Directory

1942 CE

The Battle of Stalingrad begins, a major turning point on the Eastern Front; the Battle of Midway sees the United States defeat the Empire of Japan in the Pacific; the Internment of Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066 forces over 100,000 people into camps; the Fall of Singapore results in the capture of around 80,000 Allied troops; the Doolittle Raid becomes the first U.S. air attack on Japan, boosting morale; the Second Battle of El Alamein forces Axis retreat from Egypt; the Manhattan Project formally launches to develop atomic weapons; the Battle of Los Angeles causes anti-aircraft barrages over California after a false alarm; and the Battle of the Coral Sea halts Japan’s advance toward Australia.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 1 – WWII: The Declaration by United Nations is signed by China, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and 22 other nations, in which they agree "not to make any separate peace with the Axis powers".source
  • February 8 – António Óscar Carmona is reelected as president of Portugal for a third term.source
  • April 26 – WWII: The Reichstag meets for the last time, dissolving itself and proclaiming Adolf Hitler the "Supreme Judge of the German People", granting him the power of life and death over every German citizen.source
  • The Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942, to help establish a military and political alliance between the USSR and the British Empire, is signed in London by foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov.source
  • July 9 – Şükrü Saracoğlu forms the new (13th) government in Turkey.source
  • July 29 – The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union institutes the Order of Suvorov and Order of Kutuzov and reinstates the Order of Alexander Nevsky.source
  • October 9 – The Statute of Westminster Adoption Act, passed by the Parliament of Australia, formalizes Australian autonomy from the United Kingdom.source
  • November 11 – The Turkish parliament passes the Varlık Vergisi, a capital tax mostly levied on non-Muslim citizens with the unofficial aim to inflict financial ruin on them and end their prominence in the country's economy.source
  • December 10 – The Holocaust: The Polish government-in-exile sends copies of The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland, including Raczyński's Note, the first official report on The Holocaust, to 26 governments who signed the Declaration by United Nations.source
  • December 17 – The Allies issue the Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations (as the answer to Raczyński's Note), the first time they publicly acknowledge the Holocaust.source

Conflict & Security

  • Dutch East Indies campaign: Japan declares war on the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. Japanese forces invade Borneo and Celebes.source
  • The USS Langley, first aircraft carrier of the United States Navy, is attacked by 9 Japanese bombers while ferrying a cargo of USAAF P-40 fighters to Java. Langley is so badly damaged that she has to be scuttled to avoid falling into Japanese hands.source
  • President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, allowing the United States military to define areas as exclusionary zones. These zones affect the Japanese on the West Coast, and Germans and Italians primarily on the East Coast.source
  • March 6 – WWII: Yugoslav Partisans, operating in Nazi-occupied Serbia, assassinate Đorđe Kosmajac in Belgrade.source
  • April 3 – WWII: Japanese forces begin the last phase of the Battle of Bataan, an all-out assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.source
  • April 5 – WWII: Easter Sunday Raid – Aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy attack Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Royal Navy cruisers and are sunk southwest of the island.source
  • May 5 – WWII: Battle of Madagascar (Operation Ironclad) begins when British forces land on the Vichy French colony of Madagascar. On May 7 the northern city of Diego Suarez surrenders.source
  • Second Battle of Kharkov: In the eastern Ukraine, the Soviet Army initiates a major offensive to capture the city of Kharkov from the German Army, only to be encircled and destroyed.source
  • June 5 – WWII: The United States declares war on Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.source
  • June 12 – The Holocaust: On her 13th birthday, Anne Frank receives the book that she will use to keep her diary in occupied Amsterdam.source
  • July 19 – WWII: Battle of the Atlantic: German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from there the United States Atlantic coast positions, in response to an effective American convoy system.source
  • July 21 – WWII: The Japanese establish a beachhead on the north coast of New Guinea in the Buna-Gona area; a small Australian force begins a rearguard action on the Kokoda Track campaign.source
  • August 7 – WWII: Guadalcanal campaign – The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps start the first American offensive of the war, with an amphibious landing on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.source
  • August 21 – WWII: Operation Edelweiss: German forces (Gebirgsjäger) of the 1st Mountain Division place the Nazi swastika flag on the summit of Mount Elbrus, a prominent peak of the Caucasus at 5.629 meters.source
  • August 23 – WWII: Battle of Stalingrad: German forces of the 16th Panzer Division reach the suburbs of Stalingrad. The German 6th Army under General Friedrich Paulus stabilishes the frontier and takes up positions at the Volga River.source
  • August 27–28 – Sarny Massacre: Nazi troops and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police systematically execute more than 14,000 people, mostly Jews, in and around Sarny in German-occupied Poland.source
  • November 2 – A USAAF squadron, including B-24 Liberators, intercepts many Luftwaffe patrols off the coast of Oran, Algeria.source
  • November 6 – WWII: Battle of Madagascar ends when Vichy French forces on Madagascar sign an armistice with the Allies.source
  • November 19 – WWII: Battle of Stalingrad: Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counter-attacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.source
  • November 22 – WWII: Battle of Stalingrad: The situation for the German attackers of Stalingrad seems desperate during the Soviet counter-attack Operation Uranus, and General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram, saying that the German Sixth Army is surrounded.source
  • November 30 – WWII: Battle of Tassafaronga – In a nighttime naval battle as part of the Guadalcanal campaign, ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy defeat those of the United States Navy.source
  • The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal ends: Although the United States Navy suffers heavy losses, it retains control of Guadalcanal.source
  • Operation Torch: Elements of the Allied expeditionary force (some 105,000 men) under Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower lands simultaneously along the coastline of Morocco and Algeria in French North Africa.source
  • December 12 – WWII: German troops began Operation Winter Storm, an attempt to relieve encircled Axis forces during the Battle of Stalingrad.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • June 12–15 – WWII: Operation Harpoon – An Allied convoy under Admiral Alban Curteis leaves from Gibraltar with 6 merchant ships escorted by the British battleship HMS Malaya, aircraft carriers HMS Argus and HMS Eagle, 4 cruisers and 17 destroyers to Malta. Two of the six merchant ships completes the journey, at the cost of several Allied warships.source
  • June 27 – WWII: Allied Convoy PQ 17 sails from Iceland, with 35 merchant ships and 3 passenger ships that have been refitted for rescuing the crews of torpedoed ships. There are also one tanker, 6 destroyers and 13 smaller ships for close escort. The convoy is destined for the Soviet port of Archangelsk.source
  • August 17 – WWII: Raid on Makin Island: US Marines of the 2nd Raider Battalion (211 men) under Lt. Col. Evans Carlson embark aboard the submarines Argonaut and Nautilus at Pearl Harbor. The aim is to destroy the Japanese installations and gather intelligence. Only the first of these objectives is achieved, but the raid does boost morale and provide a test for Raider tactics.source
  • November 21 – The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (however, the "highway" is not usable by general vehicles until 1943).source
  • November 29 – The Blue Star Line cargo liner runs aground on the Skeleton Coast of Namibia. Crew and passengers survive, following a 26-day overland trek to Windhoek.source

Religion & Belief

  • January 20 – The Holocaust: Nazis at the Wannsee Conference convened by Reinhard Heydrich in Berlin decide that the "Final Solution (Endlösung) to the Jewish problem" is deportations to extermination camps.source
  • April 23 – Exeter-born William Temple is enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury.source

Economy & Finance

  • September 3 – WWII: Erwin Rommel orders a general retreat and carries the German forces of Panzer Army Africa back to the line running from Tel el Eisa – Deir el Shein - west of Deir el Munassib down to the Qattara Depression. Allied forces of the 2nd New Zealand Division and the British 7th Armoured Division ("Desert Rats") begin an assault, but they are repelled in a fierce rearguard action by the German 90th Light Division. During the attack, Rommel loses some 2,900 men, 50 tanks, a similar number of guns, and 400 vehicles.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • January 13 – Henry Ford patents a plastic automobile that would be 30% lighter than a conventional car.source
  • January 14 – The Sikorsky R-4 first flies in the United States; it will become the first mass-produced helicopter.source
  • February 1 – WWII: The Kriegsmarine introduces the M4 (German Navy 4-rotor) Enigma machine for U-boat traffic, blinding Allied cryptanalysts to their radio signals for most of the year.source
  • February 20 – Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first U.S. Navy flying ace of the war.source
  • February 24 – Propaganda: The Voice of America begins broadcasting.source
  • March 8 – NIROM, the Dutch East Indies' privately funded broadcaster, closes.source
  • March 17 – The Holocaust: Operation Reinhard – The Nazi German Bełżec extermination camp opens in occupied Poland, about 1 km south of the railroad station at Bełżec in the Lublin district of the General Government. At least 434,508 people are killed here up to December 1942.source
  • April 13 – The United States Federal Communications Commission's minimum programming time required of television stations is cut from 15 hours to 4 hours a week during the war.source
  • May 20 – The first African-American seamen are taken into the United States Navy.source
  • May – Operation Pluto: The plan to construct oil pipelines under the English Channel, between England and France, is tested in the River Medway.source
  • June 1 – The Grand Coulee Dam is finished on the Columbia River in the United States.source
  • The United States opens its Office of War Information, a propaganda center.source
  • July 18 – WWII: The Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me 262 (using only its jet engines) for the first time.source
  • August 11 – Hedy Lamarr's and her friend George Antheil's frequency-hopping system for radio-controlled torpedoes is granted a patent under . In 1962 (at the time of the Cuban missile crisis), an updated version of their design will at last appear on Navy ships.source
  • October 2 – The first American-built turbojet aircraft, the Bell P-59 Airacomet fighter prototype, makes its first official flight.source
  • December 1 – Gasoline rationing begins in the United States.source
  • DDT is first used as a pesticide.source

Science & Discovery

  • March 4 – WWII: Operation K – The Japanese launch an unsuccessful attack carried out by two Kawanishi H8K ("Emily") flying boats at Pearl Harbor. This is the longest distance ever undertaken by a two-plane bombing mission, and one of the longest bombing sorties ever planned without fighter escort.source
  • German scientists under Ernst Steinhoff at Peenemünde Army Research Center test a 12-ton rocket (known later as the V-2 rocket) with a one-ton warhead.source
  • The United States Eighth Air Force inauspiciously flies its first mission in Europe, using borrowed British planes, and bombs targets in the Netherlands, such as De Kooy Airfield, attached to the Den Helder Naval Base. Three of six aircraft return; For this mission, Captain Charles C. Kegelman is the first member of the Force to be awarded the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross.source
  • August 20 – Plutonium is isolated for the first time, at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago.source
  • October 3 – The first A-4 rocket is successfully launched from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. The rocket flies 147 kilometers and reaches an altitude of 84.5 kilometers, becoming the first man-made object to reach space.source
  • December 2 – Manhattan Project: Below the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (a coded message, "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world" is then sent to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt).source
  • The battleship is launched at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.source

Health & Medicine

  • February 24 – Internment of Japanese Canadians is ordered.source
  • April 27 – WWII: Conscription crisis in Canada: A national plebiscite is held on the issue of conscription.source
  • July – The Holocaust: Inmates of Westerbork transit camp in the occupied Netherlands begin to be shipped to Nazi extermination camps. From now until 1944 around 107,000, mostly Jewish, from here will be killed.source
  • August 16 – Polish-Jewish teacher Janusz Korczak follows a group of Jewish children into the Treblinka extermination camp.source
  • November 26 – The movie Casablanca premières at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.source

Crime & Justice

  • March 15 – The Holocaust: Dünamünde Action – 1,900 central European Jews are shot dead north east of Riga, 1,840 are killed on the 26th.source
  • The Holocaust: the Nazi German extermination camp Sobibór opens in occupied Poland, on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór. Between April 1942 and October 1943, at least 160,000 people are killed here.source
  • Bataan Death March: American and Filipino prisoners of war are forced to march from San Fernando to Capas (some 65 miles). During the march some 15,000 soldiers are killed by severe physical abuse and wanton killings.source
  • July 16 – The Holocaust: By order of the Vichy France government headed by Pierre Laval, French police officers round-up 13,000–20,000 Jews and imprison them in the Winter Velodrome.source
  • Bastille Day Gaullist demonstrations in Vichy France; 2 women are shot dead by members of the fascist French Popular Party (PPF) in Marseille.source
  • The SS Robert E. Lee is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico by , which is itself sunk by the escorting patrol craft.source
  • August 9 – Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi is arrested in Bombay, by British forces.source
  • September 26 – The Holocaust: Nazi official August Frank issues the August Frank memorandum, setting out how the belongings of "evacuated" (i.e. murdered) Jews are to be disposed of.source
  • October 28 – Film actor Errol Flynn is accused of statutory rape by two teenage girls.source
  • U.S. serviceman Edward Leonski is hanged at Melbourne's Pentridge Prison, for the "Brown-Out" murders of three women in May.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • January 13 – Heinkel test pilot Helmut Schenk becomes the first person to escape from a stricken aircraft with an ejection seat.source
  • January 16 – American film actress Carole Lombard and her mother are among all 22 killed aboard TWA Flight 3 when the Douglas DC-3 plane crashes into Potosi Mountain near Las Vegas while she is returning from a tour to promote the sale of war bonds.source
  • February 11–13 – WWII: Operation Cerberus: A Kriegsmarine (German navy) squadron comprising the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and their escort, dash from Brest through the English Channel to German ports; the British fail to sink any of them.source
  • February 24 – Struma disaster: , carrying Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to British-administered Palestine, is torpedoed and sunk by Soviet submarine Shch-213 in the Black Sea, killing about 791 men, women and children, with only 1 survivor.source
  • More than 200 American sailors die in Newfoundland when runs aground near Chambers Cove and runs aground at Lawn Point.source
  • Bombing of Darwin: The Japanese 1st Air Fleet under Admiral Chūichi Nagumo bombs Darwin, Australia. This force comprises the aircraft carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū and Sōryū and a powerful force of escorting surface ships. During the attack, 188 planes led by Mitsuo Fuchida destroy 11 vessels and wreck a lot of the harbor infrastructure, killing some 240 people.source
  • April 26 – A gas and coal dust explosion at Benxihu Colliery in Manchukuo kills as many as 1,549 workers, the world's all-time worst mining disaster.source
  • The Japanese Navy launches an air raid on Trincomalee in Ceylon (Sri Lanka); the Royal Navy aircraft carrier and Royal Australian Navy destroyer are sunk off the country's east coast.source
  • May 21 – WWII: Sinking of the Mexican tanker Faja de Oro by off Key West.source
  • May 30–31 – WWII: Bombing of Cologne – British RAF Bomber Command's "Operation Millennium", its first "1,000 bomber raid", with associated fires make 13,000 families homeless and kills around 475 people, mostly civilians; 3,330 non-residential buildings are destroyed.source
  • July 13 – WWII: U-boats sink three merchant ships in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.source
  • Twenty-four ships are sunk by German bombers and submarines after Convoy PQ 17 to the Soviet Union is scattered in the Arctic Ocean to evade the German battleship Tirpitz.source
  • August 16 – U.S. Navy blimp L-8 (Flight 101) comes ashore near San Francisco, eventually coming down in Daly City (the crew is missing).source
  • September 27 – WWII: Both the commerce raiding German auxiliary cruiser Stier and American Liberty ship sink, following a gun battle in the South Atlantic. Hilfskreuzer Stier is the only commerce raider to be sunk by a defensively equipped merchant ship.source
  • October 2 – British cruiser collides with liner (carrying troops from the United States) off the coast of Donegal and sinks; 338 drown.source
  • October 13 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy SC 104 is attacked by U-boats, sinking seven ships.source
  • October 21 – A Royal New Zealand Air Force torpedo bomber sinks the German MS Palatia, with a loss of 946 lives.source
  • October 23 – Award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger ("Thanks for the Memory") is among 12 people killed in a mid-air collision between an American Airlines DC-3 and a U.S. Army bomber near Palm Springs, California.source
  • British sailors board as it sinks in the Mediterranean and retrieve its Enigma machine and codebooks.source
  • November 1 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy SC 107 is heavily attacked by U-boats, sinking 15 ships.source
  • November 28 – Cocoanut Grove fire: A fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts, kills 491.source
  • A U-boat sinks the off the coast of Brazil. One crewman, Chinese second steward Poon Lim, is separated from the others and spends 130 days adrift, until he is rescued on April 3, 1943.source
  • Guadalcanal campaign: Aviators from the sink the Japanese battleship Hiei.source
  • December 28 – North Atlantic Convoy ON 154 is heavily attacked by U-boats, sinking 13 ships.source

Climate & Environment

  • Operation Typhoon, the German attempt to take Moscow, ends in failure.source
  • July 31 – The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (Oxfam) is founded in England.source
  • September 9 – WWII: A Japanese floatplane drops incendiary devices at Mount Emily, near Brookings, Oregon, in the first of two "Lookout Air Raids", the first bombing of the continental United States.source
  • October 16 – A cyclone and consequential floods in the Bay of Bengal kill 40,000 people, with particularly heavy damage around Contai.source
  • December 22 – An avalanche in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, kills 26, including Vulcan Crucible Steel heir-apparent Samuel A. Stafford Sr., when two 100 ton boulders fall on a bus filled with wartime steelworkers on their way home.source

Culture & Society

  • February 1 – Mao Zedong makes a speech on "Reform in Learning, the Party and Literature", starting the Yan'an Rectification Movement in the Chinese Communist Party.source
  • February 26 – The 14th Academy Awards ceremony is held in Los Angeles; How Green Was My Valley wins Best Picture.source
  • April 27 – The Jewish Star of David is required wearing for all Jews in the Netherlands and Belgium; Jews in other Nazi-controlled countries have already been wearing it.source
  • May 29 – Thai spelling reform of 1942 is initiated by the government of Prime Minister Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram with his office announcing a simplification of the Thai alphabet. The announcement is published in the Royal Gazette on June 1. The reform is canceled by the government of Khuang Aphaiwong on August 2, 1944.source
  • Germany introduces the Ostvolk Medal for Soviet personnel in the Wehrmacht.source
  • August 9 – Leningrad première of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, with the city still under siege.source
  • August 31 – The 1942 Luxembourgish general strike is launched, to protest against forced conscription in Luxembourg.source
  • October 16 – Animated short film The Mouse of Tomorrow, featuring the debut of Mighty Mouse (as "Super Mouse"), is released in the United States.source
  • October 29 – The Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews.source
  • December 27 – The Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia, a communist youth movement, is founded.source
  • December 31 – The Times Square Ball in Times Square, New York City is not dropped for the first time. Instead, there is a moment of silence at midnight, followed by the sound of bells playing from sound trucks at the base of One Times Square.source
  • circa JuneThe 1942 FIFA World Cup competition in Association football, which Nazi Germany sought to host, is not held, due to World War II.source

Births

  • February 1 – Terry Jones, Welsh actor (Monty Python) and writer (d. 2020)source
  • February 20 – Mitch McConnell, American politician, U.S. senior senator from Kentuckysource
  • April 12 – Jacob Zuma, 4th President of South Africasource
  • April 24 – Barbra Streisand, American singer, actress, composer, and film directorsource
  • May 22 – Ted Kaczynski, American domestic terrorist, mathematics professor, and anarchist author (d. 2023)source
  • May 24 – Fraser Stoddart, Scottish-born scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (d. 2024)source
  • June 17 – Mohamed El Baradei, Egyptian International Atomic Energy Agency director, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prizesource
  • June 18 – Roger Ebert, American film critic and television personality (d. 2013)source
  • June 18 – Thabo Mbeki, South African politician and 12th President of South Africasource
  • Brian Wilson, American singer, composer and producer (The Beach Boys) (d. 2025)source
  • October 11 – Amitabh Bachchan, Indian actor, film producer, and television hostsource
  • October 20 – Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, German biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicinesource
  • October 21 – Judy Sheindlin, American retired judge turned television personality (Judge Judy)source
  • December 17 – Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerian army general, 7th and 15th President of Nigeria (d. 2025)source

Deaths

  • January 16 – Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, 2nd youngest son of Queen Victoria (b. 1850)source
  • March 3 – Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, Italian nobleman and military officer, Viceroy of Italian East Africa (b. 1898)source
  • March 12 – Sir William Henry Bragg, British physicist, chemist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1862)source
  • March 23 – Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear, 20th President of Argentina (b. 1868)source
  • June 5 – Ryusaku Yanagimoto, Japanese rear admiral, killed in action at the Battle of Midway (b. 1894)source
  • June 5 – Tamon Yamaguchi, Japanese admiral, killed in action at the Battle of Midway (b. 1892)source
  • July 1 – Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski, Polish general, diplomat and politician, Interim President of Poland (b. 1881)source
  • July 26 – Titus Brandsma, Dutch Discalced Carmelite friar, Roman Catholic priest and blessed (b. 1881)source
  • July 30 – Leopold Mandić, Yugoslav Capuchin friar and Roman Catholic priest and saint (b. 1866)source
  • August 9 – Terea Benedicta of the Cross, German philosopher, Roman Catholic nun, martyr and saint (assassinated) (b. 1891)source
  • August 25 – Prince George, Duke of Kent, 4th eldest son of George V (b. 1902)source
  • September 30 – Hans-Joachim Marseille, German World War II fighter ace (b. 1919)source
  • October 5 – Dorothea Klumpke, American astronomer, Director of the Bureau of Measurements at the Paris Observatory (b. 1861)source
  • December 24 – François Darlan, French admiral and politician, 81st Prime Minister of France (assassinated) (b. 1881)source