Eighty years ago the British find the limits of raiding possiblities in North Africa

 

The British launched a number of simultaneous but unconnected attacks on the Axis rear area in North Africa. The initiative appears to have come from special forces HQ in Cairo with the goal of causing major disruption. Progressively even military bureaucrats had been converted to the attractions of special forces operations, but this had bred exaggerrated hopes. The most ambitious was a land and sea attack on Tobruk. The land element was disguised as a convoy of prisoners under German (in reality Jewish emigres of the Special Interrogation Group) escort. The raid failed catastrophically with over one thousand killed or PoW and the sinking of a cruiser, two destroyers and a number of light craft by the Italian navy and air force. The leader Colonel Haselden was killed. Apart from a successful raid on an Italian airfield at Barce by the LRDG none of the other elements succeeded. A large-scale attack on Benghazi by the SAS was detected early and aborted. An attempt to seize Jalo Oasis was beaten off.

The Japanese submarine I-19 sighted the USN aircraft carrier Wasp which was escorting a convoy bringing a regiment of US Marines to fight on Guadalcanal. She fired a salvo of six torpedoes at Wasp and it proved to be one of the most devastating fired of the war. Three torpedoes hit Wasp and others hit the battleship North Carolina and the destroyer O'Brien. Severe fires broke out on Wasp and she was abandoned after an hour. The only consolation was that the 26 aircraft of her airwing that were airborne were able to land safely on Wasp's sister  Hornet. The other warships were badly damaged; fatally in the case of O'Brien; North Carolina was out of action for three months.

German troops reached the central district of Stalingrad. Despite near-complete German air superiority the Red Army had fought tenaciously, launching major counter-attacks. At no stage were the Soviets forced into full-scale retreat or surrounded and forced to surrender as had happened so frequently in the aftermath of Barbarossa. Nor were Soviet forces on the western side of the Volga eliminated. Teh stage was set for savage, attritional battles in the surviving buildings of the city.