4 th July 1942
Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico : German submarine U-129 torpedoed and sank Soviet tanker Tuapse in the Caribbean Sea; 8 were killed, 36 survived. On the same day, U-575 torpedoed and sank US cargo ship Norlandia also in the Caribbean Sea; 9 were killed, 21 survived.
North Sea : German anti submarine vessel Sperrbrecher (1,078 GRT, 1935) struck a mine and sank in the North Sea off Schiermonnikoog, Friesland, Netherlands.
Arctic Ocean : Allied convoy PQ-17 was attacked by 24 He 111 torpedo bomber aircraft of German Luftwaffe unit I./KG 26 about 60 miles north of Bear Island (Bjørnøya), Norway, fatally damaging US freighter Christopher Newport with a torpedo hit which would later be scuttled by a British submarine (3 were killed, 47 survived)
At 1930 hours, another Luftwaffe attack wave came upon the convoy, causing no damage; at 2020 hours, the convoy was attacked by 25 JU-88 bombers, sinking British freighter Navarino, sinking US freighter William Hooper (3 were killed, 55 survived), and damaging Soviet tanker Azerbaijan with bomb hits ; in exchange five German JU-88 bombers were shot down by anti aircraft guns of the convoy.
At 2100 hours, believing that German battleships might be in the area, British Admiralty (order came directly from First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound who was suffering from brain cancer) convoy PQ-17 was ordered to scatter and the convoy escorts were withdrawn despite opposition of convoy escort commander Captain Edwin Broome and captains Royal Navy escorts in the convoy.
The convoy is now 240 miles from North Cape, 450 miles from the nearest Soviet landfall.
In London, consternation and uncertainty reigns in British Admiralty. The British know German battleship Tirpitz and her 15-inch guns along with her escorts can intercept the convoy in 10 hours time. US Navy battleship USS Washington providing distant escort to convoy, the best chance to sink Tirpitz, is west of Bear Island, in no position to meet Tirpitz. The worst-case scenario, of Tirpitz savaging PQ-17’s escorts, while Scheer and Hipper rip up the freighters, looks likely.
At 9:11 p.m., First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound orders his cruiser force to withdraw. At 9:23, he orders PQ-17 to disperse and proceed to Russian ports. That would mean the convoy breaks formation and all merchant ships head to Russian ports alone and unescorted. At 9:36, Pound sends his third order, “Most immediate. Convoy is to scatter.” Each cargo vessel is on its own. The merchant ship captains watch as their escorts turn around and head home. A disaster is in the making.
Unbeknownst to the escort and convoy commanders, German battleship Tirpitz and its battlegroup was not actually advancing toward the convoy or in the vicinity. Tirpitz along with pocket battleship Admiral Scheer and three escort destroyers had left Trondheim on July 2 to the port of Vestfjord; the next day, German Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Raeder received permission to move the Tirpitz to Altenfjord to join up with friendly ships. Meanwhile in London , prior to issuing the orders, Pound visited Whitehall and consulted intelligence officer Lieutenant Commander Norman Denning to confirm that Tirpitz had left Altentfjord. Though Denning couldn’t answer if she was still anchored there he did explain that his sources would have confirmed if the ship had or was about to put to sea at that time. It would not be until several hours after Pound’s orders that Tirpitz was confirmed as still being anchored at Altenfjord. Tirpitz and her battlegroup had turned back to port. The disrse order to convoy PQ-17 was in vain ,complately unnecessary and left each ship defenceless and exposed to German air and submatrine attack in Barents Sea.
Sailing in the opposite direction, QP-13 broke up to two convoys, one of which ran into an uncharted minefield; several ships struck mines and sank (Royal Navy minesweeper HMS Niger (149 were killed), British freighter Hybert, freighter Heffron, freighter Massmar (17 were killed), and Soviet passenger ship Rodina (several family members of Soviet diplomats were killed), and several others were damaged (civilian commodore’s ship American Robin, freighter Exterminator, and freighter John Randolph); Royal Navy destroyer HMS Hussar was able to lead the survivors out of the minefield.
El Alamein , Egypt : General Auchinlek orders 13th Corps to drive northwestward through El Mreir to wreck Rommel’s coordination. Only Kippenberger’s 5 New Zealand Brigade obeys, its 21st and 23rd Battalions attacking Italian 10 Corps’ Brescia infantry Division at El Mreir ridge and infltrated Italian positions in the afternoon. Then 5th New Zealand Brigade columns hit by German JU-87 Stuka dive bombers, and retired back to its startline. Kippenberger called it a “most disappointing day.” However, the Kiwis only lost 17 killed and wounded in exchange for 113 Italians killed , 12 Italians and five Breda machina guns captured before returning back to their lines.
Rommel observes this move, and moves 21st Panzer Division down and back towards El Mreir. The British see these moves, and 1st Armoured Division attacks with two squadrons of Grant tanks. They overrun 15th Panzer’s Rifle Regiment. 200 Germans are captured.
The Germans have used up the last of their 88 mm ammunition to halt advance of British armor. At this point, Rommel decided his exhausted forces could make no further headway without resting and regrouping. He reported to the German High Command that his three German divisions numbered just 1,200–1,500 men each and resupply was proving highly problematic because of enemy interference from the air. He expected to have to remain on the defensive for at least two weeks.
Panzer Army Afrika was by this time suffering from the extended length of his supply lines. The Allied Desert Air Force (DAF) was concentrating fiercely on his fragile and elongated supply routes shooting , strafing , bombing any motor vehicle or supply column on coastal road while British mobile columns moving west and striking from the south were causing havoc in the Axis rear echelons. All Luftwaffe efforts to support Panzer Army Afrika remained still very weak since Luftwaffe and Italian Air Force were just deploying inside Fuka airbases just captured by Axis. That day 1st South African Squadron from Desert Air Force in their Hurricanes intercepted a JU-87 Stuka dive bomber formation (the very one which attacked 5th New Zealand Brigade) over El Alamein , attacked what was becoming known as a ‘Stuka Party’ – thirteen out of fifteen of these increasingly helpless German dive bomber aircraft were shot down.
Rommel could afford these losses even less since shipments from Italy had been substantially reduced (in June, he received 5,000 short tons (4,500 t) of supplies compared with 34,000 short tons (31,000 t) in May and 400 vehicles (compared with 2,000 in May). Meanwhile, the Eighth Army was reorganising and rebuilding, benefiting from its short lines of communication. By 4 July, the Australian 9th Division had entered the line in the north
On 4th July Rommel wrote a letter to his wife that reflected the condition of his forces:
“The struggle for the last position is hard. Unfortunately, things are not going as I should like them. Resistance is too great and our strength exhausted. However, I still hope to find a way to achieve our goal. I’m rather tired and fagged out.”
He decided to temporarily halt the offensive on July 4 in order to bring up more fuel, ammunition, and reinforcements. Rommel was not the only Axis soldier feeling “fagged out.” An Afrika Korps Medical Report recorded: "With the lull in the fighting the number of wounded has decreased, but the number of sick is increasing … most noticeable are [cases of] diarrhoea, skin diseases, influenza, angina and exhaustion. There was also collapsing morale among Panzer Army troops. It soon dawned on Rommel’s troops that the vision he had held out to them of smiling girls offering salaams and more at their journey’s end was slowly fading from their grasp, a mirage in the sand. One Italian soldier, drained of energy and hope, noted in his diary, ‘We come out of our holes at night to take the air, otherwise we are buried all day, and with a slit trench as deep and narrow as mine it’s no fun. There are two of us in mine and when we want to turn around it’s agony, as we are as tightly packed in as anchovies in a tin.’
Rommel, for all his inspirational and daring leadership, had failed to appreciate the importance of air support for his strike, nor had he realized how effectively the RAF was still operating. He had allowed his ground forces to outrun his air forces: the Eighth Army had been almost unscathed by either the Luftwaffe or Regia Aeronautica , whilst the RAF had not only covered their retreat but had continually pounded the advancing Panzer Army. ‘The enemy air force is bothering us a lot,’ a German soldier had noted in his diary on 4 July. ‘From five until eleven o’clock it was over us more than five or six times – the least of the bombings we had. Night and day it seems to go on without interruption, and there’s not a moment’s peace. We are becoming like potatoes – always underground.’
This crucial use of air support, as devised by Vice Air Marshal Mary Coningham and maintained by Tommy Elmhirst’s brilliant support system, was one of the very few areas where the British had tactical and strategic advantage over the Germans. Britain had much reason to thank Mary and the men of the Desert Air Force. Their achievements are all the more impressive considering their equipment and the conditions under which they were operating. By mid-July, most of the fighter squadrons were operating at half-strength.
Outnumbered in men and tanks, critically low on fuel and ammunition, the Panzer Army Afrika had very little hope of regaining the initiative. Rommel railed against Comando Supremo, which, ‘with an almost unbelievable lack of appreciation of the situation’, had inexcusably failed to deliver the fuel and weapons needed to sustain the advance into Egypt. He was especially outraged by the refusal of the Italian supply vessels on ‘the Africa run’ to take the risks required to make victory possible. To avoid the risk of being sunk by the RAF or the Royal Navy, they headed for the relative safety of Benghazi and Tripoli rather than docking at Tobruk or Mersah Matruh. As a result all replacements, spare parts, fuel, food and medical supplies had to be trucked for between 750 and 1,400 miles to the El Alamein front, which meant that the Panzer Army was critically short of the means to prosecute the war. However, the blame properly rested as much with Rommel as with Comando Supremo or OKW. He had been told in no uncertain terms that to rush headlong into Egypt without ensuring that his army had the resources to sustain the advance was recklessly incautious but, in his arrogant certainty that the Nile Delta was ripe for the picking, he dismissed these warnings out of hand. It was Rommel’s overambition and arrogant overconfidence that put Panzer Army Afrika to this situation and neither he nor his acolytes accepted that during or after the war.
There were strong military arguments to suggest that Rommel’s best course of action was to mount a phased withdrawal back to the Libyan frontier. This would shorten his lines of supply and wrong-foot the already exhausted Eighth Army. However, Rommel’s men were equally exhausted, and while captured petrol and supplies had allowed the Panzer Army to reach El Alamein, there was now not enough petrol to make an orderly and There were strong military arguments to suggest that Rommel’s best course of action was to mount a phased withdrawal back to the Libyan frontier. This would shorten his lines of supply and wrong-foot the already exhausted Eighth Army. However, Rommel’s men were too exhausted due to his callous rush into Egypt, and while captured petrol and supplies had allowed the Panzer Army to reach El Alamein, there was now not enough petrol to make an orderly and phased retreat. Once his offensive had been held, Rommel found himself trapped at El Alamein; he could not go forward or back. Rommel had staked his personal reputation and standing with Hitler in making the advance into Egypt. His insistence that he should continue had derailed the existing Axis strategy and he could hardly admit failure now. Instead, he had little choice but to hang on grimly at El Alamein, in the hope that his logistic difficulties could be surmounted and that he could find another way out of the labyrinth of his own making.
That night Rommel literally in despair wrote his wife and then ordered remains of Panzer Army to halt before Alamein line and start preparing defensive positions till new supplies and reinforcements arrive to renew the attack in a few days.
General Claude Auchinleck soon recovered his nerve no doubt helped by the arrival of another battle-worthy formation—the 9th Australian Division. Its first brigade, the 24th Infantry Brigade, arrived at the Alamein position on July 3 after a memorable journey. The Division’s Operational Report recorded of it:
“It was a journey that few will forget. The opposing traffic moved nose to tail in one continuous stream of tanks, guns, armoured cars and trucks all jammed, sometimes for hours, holding up the Divisional convoys at the same time.”
At 3 a.m. on 3rd July, the senior staff officer of 10th Corps, Brigadier Walsh, 5 telephoned orders to the headquarters of the 9th Division near Alexandria that the division was to be formed into battle groups. Realising that this order would chew up Australian division , General Morshead , commander of division (hero of first Tobruk Siege) flew up to the Commander-in-Chief’s tactical headquarters, and sought an interview with Auchinleck. After the war Morshead said that Auchinleck spoke to him very brusquely at the interview, and that the conversation went as follows :
Auchinleck : I want that brigade right away.
Morshead: You can’t have that brigade .
Auchinleck : Why?
Morshead: Because they are going to fight as a formation with the rest of
the division .
Auchinleck : Not if I give you orders?
Morshead : Give me the orders and you’ll see .
However Auchinleck, who was in no position to allow operational plans to be delayed by differences which could only be resolved satisfactorily to his wishes, if at all, by the slow process of inter-Governmental representations , bowed (against a divisional commsander) , backed down and agreed that the whole of Australian 9th Division should be brought forward as soon as practicable and employed under Morshead’s command .
Still despite his faulty judgement of deploying and sending units piecementally into battle , Auchinleck was well satisfied with events on 3rd and 4th July, although the counter-attack on 3rd July by 13 Corps against Panzer Army’s southern flank and rear had not developed as he had hoped. At 6.40 that evening he signalled in clear: ‘From C-in-C to all ranks 8 Army. Well done everybody. A very good day. Stick to it.’ Next day the New Zealanders, knowing only what had happened on their own front, thought the message applied solely to their action against Ariete Armored Division on 3rd July. The Division’s operations, however, had been more spectacular than arduous, successful though they were. The burden of the fighting on 3rd July had fallen on 1st British Armoured Division, two small columns of 50th British Division on the northern slopes of Ruweisat and, to a lesser extent, on 2nd South Africa Brigade. On 4th July , the New Zealand attack had devolved into a raid which despite fixing Italian infantry division in their place , it was later aborted.
Eventually Auchinleck (although that was not his intention. He was more like preparing for a mobile warfare with armor which thankfullty for less than well trained and commanded British tankers did not happen ) actually forced Panzer Army to a static inflexiable attrition warfare in which British were masters with firepower and attritional operational methods. There is no way Afrikakorps which was literally reduced to 26 tanks amnd its rear supply logistics lines over a single coastal road extended three times from Tripoli to till El Alamein (appox 2.800 km same distance from Duseldorff to Moscow) , could renew offensive at least for a few days. Axis drive to Nile Valley and Egypt has been officially halted at least temporarily.
Russia : While the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army was moved to Voronezh, Russia to aid the city’s defense. STAVKA (Soviet General Staff) took upon itself the handling of 5th Tank Army: on the morning of 4 July, Vasilevskii was at Lizyukov’s HQ, where a Stavka directive ordered preparations for an attack south-west of Voronezh. To the Bryansk command, it looked as if the High Command was going about 5th Tank’s attack a little too gingerly: Lizyukovhad more than 600 modern tanks, and he proposed to commit them in columns, when using his six brigades en masse would have been more effective. Lizyukov’s lead units got into action, but the bulk of his tank army was slashed and pounded by the Luftwaffe: the attempt to blunt Hoth’s Fourth Panzer spear-heads failed in spite of an over-all Soviet superiority in tanks, among them some 800 KVS and T-34s, though these encounters lasted five days in the heat and dust near the Don. The separate tank corps fought like rifle formations and were unwilling to break away from the actual rifle formations on the defensive. Stalin personally removed Feklenko from command of 17th Corps and ordered Major-General I.P. Korchagin, once a subaltern in the Imperial Russian Army who had taken service with the Red Army, to take over at once. But on 4 July, when Stalin hurled down his thunderbolts from Moscow, 17th Corps was practically wrecked.
As the fate of Voronezh was being decided, when on 3–4 July 48th Panzer Corps forced the Don, Vasilevskii told the Bryansk command ‘in confidence’ that a new front, the Voronezh Front, would soon be set up and that Golikov would assume control of it: a new commander would come to the Bryansk Front.
Meanwhile Adolf Hilter declaring Voronezh is no longer important , diverted the German 6th Army toward Stalingrad. Violent street house to house fighting spreads out between Fourth Panzer Army and Red Army defenders at Voronezh.
Soviet forces retreated at Kursk and Belgorod sectors.
Germany : RAF Bomber Command’s third 1,000-plane raid targeted Bremen, Germany, causing considerable damage to the city and the Focke-Wulf plant
Netherlands : Six American aircrews from the 15th Bomb Squadron (Light) operated six RAF Boston bombers to accompany six similar RAF aircraft on a bombing mission against enemy airfields in the Netherlands. This was the first USAAF Eighth Air Force operation of the war and resulted in its first casualties and first medal awards, for two aircraft failed to return from the mission. For returning home on one engine from this mission, Captain Charles Kegelman would be personally awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by Major General Spaatz, the then commander of the Eighth Air Force
Auschwitz , Poland : Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland began mass gassings.
Lutsk , Poland : The SS Einstazgruppen drove 4,000 Jews from their homes in Lutsk in Poland to the outskirts of town, and shot them.
Indian Ocean : German armed merchant cruiser Thor intercepted and captured empty Norwegian tanker Madrono 1,500 miles east of Madagascar; a prize crew sailed the renamed tanker Rossbach for Japan.
Guadalcanal , Solomon Islands , South West Paciific : Allied reconnaissance reported that the Japanese had begun building an airfield on Guadalcanal.
Aleutian Islands : In the Aleutians, the US Navy celebrates the 4th of July in dramatic fashion. The American submarine USS Growler, under Lt. Cdr. Howard W. Gilmore, slided into Kiska Harbor at periscope depth to find three anchored Japanese destroyers. Gilmore fired one-two- three. Miraculously, the Mark 14 torpedoes work. Japanese destroyer Arare, hit amidships, exploded when her boilers are hit. Another Japanese destroyer Kasumi’s bow was smashed, and a third Japanese destroyer Shiranuhi’s hull broke in half. Gilmore sneaked out of harbor, but it took him three days to shake off the enemy. Arare was a total loss, but the other two are refloated and rebuilt in Japan.
The same day American submarine , USS Triton stalked a silhouette for 10 hours, and launched two torpedoes, that sank Japanese destroyer Nenohi five miles south of Agattu, Aleutian Islands
The four destroyers maimed are escorts to a convoy bringing in 1,200 new Japanese troops to Kiska and six midget submarines. The Japanese, realizing that Kiska and Attu are not the highways to Alaska, start digging in, despite their shortage of construction equipment and transports. The Japanese build fortifications, midget submarine drydocks, and seaplane ramps with hand tools amid Arctic tundra. They also whip up a traditional Torii gate that still stands 50 years later, a mute memorial to Japanese occupation.
