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01/01/1942 In a first step toward organization of the United Nations, representatives of 26 allied countries meet in Washington and pledge to do their utmost to defeat Germany, Italy and Japan.
In the Philippines, American forces retreating from southern and northern Luzon join hands and retreat together toward Bataan. The rendezvous is made possible by a gallant rear-guard battle 10 miles north of Manila. U. S. tankers hold a key bridge, then dynamite it moments after the last units of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's army have crossed.
In the Soviet Union, the Germans counterattack a Russian force which has landed in the eastern Crimea and is trying to break the siege of Sevastopol.
A grim month is ahead for Allied sailors. The Germans and Japanese will sink 106 ships during January, including 48 in the Atlantic.
On the home front, U. S. Atty. Gen. Francis Biddle orders German, Italian and Japanese aliens to surrender their firearms.
01/02/1942 Manila and the naval base at Cavite fall to the 14th Japanese Army. Gen. Douglas MacArthur's army completes its withdrawal to Bataan, a mountainous 15-by-25-mile peninsula. MacArthur will have 80,000 troops on Bataan and another 15,000 on the fortress island of Corregidor. His men have plenty of ammunition but are short of food and medical supplies, especially the anti-malaria drug quinine. Bataan has one of the world's worst infestations of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. To complicate MacArthur's problems, 26,000 civilians have fled to Bataan and must be cared for.
In Burma, the Flying Tigers raid a Japanese air base in Thailand, one of the first offensive air strikes by the allies in Asia. Security restrictions require the leader of the raid be identified only as "Scarsdale Jack." During the coming months, he will become famous. He is John Van Kuren Newkirk, a former Navy pilot from Westchester County, N. Y.
01/03/1942 The allies establish the ABDA (American, British, Dutch, Australian) Command to defend Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and Australia. It is headed by Sir Archibald Wavell, reputedly Britain's finest soldier.
Wavell has an impossible job. British forces in Malaya are being thrashed and the Dutch East Indies will be defended by handful of ground units and a skimpy, hastily assembled fleet with little air cover.
The Japanese land on Borneo, one of the largest of the East Indies.
In the Philippines, Corregidor's antiquated anti-aircraft guns are unable to reach high-flying Japanese bombers. But U. S. Air Corps B-17s hit a Japanese cruiser and a seaplane tender at Davao in the southern Philippines.
The British announce they have captured 5,000 Germans and Italians at Bardia in Libya.
On the home front, Chrysler Corp. announces plans to triple tank production and double anti-aircraft gun output.
01/04/1942 Gen. Douglas MacArthur reports the Japanese are terrorizing the white residents of Manila. The Japanese say the actions are "against white fifth columnists."
Malta endures its "Black Winter" as German and Italian planes bomb the island almost daily. Malta, with its big British air and naval base, has become the center point of the struggle for the Mediterranean.
Thousands of Maltese are living in natural caves under Valletta, the capitol. Hundreds of allied military personnel and Maltese civilians have been killed, neighborhoods have been obliterated and outlying towns and villages savaged. The island has serious food and fuel shortages.
The Royal Air Force opposes the attacks with a shrinking number of Hurricane fighters, but on this date Malta-based RAF bombers wreck 44 German and Italian planes on Sicily's Castlevetrano Airfield.
01/05/1942 Gen. Douglas MacArthur's U. S.-Filipino army completes its withdrawal to Bataan and establishes a 20-mile-long defense line across the northern end of the mountainous peninsula MacArthur orders half rations for the forces on Bataan and Corregidor.
In Malaya, the Japanese curl around the flanks of the British-officered 12th Indian division and force another retreat. A momentary panic ensues when the soldiers think they hear Japanese tanks. Actually, the sound is made by Japanese infantrymen riding bicycles whose tires have worn out. Their bike rims make a loud clattering on the hard-topped road.
Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announces his forces in South China have won a big victory over the Japanese at Changsha. He claims 56,000 Japanese have been killed. Much of the reinvigorated Chinese army's equipment has been shipped to China via the Burma Road.
President Roosevelt orders all men 20 to 44 to register for the draft by February 16.
01/06/1942 In the Pacific, a Navy task force that includes the aircraft carrier Yorktown sails from San Diego, California. It escorts a convoy that will land Marine Corps reinforcements on American Samoa, a vital mid-Pacific link in the supply line that will send ships, planes and guns to Australia and New Zealand.
In his State of the Union address, President Roosevelt announces the United States will be "the arsenal of democracy" during the rest of the war. He asks Congress to allocate a record $56 billion for the 12 months beginning July 1, 1941. Most of the money will be used to build 125,000 planes, 75,000 tanks, 35,000 artillery pieces and 11 million tons of warships and merchant ships. Part of this will be allotted to America's allies. The president also recommends $9 billion in new taxes.
Gen. Erwin Rommel ends his fighting retreat at El Agheila, Libya, and learns he soon will get 55 new tanks and other equipment from a German convoy that has eluded the British and arrived in Tripoli.
01/07/1942 In Malaya, the Japanese 25th Army gains a bridgehead across a river and discouraged British-Indian units retreat again. Elsewhere, the Japanese complete their conquest of Sarawak, a British colony on Borneo.
The Japanese news agency Domei reports that Imperial forces have withdrawn from Changsha, China, because they have completed their objectives. That's a lie to cover an ignominious Japanese disaster at the hands of a revived Chinese army.
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ignores the advise of his Red Army chief of staff, Marshall Georgi Zhukov, and orders attacks along a 1,000-mile front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Zhukov, who has just defeated the Germans in the Battle of Moscow, warns Stalin the Russian attacks will be too spread out to achieve much. He's Right. The Germans hold fast in "hedgehogs" centered on large towns; Demyansk, Rzhev, Vyzama, Bryansk, Orel and Kursk. None of these strong points fall and the Russian attacks falter.
01/08/1942 The Flying Tigers, one of the few points of light in the Pacific, destroy 11 Japanese planes in raids on Thailand and northern Malaya. Two are credited to "Scarsdale Jack" Newkirk, leader of the Panda Bear squadron.
A strange pattern is developing in the air war over Burma and Thailand. The Japanese bomb Allied airfields near Rangoon at night and the Flying Tigers and the Royal Air Force strafe Japanese airdromes during the day.
In Malaya, Supreme Commander Sir Archibald Wavell orders hard-pressed Indian divisions to establish a new defense line behind another river. Meanwhile, a Japanese convoy lands additional troops.
On the home front, Congress establishes the Office of Civilian Defense which will be headed by New York City Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. And the federal government orders the distillery industry to convert 60 percent of its whiskey-making capacity to ethyl alcohol production, a move that will sharply increase the availability of explosive smokeless powder.
01/09/1942 Overconfident and contemptuous of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's army, the Japanese launch their first attack on Bataan with 10,000 poorly trained reservists. Two hundred artillery pieces blast the Japanese as they blunder into the U. S.-Filipino defense line.
The stunned Japanese fallback, regroup and launch a second assault, this one at night. They're cut down in heaps and the survivors retreat in confusion. Worse yet, a Japanese regiment embarrassingly gets lost in the jungle for a week. It's the first Japanese setback since the Marines' surprising -- but temporary -- victory at Wake Island nearly a month before.
In Southeast Asia, the Flying Tigers' Panda Bear squadron and RAF fighters plaster a Japanese airfield in Thailand. They claim 24 Japanese planes have been destroyed.
In the Dutch East Indies, a Japanese bomber wrecks the American passenger ship Ruth Alexander.
01/10/1942 U. S. aircraft carrier Lexington, which wasn't at Pearl Harbor on December 7, finally meets the enemy. Lady Lex's scout planes spot a surfaced Japanese submarine southwest of Hawaii. Depth charges and machine-gun attacks damage the sub, which is returning to its base in the Marshall Islands after attacking American shipping off California. The sub emits an oil slick, but limps home.
In Southeast Asia, the Flying Tigers knock off eight more Japanese aircraft in a raid on a Thai airfield, five on the ground and three in air-to-air combat.
On the home front, Congress imposes price controls on most food and goods. The Professional Golfer's Association cancels many of its 1942 championship events. In Hollywood, 21-year-old Mickey Rooney marries 19-year-old Ava Gardner.
01/11/1942 The Allies suffer one of their worst days since Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese declare war on the Dutch East Indies and dispatch three large naval, air and army task forces to conquer the heavily populated 3,000-mile-wide island chain that stretches from Malaya to New Guinea and the entire archipelago. Hours after the announcement, a Japanese task force lands troops at Manado in northern Celebes.
The U. S. Aircraft carrier Saratoga is hit by a torpedo fired by Japanese submarine I-6 southwest of Hawaii. The carrier will limp to Bremerton, Washington, for major repairs, reducing the Pacific Fleet to three carriers.
In the Philippines, the Japanese capture Olangapo, the U. S. Navy Base in Subic Bay. In Malaya they overrun Kuala Lumpur, the British army's main supply base north of Singapore.
Two exploding torpedoes open the German U-boat campaign off the U. S. East Coast. Fired by U-123, the torpedoes sink British cargo ship Cyclops 300 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
01/12/1942 In the Philippines, the Japanese launch a headlong attack on Bataan's 20-mile-long defense line. They make a small penetration but are driven back by counterattacks and artillery fire.
A Japanese landing force seizes Tarakan, a Dutch "oil city" off the coast of Borneo that is one of Japan's premier industrial targets. Pre-war oil embargoes by the United States, Britain and the Netherlands had cut off all Japanese sources, but by capturing Tarakan and other Borneo oil fields the Japanese will ease their oil shortage.
At Home, the federal government announces it will invest $400 million this year to produce synthetic rubber. The United States and Mexico establish a Joint Defense Commission.
In Libya, Gen. Erwin Rommel plans a surprise attack on the British 8th Army's "Desert Rats." The operation is kept so secret that Rommel doesn't tell his superiors in Berlin and Rome about it. As a result, British codebreakers who are reading top-secret German messages with their Enigma machine can't warn the unprepared 8th Army.
01/13/1942 British, Australian and Indian reenforcements begin arriving at Singapore to help the hard-pressed forces which have lost eight of Malaya's nine provinces to the Japanese 25th Army. Advance elements of the Japanese are only 100 miles from the big British naval base.
Domestically, 19 West Coast shipyards adopt around-the-clock, seven-day-a-week work schedules.
Another Allied disaster unfolds off the East Coast of the United States as German submarines sink three ships, the first phase of a six-month U-boat assault in the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
Nonetheless, East Coast cities do not black out their lights for several months and U-boat skippers destroys many ships silhouetted by the lights.
01/14/1942 American and British military leaders complete top-level meetings in Washington. Agreed is the war's basic strategy: beat Germany and Italy first, then knock out Japan. A tentative timetable calls for liberating North Africa in mid-1942 and invading France in 1943.
In Malaya, the 8th Australian division goes into action for the first time and halts the Japanese 25th Army at Gemas, a town 100 miles north of Singapore. An eight-day battle ensues in which the Japanese surround 4,000 Aussies and Indians. Only 800 of the Allied troops fight their way out. A terrible fate befalls those taken prisoner. Members of the Japanese Imperial Guards division torture them for a day, then douse them with gasoline and burn them to death.
President Roosevelt orders all aliens in the United States to register with the government. The brunt of these orders later will fall on Japanese-Americans on the West Coast.
01/15/1942 The Japanese begin their fourth major offensive (after Malaya, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies). The new target, Burma.
Though not one of Japan's original war aims, Burma is invaded to eliminate a possible threat to the Japanese army in Malaya. The Japanese also want to cut the Burma Road which is feeding supplies and equipment to China and seize Burma's oil fields. Two Japanese army divisions pour into southern and eastern Burma.
To oppose them, the British have two divisions: one Burmese, one Indian. Many of the Burmese hate the British and desert. Later 5,000 join the Burmese National Army and fight alongside the Japanese.
At home, people on Long Island, N. Y., hear a thundering explosion and see towering flames from the British tanker Coimbra, torpedoed 23 miles offshore by U-123. Forty-two crewmen are killed or wounded.
In Washington, Secretary of War Henry Stimson says nearly two million men will be inducted into the army during 1942. By year end it will have 3.6 million men.
In Europe, Royal Air Force bombers raid Hamburg and Emden.
01/16/1942 The Japanese invasion of Burma gets off to a fast start by capturing a British airfield near the Thai-Burmese border.
In the Soviet Union, German units take Theodosia in the Crimea and capture 10,000 Russians. Hitler has ordered the Wehrmacht to wipe out a Russian force in the eastern Crimea, then overwhelm Sevastopol in western Crimea, home port of the Soviets' Black Sea Fleet.
Churchill completes a four-week visit to the United States and Canada by flying from Bermuda to Great Britain.
In the United States, President Roosevelt appoints former Sears, Roebuck vice president Donald Nelson to head the newly established War Production Board. Nelson will coordinate the nationwide production of ships, planes, guns, tanks and other equipment.
01/17/1942 The Japanese find a hole in the American-Filipino defense on Bataan and start infiltrating through it. A taunting broadcast by radio propagandist Tokyo Rose (American-born Iva Ikuko Toguri) says MacArthur will be captured before the end of the month and paraded in the streets of Tokyo.
In Malaya, the Japanese 25th Army gains the upper hand over Australians and Indians in their battle near Gemas. The Japanese breach the defenses along the Muar river, begin outflanking the Australian 8th Division and are only 90 miles from Singapore.
For the first time in a month, the Japanese air force tries to raid Kunming, China, the Flying Tigers' main base. The Tigers shoot down three heavy bombers.
A British convoy carrying war supplies to northern Russia is attacked by a German U-boat. A destroyer and a cargo ship are sunk. It is the first German assault on Allied ships making the stormy, icy passage across the Barents Sea to Murmansk and Archangel.
01/18/1942 Life in Leningrad reaches a low ebb.
Since September, the city that Czar Peter the Great built has been almost encircled by the Germans and Finns. Food and ammunition reach the city over a rickety supply line that includes a 50-mile "ice road" across frozen Lake Ladoga.
The daily bread ration has been cut to nine ounces per day and Leningraders are hunting cats, dogs, rats and sparrows. Four thousand people are dying each day. The frozen bodies lay where they have fallen and won't be removed until spring. (More that 900,000 Leningraders perished in an 890-day siege that didn't end until January 1944.)
The German U-boat onslaught along the East Coast of the United States claims another victim when American tanker Allan Jackson is torpedoed off Cape Hatteras, N. C.
New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio is named 1941's Player of the Year.
01/19/1942 The first elements of a convoy escorted by the carriers Enterprise and Yorktown arrive at American Samoa with Marine reinforcements. It is the Navy's first successful operation in the Pacific and bolsters a key link on the supply line to Australia.
In Burma, the rapidly advancing Japanese 15th Army overruns a Royal Air Force airfield at Tavoy and continues its advance toward Moulmein. The British lose another colony when the Japanese complete their conquest of oil-rich North Borneo.
Along the Atlantic seaboard, the German submarine U-66 sinks the Canadian passenger liner Lady Hawkins off Cape Hatteras, N. C., and 243 passengers and crewmen are killed. It is the worst tragedy thus far in the new U-boat onslaught that the Germans call Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat).
Cleveland Indians Bob Feller signs a $30,000 contract for 1942 and becomes the highest paid pitcher in the history of baseball.
01/20/1942 In the Philippines, U. S.-Filipino defenses on Bataan begin to crumble. Weary, hungry Americans begin chalking V's on their helmets: for victim, not victory.
In Burma, a second Japanese invasion force crosses the Burma-Thailand frontier and heads toward Rangoon. Jack Newkirk becomes the Flying Tigers' first ace by shooting down two more Japanese planes.
President Roosevelt signs a bill that decrees Daylight Savings Time for the duration of the war. It goes into effect February 9.
The Holocaust is plotted by 16 Nazis led by SS Lt. Gen. Reinhard Heydrich.
Meeting in Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, Heydrich and his underlings agree on a "final solution" for the 8.3 million Jews in German-controlled Europe. SS Lt. Col. Adolf Eichmann will ship the Jews and other "undesirables" to resettlement and extermination camps -- notably Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzecm Chelmno, Maidenek, Sobibor and Treblink.
01/21/1942 In Malaya, the Japanese smash Australian and Indian troops and force the Allies to retreat from the Muar River line, 85 miles from Singapore. The Japanese also intensify their air attacks on Singapore.
The week-old Japanese invasion of Burma overruns another British airfield. Japanese aircraft bomb several Allied bases in New Guinea.
Heavy fighting continues on Bataan with the Japanese 14th Army exploiting a hole in the center of the U. S.-Filipino defense line.
Bolstered by modest reenforcements of men and tanks, Gen. Erwin Rommel the "Desert Fox," launches a stunning surprise attack on the British 8th Army in Libya.
The British have been weakened by the loss of forces to the Far East. Rommel advances in two columns, isolates a British tank brigade and speeds toward Benghazi and Tobruk, the biggest port cities of the province of Cyrenaica.
01/22/1942 The Japanese break the defense line on Bataan. Some panicked units flee but hard-fighting artillerymen slow the Japanese advance. Gen. MacArthur orders a retreat to a second defense line midway down the peninsula.
The Japanese also land two units near the southern tip of Bataan, but they're wiped out by MacArthur's hodgepodge reserves -- Marines, sailors from sunken ships, Air Corps crews and mechanics and Filipino scouts.
In Malaya, an Indian brigade lands in Singapore to reinforce the hard-pressed British Empire army.
The Japanese close in on Rabaul, a small port on New Britain island north of the Solomons. (It will become Japan's biggest base in the Southwest Pacific.) The commanders of Rabaul's Aussie garrison cites the Roman gladiators in his farewell message: "We who are about to die salute you!" Of his 1,400 member garrison, only 400 escape.
The War Department begins organizing the all-black 93rd Infantry Division and the all-black 100th pursuit squadron.
01/23/1942 Another U.S. Navy raid on Wake Island is aborted when the Japanese submarine I-72 torpedoes the oiler Neches 135 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor.
The Neches was to have refueled the task force, but without the oiler there's no way the task force can sail to Wake, fight and return to Pearl.
A Japanese landing force seizes Balikpapan, a large oil complex on Borneo. Another unit takes the big Dutch air base at Kendari, Celebes, and Japanese planes can now intercept Allied reinforcements being ferried from Australia to Java. Japanese landing parties capture Rabaul on New Britain, Kavieng on New Ireland, and gain a foothold on Bougainville in the northern Solomon Islands.
The Pacific's only bright spot is another victory by the Flying Tigers who shoot down 21 Japanese planes near Rangoon.
In Libya, the Italian forces attached to Rommel's Afrika Corps refuse to participate in the Desert Fox's surprise offensive against the British 8th Army. Rommel storms ahead without them.
01/24/1942 The first American naval victory since the Spanish-American War is scored by four antiquated destroyers.
To oppose the Japanese takeover of the Balikpapan oil complex, Rear Adm. William Glassford orders two cruisers and the World War I tincans Parrot, Pope, Paul Jones and Ford to sail from Timor and attack the Japanese task force.
The Cruisers turn back when one is damaged by a reef and the other develops engine trouble. The destroyers press on and in a night attack sink three Japanese troopships. A Dutch submarine destroys a fourth.
The Flying Tigers score 11 more victories near Rangoon. A force of Chinese-manned Russian bombers blast Haiphong in French Indo-China. A British division lands in Singapore to reinforce the retreating Allied army.
Japanese planes from the carriers Hiryu and Soryu blast the naval base at Amboina in the Dutch East Indies.
The Parl Harbor investigation commission tells President Roosevelt that Adm. Husband Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter Short should be charged with dereliction of duty.
01/25/1942 In Malaya, Australian and British-officered Indian divisions abandon their last river defense line above Singapore and flee toward the big British naval base.
Menaced by another Japanese force, an Australian unit abandons Lae, the capital of eastern New Guinea, the huge island 300 miles north of Australia.
The German surprise offensive in Libya against the British 8th Army is moving briskly. Gen. Rommel's Panzer Armee Afrika has advanced nearly 50 miles and destroyed a British armored brigade.
In the Mediterranean, the Royal Air Force successfully attacks a German-Italian convoy.
01/26/1942 On Bataan, discouraged U. S. and Filipino soldiers dig in along their second defense line halfway down the jungle-covered peninsula. Japanese planes bomb them during the day, and Japanese loudspeakers taunt them at night. A ditty circulates among the troops:
"We're the battling bastards of Bataan;
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam.
No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces;
No rifles, no planes or artillery pieces.
And nobody gives a damn!"
In Malaya, the Japanese are now 60 miles from the big British naval base at Singapore. In nearby Burma, the Japanese are closing in on Moulmein, the city of pagodas.
The U. S. 34th infantry division begins arriving in Northern Ireland, the first American army units to land in Europe.
Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera protests the American presence. He is assured the United States has no hostile intentions toward Ireland.
01/27/1942 The American sub Gudgeon tracks down and sinks Japanese sub I-173 which two days earlier shelled Midway Island. Navy codebreakers helped by intercepting I-173's radio messages and pinpointing its location. Gudgeon is the first U. S. sub to destroy an enemy sub.
In another Far East sea battle, three Japanese destroyers take on two British destroyers trying to break up a troop landing in southern Malaya. The British destroyer Thanet is sunk, but the other warship escapes.
In Britain, Prime Minister Churchill announces American planes will join the Royal Air Force "in the ever increasing offensive against Germany."
At home, President Roosevelt announces the Office of Price Administration will ration all retail goods and commodities until the end of the war.
01/28/1942 The commander of the British army in Malaya, Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival, gives up all hope of defeating the Japanese north of Singapore. He orders his battered Australian and Indian troops to withdraw the last 40 miles to Singapore Island. Prime Minister Churchill orders Percival's army to fight to the last man and the last bullet.
In less than eight weeks, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita's 25th Army has swept 620 miles from its troopships. The Japanese have lost 5,000 killed and wounded. The Allies have lost 25,000, including 21,000 prisoners. And the Japanese have been outnumbered 2-to-1.
In Burma, the Flying Tigers shoot down five Japanese planes near the Tigers' airfield, and are awed by a Japanese pilot who dies trying to crash his plane into a taxiing American fighter.
In Savannah, Georgia, the Army Air Corps organizes the Eighth Air Force.
01/29/1942 In Burma, the Flying Tigers knock down 14 more Japanese planes near Rangoon. One of the victors is "Pappy" Boyington who will later become the legendary leader of the U. S. Marines' "Black Sheep" squadron.
The Germans, after hard fighting, stop a Soviet offensive in the Ukraine that has ripped an 80-mile gap in their lines and liberated 400 towns and villages.
Gen. Erwin Rommel drives the British 8th Army out of Benghazi, the capital of Libya's Cyrenaica province. The Germans have pushed the British back more than 150 miles in eight days.
The U. S. Coast Guard suffers its worst loss of the war when a German U-boat torpedoes the big sea-going cutter Alexander Hamilton near Iceland.
01/30/1942 In Malaya, the Japanese probe to within 18 miles of Singapore. In Burma, they take Moulmein after a hard fight with British artillerymen. A large part of the picturesque pagoda city is destroyed.
President Roosevelt's 60th birthday is celebrated across the country with dinners by the Infantile Paralysis Fund, the president's favorite charity. California Gov. Culbert Olson revokes the professional and business licenses of 5,000 Japanese, German and Italian aliens in California. The revocations mostly affect Japanese-Americans.
Iran, Britain and the Soviet Union sign a treaty in Tehran that paves the way for Iran to become part of a vital supply line funneling trucks, weapons and food to the beleaguered Russians.
01/31/1942 British forces in Malaya blow up the causeway connecting Singapore to the Malayan mainland. Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival has 85,000 men to defend the island. He also has 400 guns, including some massive artillery pieces that hurl enormous 15-inch shells, and enough supplies to last for three months.
In the Philippines, after a month on half rations, the U. S.-Filipino army is reduced to one-third of the normal daily food allowance.
In the Mid-Atlantic, the German cargo ship Spreewald, after sneaking halfway around the world loaded with an invaluable cargo of rubber, tin, tungsten is mistakenly torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat.
In the U. S., auto production is halted for the duration of the war. The auto plants will build planes, guns, tanks and other military equipment.