February 5, 1941. North Africa.
Operation Compass. At noon, after crossing 150 miles of desert in 30 hours, Combe Force’s armoured cars cut the coast road at the hamlet of Sidi Saleh. 30 minutes later, retreating Italians begin arriving from Benghazi but they cannot break through the British roadblock. By evening, 4th Armoured Brigade reaches the road 10 miles north at Beda Fomm and attacks the Italian column with tanks.
Source: worldwar2daybyday
February 7, 1940. Finland
Red Army attacks the Summa gap for the 7th consecutive day. The daily artillery bombardment and tank/infantry attacks, followed by Finnish counterattacks, weakens the Mannerheim Line fortifications, exhausts the defenders and sucks in the Finnish reserves.
Photo: A field gun of the Red Army in action on the Karelian Isthmus. Image via Juri Kilin.
Source: worldwar2daybyday
February 8, 1941. North Africa
General O’Connor has plans for Operation Compass to push onwards to Tripoli, Libya, and drive Italian forces from North Africa. However, Hitler has already decided to provide assistance to his ally Mussolini. The first Afrikakorps troops sail for Tripoli from Naples, Italy, aboard German steamers Ankara, Arcturus & Alicante (escorted by Italian destroyer Turbine and 3 torpedo boats). They dock at Palermo, Sicily, for 2 days to avoid British Force H from Gibraltar which is at sea in the central Mediterranean (bound for Genoa).
Photo: German medium tanks Pz.Kpfw. III Ausf.G of the 5th Tank Regiment, 5th Light Mechanized Division ‘Africa’ before being sent to North Africa.
Source: worldwar2daybyday
@captain-walker Its fun to see someone rummaging through that turret basket, its a distinct feature of early german tanks when you make the models, I believe Pzkw II has a similarly shaped basket. And of course, radiator and fan covers, license plate lights etc. were all designed in that peculiar german way that you only notice when you operate a miniature tank assembly factory.
On this day in 1944, aero-engine factory, Limoges, France. 617 Squadron commander Cheshire made three low-level passes, warning civilians, before bombing commenced.
12 Lancasters of No 617 Squadron, led by its new commanding officer Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire, attacked the Gnome & Rhone aero-engine factory at Limoges in France. This was a very important raid. No 617 Squadron had been experiencing difficulty in finding a useful role after the Dams Raid nearly 9 months earlier. Low-level precision raids on targets in Germany had been too costly. High-level precision bombing on small targets in France and Belgium had been unsatisfactory, despite marking by Oboe-equipped Mosquitos. For this attack, Cheshire was given official permission to attempt low-level marking of this target, which had many French civilian houses near by. The factory was undefended, except for 2 machine-guns, and Cheshire made 3 low-level runs in bright moonlight to warn the French factory workers to escape. On his 4th run, he dropped a load of 30lb incendiaries from between 50 and 100ft. Each of 11 other Lancasters then dropped a 12,000lb bomb with great accuracy; 10 bombs hit the factory and the remaining one fell in the river alongside. The factory was severely damaged and production almost completely ceased. There were few if any casualties among the French people. No Lancasters were lost.
Despite the success of the low-level marking, it was never adopted by the Pathfinders, but was used on raids by No 617 Squadron and No 5 Group.
Source: The National Archives
9 February 1945
P-51 Mustangs of the 8th AF return from an escort mission to Lutzkendorf, Germany.
44-15152 QI-T ‘Jersey Jerk’, 44-15666 QI-E ‘Jett Job’, QI-A and QI-P of the 361FS, 356FG, 8AF.
Nearest in shot is Maj. Donald Strait in his personal aircraft 44-15152 QI-T ‘Jersey Jerk’, and tucked just behind is Lt. Shelby N. Jett his is P-51D serial 44-15666 QI-E ‘Jett Job’, with QI-A and QI-P tucked in behind them both. One unknown straggler is seen catching up from behind.
@captain-walker Beautiful pic. Thank you.
February 11, 1940. Finland
With the Mannerheim Line weakening, Timoshenko opens his main attack. From morning till noon massive artillery barrage (heard 100 miles away), then 120,000 Soviet troops attack into the 12 mile Summa gap. 123rd division penetrates the Lähde sector and 245th Rifle Regiment under Colonel Rosly takes Fort Poppius at 13:30hrs by parking armoured cars in front of the machine gun ports. Finns try to plug the gap but are cut down by Soviet tanks. Strangely, Soviets do not send in reinforcements to exploit this gap. Fighting goes on around Million Fort all night.
Photo: The Red Army’s light tank platoon ready to attack the Karelian Isthmus
Source: worldwar2daybyday
Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival (right), led by a Japanese officer, walks under a flag of truce to negotiate the capitulation of Allied forces in Singapore, on 15 February 1942. It was the largest surrender of British-led forces in history.
20 February 1945
Navy Doctors, Corpsmen and a Chaplain administer to the wounded at an Iwo Jima Aid Station.
Navy Chaplain Lieutenant (Junior Grade) John H. Galbreath (right center) is kneeling beside a man who has severe flash burns, received in an artillery battery fifty yards or so away.
"… a sizeable element of beach defenders had survived the Navy’s rolling barrage and added their weight to the fire. As one marine battalion commander remarked, “You could’ve held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by”.
Photographed by Warrant Officer Obie Newcomb, Jr., USMCR.
(Colourised by Royston Leonard)
21st Feb 1940
Germany
Adolf Hitler authorized the Operation Weserübung, the invasion of Norway. Lieutenant General Falkenhorst was ordered to submit his final invasion plan by 1700 hours on the same day. Having no clue he was to be assigned this commanding role prior to the meeting and given little time to prepare, Falkenhorst purchased a traveler’s guide to Norway and used it to design a general invasion plan; the general plan he would devise in his hotel room in the next few hours would generally agree with the plan the OKW had come up with thus far.
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
This iconic photograph was taken by Joe Rosenthal 74 years ago on this day, February 23rd 1945. It depicts 6 US Marines raising an American flag atop Mount Suribachi, during the fierce Battle of Iwo Jima, Japan.
Colourised by Marina Amaral
February 25, 1945
US. Ensign Ardon Rector Ives #382583 of Rockford, Mich., appears to be calmly unbuckling his seat belt and readying to escape from his burning Grumman F6F-5 ‘Hellcat’ of VF-9 fighter carrier group.
His fighter burst into flames when it hit a barrier and other planes while landing on the USS Lexington (CV-16) on February 25 1945.
Ardon Ives was KIA in a dogfight with Japanese fighters just a few weeks later on March 18 1945, aged 23.
(Initially classified as MIA until May 22 1945)
Ensign Ardon Rector Ives, United States Navy, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (Posthumously) for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight as a Fighter Pilot embarked in U.S.S. Yorktown from 16 February 1945 to 18 March 1945.
He is buried in his home town of Rockford, Kent County, Michigan.
(Photo source - US Navy)
Salvage work continuing on the sunken battleship USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 25 February 1942. Note Arizona’s two after main turrets being pumped out and disassembled.
February 25, 1945
USMC 5th Division Marines grouped behind their Browning M1919 .30 calibre machine gun, display Japanese battle flags captured during the first few days of the bloody fight for Iwo Jima.
It was the men of the Fifth who fought their way to the top of Mount Suribachi to raise the American flag on the rim of the crater.
The 5th Division landed on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, southeast of Mount Suribachi. The division sustained heavy initial losses, so much so that by that afternoon, the 26th Marine Regiment had to be released as the division reserve.
On February 23, two American flags were raised on Mount Suribachi by members of the 28th Marine Regiment. The 5th Division would fight on Iwo Jima from February 19 until March 26 where they would sustain 2,482 killed in action, 19 missing in action, and 6,218 wounded in action. This was the highest casualty rate among the three Marine divisions involved in the invasion.
(U.S. Navy Official photograph)
@captain-walker
wow that’s gotta be close to a 50% casualty rate for the 5th
1943:
The battle of Kasserine ends when the city is occupied by the Allies. Axis attack causes roughly 10,000 casualties against 2,000 Axis dead.
The RAF begins ‘round the clock’ air offensive over Europe. Nuremberg heavily bombed at night.
Men of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division march through the Kasserine Pass, Tunisia. February 26th 1943.
26 February 1942
Indian ocean: American seaplane tender Langley, on the way to Java, is sunk by Japanese air action.
North Africa: British XIII Corps take up positions on the Gazala-Bir Hacheim line; XXX Corps prepares a defensive line on Egyptian frontier and in the Jarabub oasis. British aircraft bomb Benghazi and Tripoli 2nd day straight.
Philippines: Japanese amphibious troops leave Luzon for Mindoro.
@Phelan-Kell said in On this day during W.W. 2:
26 February 1942
Indian ocean: American seaplane tender Langley, on the way to Java, is sunk by Japanese air action.
I once saw a two-part, 1960s-ish US Navy documentary about the evolution of aircraft carriers and it mentions the USS Langley, a.k.a. CV-1, the USN’s first carrier (and, as a footnote, also the USN’s first ship with turbo-electric propulsion). Its capacities were limited, but it was only meant to serve as an experimental platform for the development of carrier technology, operational techniques and doctrine, and much was learned from those early pioneering days. The documentary’s narrator has a memorable line in which he says that, decades later, it was a source of great pride for a dwindling number of grey-haired naval aviators to say to their younger buddies, “I flew from the Langley.”
