Air Operations, Europe

• 36 aircraft of No. 2 Group, 18 Venturas, 12 Bostons and 6 Mosquitos, attack airfields and railway targets in France. 6 Wellingtons lay mines in the Frisians.
• There are no losses.

• There is another trial raid on Essen by 3 Mosquitos and 66 Lancasters.
• This is another poor raid by Oboe-equipped aircraft. 2 planes have to return without marking and the skymarkers of the third fail to ignite above the clouds. It also seems that German aircraft drop some decoy flares to distract the Lancasters. Essen, however, does report a serious raid with 63 people being killed. This raid marks the last of the Oboe test raids.
• 4 Lancasters are lost.

Air Operations, Libya

IX Bomber Command medium bombers abort their missions due to bad weather. 57th Fighter Group P-40 pilots down 2 Bf-109s in separate actions.

Air Operations, Mediterranean

XII Bomber Command B-25s attack a sinking Axis freighter between Sicily and Tunisia.

Air Operations, New Guinea

V Bomber Command bombers attack the airfields at Lae and Salamaua and docking facilities at Lae. 3d Light Bomb Group A-20s attack Sanananda.

Air Operations, Solomons

• 347th Fighter Group P-39s provide direct support for a US ground offensive on Guadalcanal.
• AirSoPac B-26s, escorted by P-38s and P-39s, attack Rekata Bay and fighters attack the airfield at Munda Point, New Georgia.

Air Operations, South Pacific Area

Maj-Gen Millard F. Harmon, commander of US Army forces in the South Pacific (ComGenSoPac), establishes the 13th Air Force, under the command of Brig-Gen Nathan F. Twining, with headquarters at Espiritu Santo Island, New Hebrides. The 13th Air Force takes operational control of all US Army Air Forces in the Southern Pacific, except fo Army Air Force units on Guadalcanal, which are under the operational control of the Marine Corps.

Air Operations, Tunisia

5 Luftwaffe Ju-88s bomb the advance fighter base at Thelepte early in the evening, but 2 are downed and another damaged by 33rd Fighter Group P-40 pilots based there.

Battle of the Atlantic

The German submarine U-507 is sunk by naval land-based aircraft (VP-83) off Brazil.

U-507

January 13, 1943 - PBY-5A aircraft from (VP-83) sink German submarine U-507 off Brazil, which had sunk 19 and damaged one Allied merchant vessels.

German U-boat Sinks off Brazil

Eastern Front

The Russian 24th, 65th and 21st Armies of the Don Front, commanded by Rokossovsky, advance from the west as far as the Rossoshka River which they reach late in the day. The 64th Army is advancing from the south, the 66th from the north, while from east of the Volga the German positions are battered by the guns of the 62nd Army. A fifth of the defensive perimeter of the German 6th Army is now in Russian hands.

At Leningrad the 67th and 2nd Shock Armies continue to attack across the Neva and along the Volkhov, lead units being no more than 2 or 3 miles apart by the end of the day. The XXVI and XXVIII Corps have suffered heavy losses during the fighting. Soviet 8th Army joins the attacks, committing its 52,000 men to the battle.

The offensive by the Soviet 40th Army against the Hungarian 2nd Army - part of a larger Red Army offensive involving the Voronezh, Bryansk and Southwestern Fronts along a 300-mile front - begins. The Hungarian 7th Division takes the full weight of the Soviet thrust and after heavy fighting is overwhelmed.

In the Stalingrad pocket the 65th and 21st Armies reach the Rossoshka. Attacks by the 64th and 66th Armies from the north and south also force the Germans back while the 62nd Army counterattacks inside the city.

Guadalcanal

The XIV Corps offensive broadens as the 2nd Marine Div begins a coastal attack from the line Point Cruz-Hill 66, to the right of the 25th Div. The 8th Marines, on the right, attempts to advance westward from Hills 80 and 81 but is halted by enemy fire. The 2nd Marines advances 800 yards west from Hill 66. The 27th Infantry, 25th Div, completes the capture of Galloping Horse with the reduction of Hill 53 by the 2nd Battalionl. The Americans now hold a 4,500-yard front extending to the south from Point Cruz over Hill 66 to Hills 57 and 55. C Company, 35th Infantry, is again halted by enemy fire from the southwest as it tries to push westward. The 2nd Battalion makes negligible progress against the pillboxes of the Gifu strongpoint. It seems that, although the Japanese have already decided to evacuate the island, they want to postpone it to the last possible moment and to inflict all the losses they can on the Americans before withdrawal.[MORE]

Mediterranean

The corvette HMCS Ville de Quebec was escorting convoy TE-13 when she detects U-224 and delivers and extremely accurate depth charge attack which blows the submarine out of the water. Upon surfacing the U-boat is rammed by the corvette.

U-224

New Guinea

The American Gen Eichelberger takes overall command of the fighting troops on the island.

American soldiers relax by playing cards in a palm grove behind the lines at Buna, New Guinea on January 13, 1943. (Photo - Ed Widdis)

Americans Relax near Buna

North Africa

The Germans move out of Pont du Fahs, south of Medjez and capture 'Two Tree Hill'.

A Valentine tank crew relax after an action near Bou Arada, 13 January 1943.

Tank Crew Relaxing near Bou Arada

Pacific

The US submarine Whale (SS-239) sinks the Japanese collier Iwashiro Maru (3550t) about 40 miles north of Kwajalein.