Air Operations, Europe

• 11 Bostons raid the Hazebrouck railway yards with no losses.
• 135 aircraft are sent to Cologne. The leading crews carry flares and incendiary bombs and locate the target without problem. The planes that follow bomb accurately. This raid is considered the first successful Gee-led one and 5 times more effective than the average of recent raids on Cologne. 237 separate fires are started. 62 people are killed and 84 are injured. 1 Manchester is lost on the raid.
• There are many minor raids: 20 aircraft to Boulogne, 19 to Dunkirk, 2 Blenheim Intruders to France and Holland, 5 Hampdens mine-laying in the Frisians, and 7 Hampdens on leaflet flights over France. 2 Wellingtons are lost on the Dunkirk raid and 1 Wellington on the Boulogne raid.

Battle of the Atlantic

• The Chilean ship Tolten is torpedoed and sunk of the American east coast. 27 people are killed. There are two survivors who are picked by the US net tender Larch (YN-16).
• The unarmed US schooner Albert E. Paul (735t) is torpedoed and sung by U-332 off the east coast of the United States. There are no survivors.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler reviews a unit of SS-police in Krakow, Poland, 13 March 1942

Himmler Reviews SS Police Unit

Burma

Over the next 10 days, British forces establish a defensive line across from Prome, Toungoo and Loikaw around the Salween River, with Maj-Gen William Slim in command of the Burma Corps, an ill-equipped force of 1 Indian and 1 Burmese division.

Eastern Front

The 51st Army has regrouped to renew attacks on the Kerch peninsula. In all, 8 rifle divisions and 2 tank brigades strike the 11th Army, but agains the Germans repel the waves of tanks and infantry. Casualties continue to mount as the attacks are pressed home repeatedly. In the three days between the 13th and the 15th, the 51st and 44th Armies lose over 130 tanks to German guns.

German troops on the march, a Panzer III in the foreground, 13 March 1942.

Desperate Conditions on the Eastern Front

German Raiders

The German auxiliary cruiser Michel passes through the Strait of Dover on the outward voyage of her first operational cruise.

India

US Air Force personnel begin arriving in Karachi, the first American detachment to reach the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater. They were originally to be deployed in the defense of Java.

Mediterranean

The ship Rabmanso leaves Haifa, Palestine for Piraeus, Greece with emergency supplies of grain.

New Guinea

After consolidating their positions around Lae and Salamaua, the Japanese replace their infantry by naval personnel.

Pacific

The US submarine Gar (SS-206) torpedoes and sinks the Japanese victualling stores ship Chichibu Maru (1520t) about 10 miles southwest of Mikura Jima, south of Tokyo Bay, Japan.

Secret War

American cryptanalysts break teh Japanese navy's general-purpose code and identify the codeword for Midway Island. Two American naval intelligence centers are in operation in the Pacific providing communitations intelligence on the Japanese navy. One is in Melbourne, Australia, and the other at Pearl Hargor, let by Cmdr Joseph J. Rochefort. The Navy Radio Intelligence Section in Hawaii, identified as OP-20-G, has the responsibility to intercept enemy radio communications, decode and translate the information, then pass it to the Pacific Fleet commander.

Solomon Islands

The capture of Buka and other islands in the north of the archipelago is completed. The landing operation is protected by the Japanese 4th Fleet, based on Rabaul, New Britain.

A Malayan mother expresses her grief over the loss of her child whose body (at right) lies where the youngster was killed by a Japanese bomb fragment in one of the last raids before the city fell, in Singapore, on 13 March 1942. (AP Photo)

Malayan Mother Expresser Her Grief

Military working dogs first entered the service on 13 March 1942 to serve in the US Army's K-9 Corps.

Military Working Dogs