“Pappy” Boyington. For details about his role in World War II, click here.
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.
On December 17, President Roosevelt reveals that a plot to assassinate him, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference was discovered and thwarted. (Scholars are divided, however, on whether the plot was real or not.) In the Pacific, U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington leads his “Black Sheep Squadron” (VMA-214) in the first-ever “fighter sweep” operation, attacking the Japanese air station at Rabaul. (A “fighter sweep” is a mission by fighter planes to seek and destroy enemy aircraft or other targets of opportunity in a particular, defined area.)
The Japanese bomb Kunming, China, an important city on the Burma and Ledo Roads on December 18. Both roads link India and China and are used to supply war materiel to the Chinese in their efforts against the Japanese. (The Ledo Road was built to join the Burma Road when the northern portion of the latter was cut by the Japanese in 1942.) “The Kharkiv Four” (three Germans and one Russian who pleaded guilty to exterminating Russians in Kiev) are sentenced to death by a Soviet military court. In Germany, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issues new rules for the arrest and deportation of Jews from Germany, revoking most of the exceptions for Jews who married gentiles.
A pitched battle is reported on December 19 between the French Resistance and German troops in Bernex, in eastern France. In Kharkiv, Ukraine, 50,000 people turn out to watch the hanging of the “Kharkiv Four” in the town’s central square. In the Philippines, on Panay Island, 10 Baptist missionaries, three other Americans and two children are captured by Japanese soldiers after hiding in the jungles for over two years, aided by Filipino friends. The next day, the adults are beheaded and the children, including a nine-year-old boy, are bayoneted. The 15 are memorialized as the Hopevale Martyrs. (“Hopevale” was the name they gave to the area where they hid.)
U.S. counterintelligence officials on December 20 report the smashing of a Nazi spy ring in Sicily. A 19-year-old ringleader, “Grammatico,” and 27 others are arrested. In Germany, the Intelligence Division of the SS issues a report to the German High Command outlining the requirements for invading neutral Switzerland. Only 16 days after bringing Bolivia into the war against the Axis, President Enrique Peñaranda is overthrown in a military coup.
Under pressure from the Allies to curtail German espionage operations in the neutral Irish Free State, Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera on December 21 orders the confiscation of the German embassy’s radio transmitter in Dublin.
The Allies announce on December 22 that Josip Broz Tito is to be the Allied commander in Yugoslavia; his Partisans are now estimated to number 250,000. In Germany, the government orders all male youths aged 16 and over to register for military service beginning in January. In Italy, the Canadian 1st Infantry Division enters the coastal town of Ortona, on the Adriatic, and is engaged in ferocious street fighting by the German 1st Fallschirmjäger Division. The ferocity of fighting there leads Ortona to be referred to as “Little Stalingrad.”
In Italy, the British Eighth Army continues its attacks on December 23. The Canadian 1st Infantry Division seizes control of most of Ortona. Inland, other elements of the Eighth Army capture Arielli. In the Soviet Union, the Battle of the Dnieper is won by the Red Army after three months, three weeks and six days of fighting. The entire east bank of the river is held by the Red Army along the 870-mile front, and the Germans are forced to move their defenses westward.
