Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur T Harris, Commander in Chief of Royal Air Force Bomber Command, discussing an operation with the Senior Air Staff Officer, Air Vice Marshal R D Oxland, CB, CBE, and Mr M T Spence, OBE. Source: Wikimedia.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
The Germans occupy the Soviet city of Rostov-on-Don on July 24, 1942. The Red Army is in a general retreat along the Don River.
Farther south, German Army Group A begins an offensive into the Caucasus on July 25.
On July 26, an attack by the British against Rommel at El Alamein fails; Axis defenders are awaiting the offensive and turn it back. The RAF conducts a heavy incendiary-bomb raid on Hamburg, killing over 300 people and leaving 14,000 homeless.
With the British Eighth Army exhausted, and Rommel’s force starved of supplies and replacement tanks, and far from its supply base, the First Battle of El Alamein ends in a stalemate on July 27. The British Eighth Army suffers some 13,250 casualties while the Axis forces have 10,000 killed or wounded and lose 7,000 as prisoners.
On July 28, the Soviet High Command at Stalingrad issues Order No. 227 to the city’s defenders. It includes the dictum: “Not one step back!” From London, Acting Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Commander-in-Chief, RAF Bomber Command, makes a radio broadcast informing German listeners that bombers would soon be coming “every night and every day, rain, blow or snow — we and the Americans. . . . We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end, if you make it necessary for us to do so . . .” In Warsaw, Occupied Poland, some Jews begin setting up an organization to resist deportations to Nazi death camps.
After a four-day battle against Australian forces, Japanese troops on July 29 capture Kokoda, in the Owen Stanley Mountains, halfway between the north shore of New Guinea and Port Moresby in the south. In the Soviet Union, the German 1st Panzer Army captures Proletarskaya, in southern Russia.
In North Africa on July 30, the stalemate between Rommel and Auchinleck at El Alamein continues. In Washington, President Roosevelt signs into law the act creating the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the women’s branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve. The law authorizes the U.S. Navy to accept women into the Naval Reserve as officers and enlisted personnel for the duration of the war plus six months. The intent is to place women at shore stations, releasing men for sea duty.
