Battle of the Atlantic

The Italian submarine Calvi sinks the British steamer Carlton (5162t) from Convoy OB-260 with the loss of 31 of her crew.

The Blitz

There is a heavy night raid on Liverpool, the first of 2 consecutive nights. The first bombers arrive at 6:30p.m. Over 200 aircraft drop 27,000 incendiaries and 205 tons of high explosives. Many fires are started in the main dock area. The Dock Board and Cunard Buildings, the Central Police Office, municipal buildings and the town hall all burn. The Adelphi Hotel is severely damaged by a parachute mine that explodes in Copperas Hill. The worst incident of the night occurred at Bentnick Street when a bomb strikes a railway viaduct used by civilians as a shelter. 42 people are killed and it takes 2 days for rescue services to free the last of the 48 survivors.

The Cooperative Mill's runway over the canal in Liverpool is damaged.

Damage in Liverpool

Bulgaria, Politics

New anti-Semitic laws are introduced. Bulgaria's Jewish population at this point is about 50,000 people. There are also measures against Free Masons and other so-called secret societies.

Britain, Home Front

The Committee of Enquiry into the Arandora Star disaster (see July 2, 1940) publishes its findings. The main criticism concerns the indiscriminate deportation of both Fascist and anti-Fascist Italians on the liner.

Germany, Strategy

A series of OKH war games and independent studies regarding a German war in the East, conducted under the direction of Head Quartermaster of the General Staff, Maj-Gen Friedrich Paulus, come to an end. Paulus' conclusions are that German forces are 'barely sufficient for the purpose' assigned to them. In addition, the Wehrmacht will have no reserves left by the time it reaches Moscow, forcing the army to undertake an attack against the city with no reinforcements. And the Volga-Archangel line is a target that will be beyond the reach of the Wehrmacht. More worryingly, the studies revealed that in a campaign area the size of the western USSR, the panzer columns and slower-moving infantry would quickly become separated, leaving the flanks of the panzer forces dangerously exposed.

Holland

The entire Dutch Navy, small but consisting of a wide variety of vessels, escapes across the English Channel to Hull. The ships are overloaded with Dutch volunteers.

A newly-constructed wall partitions the central part of Warsaw, Poland, seen on December 20, 1940. It is part of red brick and gray stone walls built 12 to 15 feet high by the Nazis as a ghetto – a pen for Warsaw’s approximately 500,000 Jews. (AP Photo)

Central Warsaw Partition