Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Day 773 October 12, 1941

Operation Typhoon. Germans move towards Moscow on a broad front, capturing Kaluga 100 miles Southwest of the capital. Many German formations have advanced over 70km in 5 days.

Soviet submarine S8 (which left Kronstadt yesterday) is blown apart, presumably by a German mine, and sinks 8 miles off the Swedish island of Öland (all 48 hands lost).

At 2.00 PM 100 miles off the coast of Portugal, U-83 stops and sinks neutral Portuguese SS Corte Real for carrying cargo to Canada and Australia. Remarkably, the U-boat tows 3 lifeboats with 42 crew and passengers for 3 hours enabling them to make land near Lisbon.

German motor torpedo boats S41, S47, S53, S62, S104, and S105 attack convoy FN531 just off the coast of East Anglia, England, sinking British SS Chevington (7 crew and 2 gunners killed) and Norwegian SS Roy (3 crew lost).

With the moon waning, the final phase to replace Australian 9th Division at Tobruk, Libya begins (Operation Cultivate). British cruiser HMS Abdiel and destroyers HMS Hero, Kipling & Nizam make the round trip overnight from Alexandria Egypt. However, German U-boats are now patrolling the Alexandria-Tobruk route. 35 miles West of Tobruk, U-75 sinks 2 British landing craft tanks which left Tobruk yesterday (29 crew, 4 Australian soldiers, a Royal Engineers officer and 2 Italian POWs are killed; 1 survivor is taken prisoner by U-75 and taken back to Germany).

Overnight, RAF mounts a big raid on Hüls and Bremen, Germany, with 118 bombers mainly Avro Manchesters (Bomber Command No.5 Group).

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