January 17, 1942 - Saturday - 80 years ago today

 

 Status - John Skinner - USS O'Brien:

On January 17, 1942, O'Brien was at sea, moving south through the Atlantic and the Caribbean toward the Panama Canal, in company with Idaho and Mustin. From leaving Norfolk on the 15th, it would take 5 days to reach the Canal Zone and cross into the Pacific.

Other Events

• January 6th: Convoy carrying a Marine unit to Pago Pago, American Samoa, leaves the west coast.  None too soon it turns out, as a Japanese submarine shells Pago Pago on the 11th.
• January 11th: Japan declares war on the Netherlands, and invades the Dutch East Indies with landings on Borneo and Celebes (now Sulawesi).  In addition this further surrounds the Philippines.
• January 11th: USS Saratoga, one of the four active aircraft carriers, is torpedoed, and has to return to the west coast for repairs.  It will be out of action until late May. 
  
• January 12-16: Japanese submarines mine the channel that provides access to Darwin, Australia. to limit its use by Allied forces.
  
• January 15th: American-British-Dutch-Australia (ABDA) command formed.  Admiral Thomas Hart is in command of the combined Naval forces.
• January 16th: The War Production Board was created to oversee the transition of the US economy to wartime production, to allocate critical materials, and to ration various commodities needed for the war effort.
• January 16th: Japanese forces have captured Bangkok and are invading Burma from there.  They were also moving down the Malay peninsula toward Singapore.
  

 In the  Official Navy Chronology for January 11th, 1942 is the following entry:

"Operation Paukenschlag ("roll of the kettledrums") descends upon the eastern seaboard of the U. S. like a "bolt from the blue".   The first group of five German submarines take up station off the east coast of the United States on this date.  Over the next month, these boats (U-66, U-109, U-123, U-125 and U130) will sink 26 Allied ships; the presence of the enemy off the eastern seaboard takes U. S. Navy antisubmarine forces by surprise."

So even as destroyers like O'Brien, with crews trained in antisubmarine warfare were being sent to the Pacific due to critical destroyer shortages there, shipping on the east coast was in grave danger.  At this point, there were just not enough ships to handle all the threats.

NEXT POST: JANUARY 21ST