Diary July 1, 1942

07-1942, Diary WW2, War Diary, Year 1942 / 1 minute of reading

An Eight-Eight gun moves forward — First day of ‘First Battle of El Alamein’: an Eight-Eight gun moves forward. The rings on the barrel denote the number of ‘tank kills’.

WW2 War Diary for Wednesday, July 1, 1942:

Africa

Western Desert: FIRST BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN. Rommel reaches El Alamein, having advanced 644 km in 36 days, and immediately attempts to push on towards Alexandria. General Auchinleck calls for ‘supreme effort’ from 8th Army.

Air War

China: American bombers raid Hankow – main Japanese supply base in China.

Neutrals

Sweden – Athletics: Gundar Haegg sets new world mile record of 4 min. 6.2 sec., beating Wooderson’s 1937 mark by 1.4 sec. (Haegg achieves time of 4 min. 1.4 sec., July 17, 1945.)

Politics

Finland: Government establishes diplomatic relations with the Vatican.
Exil-Government Poland: US-Polish Lease-Lend Agreement.

Home Fronts

Britain: Wardlaw Milne moves vote of censure against Churchill in the Commons for mismanagement of the war effort. (Churchill wins the vote 476-25, July 2.)

Occupied Territories

France: Death of Leon Daudet, French satirical writer and editor of Royalist anti-Semitic newspaper Action Francaise, aged 74.

About The Author

Kretaner

My name is Norman 'Kretaner' and since my childhood I am interested in history and strategy games. Later, I have learned programming and the development of computer games, and finally with the Internet, also web design. I'm in the fortunate position to combine all my interests with my work and to live on a place of my choice, on Crete. All information, figures, specifications and statistics used here had been compiled from a variety of sources and the large, over decades collected, library of the author about military history, WW2 and weapons.