March 1942

The following events occurred in March 1942:

March 1, 1942 (Sunday)

*The Second Battle of the Java Sea was fought, resulting in Japanese victory. The cruiser HMS ''Exeter'' and the destroyers HMS ''Encounter'' and USS ''Pope'' were sunk.
*The Battle of Sunda Strait ended in Japanese victory. The Allies lost 1 heavy cruiser, 1 light cruiser and 1 destroyer while the Japanese lost 1 minelayer and 4 troopships sunk or grounded.
*Construction of the Sobibór extermination camp began.
*Near Christmas Island, the fuel tanker USS ''Pecos'' was bombed and sunk by Aichi D3A dive bombers, while the American destroyer USS ''Edsall'' was bombed and damaged by Japanese aircraft and then shelled and sunk by the battleships '' Hiei'' and '' Kirishima''.
*The Dutch steamship '' Roseboom'' was torpedoed and sunk west of Sumatra by the Japanese submarine '' I-159''.
*German submarine '' U-656'' was depth charged and sunk off Cape Race, Newfoundland by an American Lockheed Hudson.
*Died: George S. Rentz, 59, United States Navy chaplain (killed in action); Cornelius Vanderbilt III, 68, American military officer, inventor, engineer and yachtsman

March 2, 1942 (Monday)

*The Japanese began heavy air strikes on New Guinea in preparation for an invasion.
* Australia declared war on Thailand.
*Ships at Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies were scuttled to keep them from being captured by the Japanese.
*The American destroyer '' Pillsbury'' was shelled and sunk west of Christmas Island by the Japanese cruisers '' Atago'' and '' Takao''.
*Born:
**John Irving, novelist and screenwriter, in Exeter, New Hampshire;
** Claude Larose, ice hockey player, in Hearst, Ontario, Canada;
** Lou Reed, musician, in Brooklyn, New York (d. 2013)
*Died: Charlie Christian, 25, American swing and jazz guitarist (tuberculosis)

March 3, 1942 (Tuesday)

*The Battle of Pegu, concerning the defence of Rangoon, began.
*Attack on Broome: Japanese fighter planes attacked the town of Broome, Western Australia and killed 88 people.
* KNILM Douglas DC-3 shootdown: A Douglas DC-3 airliner was shot down over Australia by Japanese warplanes, resulting in the deaths of four passengers and the loss of diamonds worth an estimated A£ 150,000–300,000. The diamonds were presumably looted from the crash site but their fate remains a mystery.
*The American gunboat ''Asheville'' was sunk south of Java by the Japanese destroyers ''Arashi'' and '' Nowaki''.
*An exhibition titled "Artists in Exile" opened at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Fourteen artists including Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger and Piet Mondrian were represented at the exhibition with one piece each.
*German submarine '' U-92'' was commissioned.
*Died: Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, 43, Italian prince (died in a POW camp in Nairobi)

March 4, 1942 (Wednesday)

*The Japanese conducted Operation K, a reconnaissance of Pearl Harbor and disruption of repair and salvage operations there. Two Kawanishi H8K flying boats were dispatched but failed to see much due to heavy clouds and only did negligible bombing damage.
*The Sook Ching massacre ended in Singapore. Official Japanese statistics show fewer than 5,000 killed while the Singaporean Chinese community claims the numbers to be around 100,000.
*The British sloop '' Yarra'' was sunk in the Indian Ocean by Japanese cruisers.

March 5, 1942 (Thursday)

*Japanese forces entered Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies.
*German submarines '' U-462'' and '' U-612'' were commissioned.
*Born: Felipe González, Prime Minister of Spain, in Seville, Spain
*Died: Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, 50, Russian royal

March 6, 1942 (Friday)

*Elements of the Japanese 2nd Infantry Division on Java entered Buitenzorg began transmitting news bulletins in Morse Code for the benefit of resistance fighters in occupied Europe.
*The Manzanar Japanese-American internment camp first opened.

March 23, 1942 (Monday)

*The Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands began.
*The British tanker '' British Prudence'' was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by the German submarine '' U-754''.
*Hitler issued Directive No. 40, pertaining to the command organization of the Atlantic Wall.
*German submarine '' U-166'' was commissioned.
*Born: Walter Rodney, historian, political activist and scholar, in British Guiana (d. 1980)
*Died: Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear, 73, 20th President of Argentina

March 24, 1942 (Tuesday)

*The Battle of Oktwin ended when the Chinese fell back to the main defensive line at Toungoo.
*The British destroyer ''Southwold'' sank off Malta after hitting a naval mine.
*German submarine '' U-655'' was rammed and sunk in the Barents Sea by the minesweeper HMS ''Sharpshooter''.
*The romantic drama film ''To the Shores of Tripoli'' starring John Payne, Maureen O'Hara and Randolph Scott had its world premiere in San Diego, California.

March 25, 1942 (Wednesday)

*British destroyer '' Jaguar'' was torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean Sea off Sidi Barrani by German submarine '' U-652''.
*British destroyer ''Legion'' and submarine '' P39'' were bombed and sunk in the Grand Harbor, Valletta, Malta.
*The White House Communications Agency was formed.
*Holocaust in Slovakia: The first mass transport of Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp departed from Poprad railway station in the Slovak Republic, consisting of 997 young women.
*Born: Aretha Franklin, soul singer, in Memphis, Tennessee (d. 2018)

March 26, 1942 (Thursday)

*The Battle of Suursaari began on the frozen Gulf of Finland between Finnish and Soviet forces.
*The Second Dünamünde Action massacred another 1,840 people near Riga.
*The Nazis began the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp with the transport of 1,000 single women from Slovakia via Poprad transit camp. This was also the first deportation of Slovak Jews; of the 57,000 deported in 1942 only a few hundred survived the Holocaust.
*The Germans launched Operation Bamberg, an anti-partisan operation in occupied Belarus.
*Police in Rio de Janeiro announced that they had smashed a Nazi spy ring with the arrest of 200 operatives.
*The ruling Wafd Party won parliamentary elections in Egypt.
*German submarines '' U-337'' and '' U-615'' was commissioned.
*Born: Erica Jong, author and teacher, in New York City

March 27, 1942 (Friday)

*For French Jews, deportations began when the first convoy left Paris for Auschwitz.
*The Australian government imposed a state of emergency over the northern portion of the continent.
*The Action of 27 March 1942 was fought in the Atlantic Ocean. German submarine '' U-123'' sank the American Q-ship USS ''Atik''.
*German submarine '' U-587'' was depth charged and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by British warships.
* Joe Louis knocked out Abe Simon in the sixth round at Madison Square Garden to retain the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship.
*Born:
**John Sulston, biologist, in Cambridge, England (d. 2018);
**Michael York, actor, in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, England
*Died:
** Julio González, 65, Spanish sculptor;
** John W. Wilcox, Jr., 60, American admiral (lost overboard in stormy weather)

March 28, 1942 (Saturday)

*The Japanese completed the invasion of Sumatra.
* Bombing of Lübeck: The port city of Lübeck was the first German city attacked in substantial numbers by the Royal Air Force. The night attack caused a firestorm that caused severe damage to the historic centre and led to the retaliatory Baedeker raids on historic British cities.
*The British conducted the St Nazaire Raid on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at Saint-Nazaire in German-occupied France. All British objectives were achieved although 169 were killed and 215 taken prisoner. The destroyer HMS ''Campelltown'' was expended as a floating bomb.
*The Panamanian cargo ship ''Howick Hall'' of convoy PQ 13 was bombed and sunk in the Barents Sea by Junkers Ju 88 aircraft.
*German submarine '' U-261'' was commissioned.
* Stanford beat Dartmouth 53–38 in the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament Final.
*Born:
** Daniel Dennett, philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts;
**Neil Kinnock, politician, in Tredegar, Wales;
** Mike Newell, film director and producer, in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England;
**Conrad Schumann, East German border guard, in Zschochau, Saxony, Germany (d. 1998);
**Jerry Sloan, basketball player and coach, in McLeansboro, Illinois (d. 2020)
*Died: Pompiliu Ștefu, 31, Romanian typographer, communist activist and anti-fascist militant (executed)

March 29, 1942 (Sunday)

*The Battle of Toungoo ended in Japanese victory.
* Stafford Cripps met with Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi and presented his plan for postwar independence for India.
*The British cargo ship '' Hertford'' was torpedoed and sunk south of Halifax, Nova Scotia by German submarine '' U-571''.
*German destroyer '' Z26'' was shelled and sunk in the Barents Sea by British cruiser ''Trinidad'' and destroyer '' Eclipse''.
*The Hukbalahap Rebellion began when former Hukbalahap soldiers rebelled against the Philippine government. The rebellion would not end until 1954.
*Following a coup d'état, the Free Republic of Nias was proclaimed by a group of freed Nazi German prisoners in the Indonesian island of Nias. The republic existed for less than a month until the island was fully occupied by Japanese troops.
*Born:
** Kenichi Ogata, voice actor, in Tagawa District, Fukuoka, Japan;
** Scott Wilson, actor, in Thomasville, Georgia (d. 2018)
*Died: Yogbir Singh Kansakar, 56, Nepalese poet and social reformer

March 30, 1942 (Monday)

*As a result of the collapse of American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM), the US Joint Chiefs of Staff assumed responsibility for control of Allied forces in the Pacific; these were divided into several supreme commands, including Pacific Ocean Areas (POA), under Admiral Chester Nimitz and South West Pacific Area (SWPA), under General Douglas MacArthur.
*German submarine '' U-585'' struck a naval mine and sank in the Barents Sea.
*The exclusion of Japanese-American internees began in Bainbridge Island, Washington.
*Born: Ruben Kun, President of Nauru, in Nauru (d. 2014)

March 31, 1942 (Tuesday)

*The Japanese began the Indian Ocean raid.
*The Battle of Christmas Island was fought. Japanese soldiers were able to occupy Christmas Island without resistance, although the American submarine '' Seawolf'' damaged the Japanese cruiser '' Naka''.
*Allied convoy PQ 13 reached Murmansk despite fierce German attacks.
*German submarine '' U-353'' was commissioned.

Notes

{{Events by month links

1942
*1942-03
*1942-03