Eastern Front

In the northern sector Tikhvin is captured by the XXXIX Panzer Corps. The object of the advance east of Leningrad is to link up with the Finnish troops, but it is not achieved.

The XXXIX Panzer Corps, with the I Corps in support, enters Tikhvin and fights its way through the town. The 4th Army is close to collapse, having lost contact with the headquarters of the Leningrad Front and threatening the rear of the 7th Independent Army on the Svir. Elements of the 44th Rifle Division pulls back along the Tikhvin-Lodenoye Pole road, while the 191st Rifle Division falls back east.

The LIII Corps continues to fight off the 3rd Army attacks around Teploye. Schweppenburg's XXIV Panzer Corps, which has been earmarked to support the LIII Corps, is forced to deal with new attacks from Tula by the 50th Army. Heavy fighting rages at Uzlovaya as a rifle division and a tank brigade strike the German lines.

The West Front expect the next phase of German attacks from Volokolamsk and Tula. Zhukov proposes a number of pre-emptive attacks to hinder German redeployment. The 16th Army is to lead the first attack at Volokolamsk.

Germany, Home Front

In a speech in Munich, Hitler exaggerates the enemy's losses even more than Stalin did. He says that since the start of the war the Soviet Union has lost 10 million men killed, wounded or captured. He describes the USSR as 'this Mongol State' and Stalin as a 'second Genghis Khan'. Also, 60-75 per cent of its industrial potential and raw materials have been lost. 'However long the war may last, the last battalion in the field will be a German one... We are deciding the fate of Europe for the next thousand years.'

Mediterranean

• In a night battle about 200 miles east of Malta, the British Force K from Malta, 2 cruisers (Aurora and Penelope) and 2 destroyers (Lance and Lively, attacks an Italian convoy heading for Libya. All 7 transports and 1(?) of its escorts are sunk. 2 Italian destoyers, the Fulmine and the Libeccio, are sunk. The Italian covering force of heavy cruisers and destroyers does not engage. The Royal Navy had received precise intelligence data through Ultra intercepts.
• The British steamer Rosalie Moller (3963t) is sunk by German bombing in Anchorage H, Suez Canal, with the loss of 2 of her crew. The Australian sloop Parramatta rescues the survivors.
• The Italian steamer Paolo Z. Podesta (863t) is sunk by the British 830 Squadron southwest of Favignana, Italy.