42-8-17 USAF bombs Rouen

B-17 Daytime raid - Rouen = USAF first bombing mission > .
44-12-31 B-17 Piggyback & Crash > .

17 August 1942: Mission No. 1. The United States VIII Bomber Command made its first heavy bomber attack on Nazi-occupied Europe when eighteen Boeing B-17E Flying Fortress four-engine bombers of the 97th Bombardment Group (Heavy), based at RAF Polebrook, Northamptonshire, England, headed for the railroad marshaling yards at Rouen-Sotteville, France. This was the largest and most active railroad yard in northern France.
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While six B-17s flew along the French coast as a diversion, twelve bombers flew to Rouen and were over the target from 1739 to 1746. From an altitude of 23,000 feet (7,010 meters), they dropped 39,000 pounds (17,690 kilograms) of general purpose bombs.

Accuracy was good. One of the aim points, the locomotive shops, was destroyed by a direct hit. The overall results were moderate.

https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/17-august-1942/ .

Lt Glenn Rojohn of the 8th Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group was flying his B-17 Flying Fortress on a raid over Germany. A second B-17 struck and stuck below Rojohn's B-17.

42-7-27 Japanese Bomb Port Darwin

.42-7-27 Port Darwin bombed by 27 Japanese bombers - BrMo > .

(27 Jul 1942) Twenty-seven Japanese bombers raid the North Australian port of Darwin.

42-7-2 Destruction of Convoy PQ17 42-7-25

Destruction of Convoy PQ17: Merchant Ships Left Defenceless - Hgraph > .

PQ 17 was the code name for an Allied Arctic convoy during WW2. On 27 June 1942, the ships sailed from Hvalfjord, Iceland, for the port of Arkhangelsk in the Soviet Union. The convoy was located by German forces on 1 July, after which it was shadowed continuously and attacked. The First Sea Lord Admiral Dudley Pound, acting on information that German surface units, including the German battleship Tirpitz, were moving to intercept, ordered the covering force built around the Allied battleships HMS Duke of York and the USS Washington away from the convoy and told the convoy to scatter. Due to vacillation by Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, German armed forces high command), the Tirpitz raid never materialised. The convoy was the first large joint Anglo-American naval operation under British command; in Churchill's view this encouraged a more careful approach to fleet movements.

As the close escort and the covering cruiser forces withdrew westwards to intercept the German raiders, the merchant ships were left without escorts. The merchant ships were attacked by Luftwaffe aircraft and U-boats and of the 35 ships, only eleven reached their destination, delivering 70,000 short tons (64,000 metric tons) of cargo. The convoy disaster demonstrated the difficulty of passing adequate supplies through the Arctic, especially during the summer midnight sun. Convoy PQ 17 lost 24 of its 35 merchant ships during a week of daylight attacks by U-boats and aircraft. The German success was possible through German signals intelligence and cryptological analysis.

42-6-10 Aleutian Islands campaign 43-8-15

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America's Arctic War - The Aleutians Campaign - MaFe > .
The Only Land Battle Fought on U.S. soil in WW2 > .

What Exactly Are Maritime Borders? - KhAnubis > .

1 CE to 2024 Mapping History of the Arctic - Tigerstar > .

24-11-1 [Increasing Geostrategic Importance of Alaska] - Invisible > . skip > .

The Aleutian Islands campaign was a military campaign conducted by the United States and Japan in the Aleutian Islands, part of the Territory of Alaska, in the American theater and the Pacific theater of World War II starting on 3 June 1942. In the only two invasions of the United States during the war, a small Japanese force occupied the islands of Attu and Kiska, where the remoteness of the islands and the challenges of weather and terrain delayed a larger U.S.-Canadian force sent to eject them for nearly a year. The islands' strategic value was their ability to control Pacific transportation routes, which is why U.S. General Billy Mitchell stated to the U.S. Congress in 1935, "I believe that in the future, whoever holds Alaska will hold the world. I think it is the most important strategic place in the world." The Japanese reasoned that control of the Aleutians would prevent a possible U.S. attack across the Northern Pacific. Similarly, the U.S. feared that the islands would be used as bases from which to carry out a full-scale aerial attack on U.S. West Coast cities like Anchorage, Seattle, Portland, or Los Angeles.

A battle to reclaim Attu was launched on May 11, 1943, and completed following a final Japanese banzai charge on May 29. On August 15, 1943, an invasion force landed on Kiska in the wake of a sustained three-week barrage, only to discover that the Japanese had withdrawn from the island on July 29.

The campaign is known as the "Forgotten Battle", due to its being overshadowed by the simultaneous Guadalcanal Campaign. Military historians believe it was a diversionary or feint attack during the Battle of Midway, meant to draw out the U.S. Pacific Fleet from Midway Atoll, as it was launched simultaneously under the same commander, Isoroku Yamamoto. Some historians have argued against this interpretation, believing that the Japanese invaded the Aleutians to protect their northern flank, and did not intend it as a diversion.

42-4-23 Baedecker Blitz 42-6-1

Butcher Bird Blitz: Focke-Wulf 190 Assault on England > .


Sar Jim | The butcher bird raids prompted the RN to convert a couple of merchant ships into radar pickets in an attempt to pick up German raiders flying at low levels. Because the ship's radars were only 50 or so feet off the sea surface they had a better chance of picking up low fliers than land based stations. The state of radars then was such that ships only added about two minutes warning time compared to land based radars so the experiment wasn't continued. It did lead to the British converting older destroyers of the Battle class into so-called aircraft direction ships in the early 50's, fulfilling some of the radar picket tasks as first tried during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baedeker_Blitz .

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfCKvREB11-fxyotS1ONgww/videos