11 - 17 October 1941

merdiolu · October 15, 2020, 6:45pm

11 October 1941

Russia : At Bryansk, Russia, enveloped Soviet 3rd and 13th Armies counterattacked positions held by troops of German Panzer Group 2 and broke through.

Baltic Sea : Soviet submarine ShCh-322 was lost in the Gulf of Finland to unknown reason; all 40 aboard were killed. She had most likely struck a mine.

Mediterranean Sea : Malta-based Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Swordfish bombers of No. 830 Squadron attacked an Italian convoy 100 miles north of Tripoli, sinking Italian cargo ships Zena and Casaregis.

Moscow , USSR : Thousands fled Moscow, Russia based on rumors of an imminent German capture of the Soviet capital. To the west, the enveloped Soviet troops at Vyasma suffered a heavy artillery and air bombardment that caused heavy casualties.

Archangelsk , Kola Peninsula , USSR : Allied convoy PQ-1, consisted of eleven merchant ships escorted by seven British warships, arrived in Archangelsk, Russia. A second PQW convoy will be leaving from Iceland inbound to Russia at the end of week

12 October 1941

Leningrad : German 250th Infantry Division of Spanish volunteers was deployed on the River Volkhov near Leningrad, Russia.

Moscow Front : German Army Group Center captured Bryansk and Kaluga (a hundred miles of southwest of Moscow) in Russia. General Heinz Guderian noted in his diary that snow continued to fall amidst the campaign in the Soviet Union. Eight Soviet armies had been trapped and destroyed, and 648,196 men taken prisoner.

Baltic Sea : Soviet submarine S8 was lost off Öland, Sweden in the Baltic Sea to unknown reason; all 48 aboard were killed. She presumably struck a mine.

North Sea : German motor torpedo boats S41, S47, S53, S62, S104, and S105 attacked Allied convoy FN531 just off the coast of East Anglia, England, United Kingdom, sinking small Britishcargo ship Chevington (9 killed) and Norwegian cargo ship Roy (3 killed).

Germany : After dark, 118 bombers from RAF Bomber Command took off to attack Hüls and Bremen, Germany.

UK : After dark, German bombers attacked Manchester, Clayton, Denton, and Oldham in England, United Kingdom, causing generally light damage. 23 were killed at Oldham.

Atlantic Ocean : Porteguise cargo ship Corte Real was intercepted , torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-83 off Oporto.

merdiolu · October 15, 2020, 6:54pm

13 October 1941

Russia : German Army Group Center captured Kalinin (now Tver) and Rzhev northwest of Moscow, Russia after a tough fight; meanwhile further west Soviet 30th Army was encircled and wiped out at Rzhev. West of the Soviet capital, Soviet 18th and 19th Tank Brigades fell back from Gzhatsk (now Gagarin) toward Mozhaysk 30 kilometers closer to Moscow where the new main defensive line was being constructed. Vyazma was abandoned by Russians. German Army Group Center still advancing but its speed fell down considerably on Mozhaisk-Volokolamsk-Kaluga-Kalinn Line.

At rear of German lines , the first German offensive against Soviet partisans, Operation Karlsbad, was launched between Minsk and Smolensk, where partisans had threatened to cut this essential supply route to the front.

UK : Allied convoy PQ-2 departed Liverpool, England, United Kingdom inbound to Russia.

merdiolu · October 16, 2020, 7:08pm

14 October 1941

Atlantic Ocean : German submarine U-206 sank British corvette HMS Fleur de Lys (Lieutenant A. Collins; escorting Allied convoy OG-75) 60 miles west of Gibraltar at 0336 hours; 71 were killed, 3 survived and were rescued by a Spanish ship.

Russia : The Soviet troops in the Bryansk pocket in Russia were eliminated (50,000 captured), while the Vyazma pocket was within days of the same fate. German advance reached Kalinn and Tula just 65 miles away from Soviet capital but met with heavy Soviet resistance there. In Berlin, Germany, Adolf Hitler ordered that the Soviet capital of Moscow was to be enveloped, not attacked directly. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Joseph Stalin briefed 23 senior Soviet military and civilian officials between 1530 and 1815 hours on a plan to evacuate the city in an orderly fashion; he ordered four theater groups (Lenin State Theater, Maxim Gorkiy Artistic Academic Theater, Little Academic Theater, and Vakhtangov Theater) to be evacuated first.

On October 14; that same day, as the first snowflakes fell on Leningrad, the temperature throughout the central battle zone fell to below zero. ‘Weather prediction is not a science that can be learned mechanically,’ Hitler told his entourage at Rastenburg that evening. On the following day, October 15, one of the regimental diaries of the SS Death’s Head Division recorded the first substantial snowfall, ten inches of snow. Throughout the Eastern Front, a mixture of melting snow flurries and heavy rain had created a thick, glutinous mud, which slowed down and could even halt the advance of the German tanks; it was a mud which the Soviet T -34 tank with their wider tread , better designed to overcome.

Mediterranean Sea : Italian cargo ship was torpedoed by Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Swordfish toredo bombers from Malta , sank next day off Sicily.
Italian torpedoboat Pleiada was bombed and sank by RAF Wellington bombers off Tripoli , Libya.

Norwegian Sea : German submarine chaser UJ 1709 Carl Kämpf was torpedoed and sank by RAF Coastal Command Beaufort torpedo bombers off Lista.

merdiolu · October 16, 2020, 7:36pm

15 October 1941

North Atlantic : Battle of Convoy SC-48 started. German submarine U-553 attacked Allied convoy SC-48 500 miles west of Ireland at 0815 hours, sinking British cargo ship Silvercedar (21 killed, 26 survived) and Norwegian cargo ship Ila (14 killed, 7 survived). Merchant ship Silverelm attempted to ram the submarine, and hours later Canadian destroyer HMCS Columbia attacked with depth charges, but none damaged U-553. Meanwhile German submarine U-568 torpedoped and sunk British cargo ship Empire Heron from same convoy.
German submarine U-558, en route to attack Allied convoy SC-48, came across and sank Canadian ship Vancouver Island in the Atlantic Ocean at 2317 hours; all aboard were lost.

Baltics : German SS-Brigadeführer Franz Stahlecker of Einsatzgruppe A sent a 130-page report to Berlin, Germany on this date. He reported that, among other things, 71,105 Jews had been liquidated in Lithuania and 30,000 Jews in Latvia, and 3,387 Communists in Russia.

Australia : The new Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, announced that the Australian garrison in Tobruk, Libya would be withdrawn immediately. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in fit of rage, bitterly complained to Beaverbrook: “We are at war with almost every country, including Australia!”

Poland : German SS General Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor-General of occupied Poland, issued a general order proclaiming that any Jews leaving the Warsaw ghetto would be liable for the death penalty as would any person who knowingly gave shelter to such Jews.

Russia : In Russia, German 1st Panzer Division turned northwest, thus away from Moscow, to attack Soviet Northwestern Front from the rear. The Soviet GKO ordered the NKVD, various agencies, and various foreign legations to evacuate from Moscow to Kuibyshev (now Samara). Also on October 15, all Soviet Government offices, and all diplomatic missions, in Moscow were told to prepare for evacuation. They were to be moved eastwards, to the Volga city of Kuibyshev. On the approaches to Moscow, fifty-six bridges were mined, ready to be blown up before the Germans could cross them. Inside Moscow itself, sixteen more bridges were mined, to be blown up ‘at the first sight of the enemy’.

Odessa , Ukraine : In southern Ukraine, Soviet troops set off explosive charges to destroy port facilities and defensive structures at Odessa in preparation of the evacuation of 35,000 Soviet troops from Odessa to Sevastopol in Russia, which would commence after sundown. From Odessa, on October 15, the Soviet military authorities began the final evacuation of troops and equipment. Earlier, 86,000 men had embarked; now, in one night, thirty transports sailed from the port with 35,000 men, setting course for Sevastopol. More than a thousand lorries and four hundred guns had been taken off earlier, also 20,000 tons of ammunition, in 192 sailings. It had been a bloodless Tallinn; a third Dunkirk. Next day German and Roumenian troops captured an empty and burning shell of Odessa

Mediteranean Sea : Royal Navy submarine HMS Torbay bombarded Italian held Libyan harbour Apollonia.

merdiolu · October 16, 2020, 8:01pm

16 October 1941

Battle of Borodino Field , Russia : Tanks of 2nd SS Das Reich Division and 10th Panzer Division attacked the Mozhaysk Line at Borodino, Russia 125 kilometers west of the Soviet capital of Moscow; lacking infantry support, Soviet troops halted the attacks. The fighting in Borodino airfield and village was so ferocious 32nd Siberian Division fought off knives , bayonets and spades and axes against SS panzergranediers and repulsed them. While thousands of civilians continued to flee Moscow , the Soviet government and diplomatic corps moved to Kuibyshev 1,500 miles to the east; Joseph Stalin, however, chose to stay. Around Moscow , more than half a million Russian civilians continued to buikd a vast array of defensive network with more than 5.000 miles of trenches and 60 miles of anti tank ditches
For the Germans, the weather on the Russian front had become the dominant concern. On October 16, a pilot arriving at Hitler’s Rastenburg headquarters reported that six inches of snow were covering the whole countryside. ‘Our wildest dreams have been washed out by rain and snow,’ General Hoffman von Waldau, Deputy Chief of Staff of the German Air Force, noted in his diary. ‘Everything is bogged down in a bottomless quagmire. The temperature drops to 11°, a foot of snow falls, and then it rains on top of the snow.’

Japan : Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe submitted his letter of resignation. He recommended Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni as his successor.
For Stalin, however, the Japanese threat was over; in the first week of October, he had learned from Richard Sorge in Tokyo that the Japanese Government had definitely decided that there would be no Japanese attack on the Soviet frontiers before the spring of 1942 at the earliest. Stalin had immediately ordered further troops, now totalling half of the divisional strength of the Far Eastern command, to rush to the defence of Moscow. In all, more than eight divisions were moved westward, together with a thousand tanks and a thousand aircraft. One of the first transferred divisions was ordered into action at Borodino in front of Mozhaisk, as soon as it could be hurried westward through Moscow, even though only half of its regiments had been assembled.

Germany : A round of mass deportation of Jews from Germany began.

Ukraine : The final Soviet evacuation ships departed Odessa, Ukraine at 0510 hours. In the past two weeks, 121,000 troops and civilians were evacuated from the city, along with 1,000 trucks and 20,000 tons of ammunition. Romanian troops entered the city later on this date, capturing the city.

North Atlantic : Battle of Convoy SC48 continued. From the convoy Norwegian cargo ship Rym was torpedoed and sank by U-558. Five US destroyers arived the scene to escort the convoy but one of US destroyers USS Kearney was also torpedoed by a German submnarine , badly damagedand retreated , eleven US sailors died , first US casaulties of an undeclared war between US and Nazi Germany. ‘Hitler’s torpedo was directed at every American,’ Roosevelt told the American people in his Navy Day address eleven days later. But he was still not prepared to declare war on Germany.

merdiolu · October 16, 2020, 8:47pm

17 October 1941

Mediterranean Sea : German submarine U-97 attacked a small Allied convoy 50 miles west of Alexandria, Egypt at 0325 hours, sinking Greek cargo ship Samos (31 killed, 3 survived) and British tanker Pass of Balmaha (all 20 aboard were killed).
Cruiser HMS Latona and destroyers HMS Jackal, HMS Havock, and HMAS Nizam departed Alexandria, Egypt for Tobruk, Libya.

North Atlantic : During midnight American destroyer USS Kearny, escorting Allied convoy SC-48, was damaged by a torpedo from German submarine U-568 off Iceland, killing 11. On the same day, U-432 and U-558 each sank two more Allied freighters and tankers (total three cargo ships and one tanker) in this convoy. In addition U-558 torpedoed and sank Royal Navy corvette HMS Gladious escorting this convoy.

Russia : German 2nd SS Das Reich Division and 10th Panzer Division , captured Borodino Field and village after a tough fight with 32nd Siberian Division , made slow advances along the Moscow Highway and Minsk Highway toward the Soviet capital of Moscow, Russia. The Soviet 5th Army slowly fell back toward Mozhaysk, Russia.

Ukraine : German troops from 1st SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte” along with 11th German Army captured Taganrog in southern Russia, a port city on the Sea of Azov.

Rastenburg i, East Prussia : On the evening of October 17, Hitler did not seem too perturbed about the weather. Rzhev, Belgorod, Stalino and Taganrog—less than three hundred miles from the Volga—had all fallen to his armies in the previous forty-eight hours. In the south, General von Manstein had broken into the Crimea. That evening at Rastenburg Hitler told his guests, including Dr Todt, of his plans for motor roads to the Crimea and the Caucasus. ‘These roads’, he said, ‘will be studded along their whole length with German towns, and around these towns our colonists will settle’—not only Germans, but Scandinavians, and even people from ‘Western countries and America’. As for the local inhabitants, ‘we’ll have to screen them carefully. The Jew, that destroyer, we shall drive out.’

Luxembourg : The German propaganda ministry declared Luxembourg Judenfrei, “Free of Jews”.

Hawaii : Admiral Harold Stark head of US Navy Operations informed Admiral Husband Kimmel Commander of Pacific Fleet that in his personal opinion that while he expected Japan to take action some time in the near future, an attack on Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii was not likely.