Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Day 926 March 14, 1942

At 3 AM in the English Channel off Dover, 6 British motor torpedo boats and 3 motor gunboats attack German armed merchant cruiser Michel but are driven off by the escorting minesweepers and torpedo boats. At dawn, British attack again with 5 destroyers (HMS Blencathra, Calpe, Fernie, Walpole & Windsor) and motor torpedo boats. Michel drops her disguise and opens fire with six 6-inch guns, damaging HMS Fernie and HMS Walpole. Michel escapes to Le Havre, France, with slight damage (1 killed).

Atlantic. 200 miles West of Caribbean island of Dominica, U-67 sinks Panamanian tanker Penelope at 2 AM (2 dead, 47 survivors) and U-161 sinks Canadian SS Sarniadoc (all 21 hands lost). At 8.28 AM off Atlantic City, New Jersey, U-404 sinks US freighter SS Lemuel Burrows (20 dead, 14 survivors). At 9.18 PM 260 miles North of Bermuda, U-124 ignites British tanker MV British Resource carrying 10,000 tons of volatile benzene and white spirit (46 killed, 5 survivors picked up by British corvette HMS Clarkia and landed at Hamilton, Bermuda). MV British Resource burns all night and sinks next day.

Mediterranean. 17 miles East of Gibraltar, Italian submarine Mocenigo sinks French vessel Ste. Marcelle. At 1.23 PM off Calabria in the Ionian Sea, British submarine HMS Ultimatum spots Italian submarine Millo returning to port at Taranto, running on the surface. HMS Ultimatum sinks Millo with 4 torpedoes (55 killed, 14 survivors picked up by HMS Ultimatum, 1 survivor rescued a few hours later by a coastal patrol boat). At 5 PM, U-133 leaves base at Salamis Island, near Athens, Greece, but hits a mine and sinks 2 hours later (all 45 hands lost). There is a myth that U-133 sailed up the Colorado River to destroy the Hoover Dam.

US Air Force 51st Pursuit Squadron, which was en route to Java with crated P-40 fighters, arrives by sea at Karachi, Northwest India (now Pakistan).

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