-111’s crew scuttled the submarine after a brief gunfire exchange; U-111 suffered 8 killed and 44 captured, while HMS Lady Shirley suffered 1 killed
Mediterranean Sea : Royal Navy anti-submarine trawler HMS Whippet was sunk by Luftwaffe dive bombers 30 miles north of Bardia, Libya, killing 1.
Royal Navy HMS Talisman sank Vichy French ship Theophile Gautier in a convoy from Crete to the Greek mainland.
Russia : German Panzer Group 3 and Panzer Group 4 began to surround rear elements of the Soviet Western Front in Russia, capturing Kirov and Spa-Demensk in the process. The German troops continued to advance toward Vyasma to complete the envelopment.
Kovno , Baltics : On that day, in Kovno, less than a hundred and twenty miles away, all the patients, doctors and nurses in the ghetto hospital, as well as the orphans in the adjacent Jewish orphanage, were locked in the building by SS Eimsatzgruppen and local militias, which was then set on fire. Anyone who managed to break out was shot. Three days later, at Rovno, the mass murder began of more than seventeen thousand Jews.
05 October 1941
Singapore : US and UK naval commanders met in Singapore.
Russia : General Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist was named the commander of German 1st Panzer Army. The German Second Panzer Group was reorganized as the Second Panzer Army; Heinz Guderian remained the unit’s commanding officer.
The leading German formations reported that they were only about 100 kilometers from Moscow, Russia. On the same day, Moscow-based Soviet fighters discovered German vehicles as close as 50 kilometers from Moscow; when Moscow Military District’s Air Force Fighter Command chief Nikolai Sbytov reported this to his supeiors, he was investigated by the NKVD for disseminating false rumors, but he was lucky that Joseph Stalin believed him. For precaution, Stalin ordered the Soviet Western Front to withdraw to Vyazma to form a new defensive line under a new commanding officer, Georgy Zhukov, replacing Ivan Konev.
Mediterranean Sea : Swordfish torpedo bombers of British No. 830 Squadron Fleet Air Arm based in Malta attacked an Italian convoy en route from Naples, Italy to Tripoli, Libya 67 miles north of Misrata, Libya, sinking tanker Rialto; the 145 survivors were rescued by Italian destroyer Gioberti.
Brtitish cargo ship Tynefield struck a mine in Suez Channel and sunk.