9 Feb 1925
- The incomplete Japanese battleship Tosa, which had been cancelled in accordance with the 1922 Washington Treaty, was expended as a target.
9 Feb 1931
- USS R-1 arrived at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
» In-depth article
- USS R-5 arrived at New London, Connecticut, United States.
» In-depth article
9 Feb 1933
- The Oxford Union debating society of Britain debated on the resolution: "That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country". It was passed by 275 votes to 153 and became one of the most well-known and notorious debates conducted by the Union.
9 Feb 1934
- President Roosevelt suspended all civil airmail contracts (effective from 19 Feb 1934) and handed the role over to the United States Army Air Corps.
» In-depth article
9 Feb 1937
- Martin Bormann ordered that clergymen and theology students were not allowed to join the Nazi Party.
- The first flight of the Blackburn Type B-24 Skua prototype aircraft was made at Brough, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom. A Dive bomber it became the British Fleet Air Arm’s first monoplane.
» In-depth article
9 Feb 1939
China
China
- The Japanese 5th Fleet arrived off Qinghai Bay, Hainan island in southern China some time between 2300 hours and the end of the day.
» In-depth article
9 Feb 1940
- Winston Churchill made a radio broadcast to warn Bulgaria against joining the Tripartite Pact.
- The Finnish defensive Mannerheim Line in the Summa sector began to fall apart, with Soviet troops taking control of a bunker near the village of Karhula. Finnish troops brought up reserves to counterattack, but failed to retake the bunker.
» In-depth article - German destroyers Z3, Z4, and Z16 deployed 110 mines in the Shipwash, a busy sea lane in the North Sea east of Harwich, England.
- British vessel Chagres, carrying 1,500 tons of Cameroonian bananas, hit a mine deployed by German submarine U-30 on 6 Jan 1940. Chagres sank 10 miles from her destination, killing 2. The remaining 62 men were rescued by anti-submarine trawler HMS Loch Montreith.
- Submarine Squalus was renamed USS Sailfish.
» In-depth article
9 Feb 1941
- Admiral Darlan became the new Vice Premier of Vichy France.
» In-depth article - 13 British aircraft from Scampton, Lincolnshire attacked battleship Tirpitz at Wilhelmshaven, Germany. The air crews reported to have caused damage, but in actuality no hits were scored.
» In-depth article - Allied troops captured El Agheila, Libya, marking an end of Operation Compass.
» In-depth article - Erwin Rommel was promoted to the rank of Generalleutnant.
» In-depth article - British Force H, including two battleships and one cruiser, with carrier HMS Ark Royal supporting from a distance, bombarded Genoa, Italy at 0815 hours. 273 15-inch shells and 782 6-inch shells were fired. Four merchant ships and a training vessel were sunk, 18 ships were damaged, harbor facilities and nearby industrial areas were damaged, and the cathedral was also hit. 144 Italians were killed, most of whom were civilians. The British lost 1 Swordfish torpedo bomber. Italian battleships Vittorio Veneto, Cesare, and Doria, supported by cruiser and destroyers, were launched to intercept the British fleet but failed to find them.
- German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau detected Allied convoy HX-106 off Newfoundland at 0830 hours. Because it was escorted by British battleship Ramilies, the German fleet withdrew at 1000 hours per orders not to engage British capital ships.
» In-depth article - German submarine U-37 attacked Allied convoy HG-53 435 miles west of Gibraltar at 0430 hours, sinking British ships Estrellano (5 killed, 21 survived) and Courland (3 killed, 27 survived). U-37 had also reported the sighting to aircraft based in Bordeaux, France, which led to the arrival of five Fw 200 Condor bombers, which sank British ships Jura, Dagmar I, and Brittanic and Norwegian ship Tejo.
- British cruiser HMS Neptune was damaged by German bombing at Plymouth, England, United Kingdom.
9 Feb 1942
- Year-round daylight saving time was re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy.
- George Marshall, Henry Arnold, Harold Stark, and Ernest King attended the first formal meeting of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
» In-depth article - Japanese hospital ship Hikawa Maru arrived at Kwajalein, departing later on the same day.
» In-depth article
» Tabular Record of Movement - Destroyer Yuzuki departed with Destroyer Division 23 to escort the invasion fleet for Gasmata, New Britain, Bismarck Islands.
» In-depth article - USS Trout sank Japanese auxiliary gunboat Chuwa Maru 50 miles northeast of Taiwan.
» In-depth article - German submarine U-654 attacked Allied convoy ON-60 in the Atlantic Ocean 450 miles east of Cape Race, Newfoundland just after 0000 hours, damaging Free French corvette Alysse; 36 were killed, 34 survived. At 2020 hours, German submarine U-85 also attacked ON-60, sinking British ship Empire Fusilier; 9 were killed, 38 survived.
» In-depth article - German aircraft damaged British cruiser HMS Cleopatra west of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea.
- German aircraft damaged British destroyer HMS Farndale off Egypt.
- Japanese Special Naval Landing Force troops arrived at Gasmata airfield, renamed Surumi airfield by the Japanese, in southern New Britain to expand the existing grass runway built by the RAAF.
- Kaga accidentally hit a reef in the Palau Islands, Caroline Islands, damaging her bilges.
» In-depth article
» Tabular Record of Movement
- Japanese Sasebo Combined Special Naval Landing Force troops landed at Makassar, Celebes, Dutch East Indies at dawn and captured the city. Most Dutch defenders fell back to the fortifications at Tjama. A small number of captured native troops were tied in groups of three and thrown into a river near Makassar to drown.
» In-depth article - Japanese aircraft damaged British river gunboat HMS Scorpion in the Bangka Strait off Sumatra, Dutch East Indies.
- Italian aircraft bombed Alexandria, Egypt.
- During the day, Japanese troops captured Tengah airfield at Singapore while behind the front 10,000 additional troops arrived at the beachheads. At 2100 hours, the Japanese 4th Imperial Guard Regiment landed at Kranji in northern Singapore, but the attempt was driven off by Australian 27th Brigade's heavy machine gun and mortar fire before the Australians fell back in anticipation of another landing.
» In-depth article
- USS Lafayette (former French luxury liner SS Normandie, impounded by the United States in May 1941), amidst conversion into a troop transport, caught fire and capsized at midnight in New York Harbor, United States.
9 Feb 1943
- Allied authorities declared Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands secure after Japan evacuated its remaining forces from the island.
» In-depth article - Soviet troops recaptured Belgorod, Russia.
- The first of seven Axis convoys left Italy with reinforcements bound for Tunisia but British aircraft from Malta, submarines, and minefields took a heavy toll.
» In-depth article - The first Chindit operation began. Brigadier Orde Wingate took a force of 3,000 troops into Burma to conduct a guerrilla-style campaign behind Japanese lines.
» In-depth article - On Ambon Island in eastern Indonesia, the Japanese beheaded 85 Australian and Dutch prisoners.
- Shoe rationing went into effect in the United States.
- USS Gar began her sixth war patrol.
» In-depth article - HMS Erica (Lieutenant A. C. C. Charles Cuthbert Seligman) was mined and sunk whilst escorting a convoy from Benghazi, Libya to Alexandria, Egypt.
- Chinese leaders Song Ziwen and He Yingqin, British leaders Archibald Wavell and John Dill, and American leaders Henry Arnold, Joseph Stilwell, Clayton Bissell, and Brehon Somervell met in Delhi, India.
» In-depth article - USS Runner attacked a Japanese transport and an escorting destroyer in the western Pacific; she claimed the sinking of a Japanese transport, hitting her with 1 of 3 torpedoes fired.
» In-depth article - George Kenney ordered a series of strong night attacks on Rabaul, New Britain.
» In-depth article
- Irako supplied food to seaplane tender Sanyo Maru at Truk, Caroline Islands.
» In-depth article
» Tabular Record of Movement
- USS Tunny fired torpedoes on a Japanese convoy in the Taiwan Strait, damaging one transport with two torpedoes.
» In-depth article
- Allied convoy RA-52 arrived at Loch Ewe, Scotland, United Kingdom.
» In-depth article
- The US Naval Dry Docks, Roosevelt Base was established near Los Angeles, California, United States.
9 Feb 1944
- Walter Heitz passed away.
» In-depth article - The German Foreign Ministry in the Hague reported back to Berlin that to date 108,000 Jews had been deported from the Netherlands. The Dutch population considered German methods brutal, and church circles were actively promoting disapproval for the deportations.
- USS Gar ended her tenth war patrol.
» In-depth article - The Royal Navy's Second Escort Group (Captain F. J. Walker CB, DSO and three bars) sank the German submarines U-734 and U-238.
- German troops captured Aprilia, Italy.
» In-depth article
- Japanese hospital ship Hikawa Maru arrived at Beppu, Japan.
» In-depth article
» Tabular Record of Movement
- Lieutenant Commander James Grady was named the commanding officer of USS Whale, relieving Lieutenant Commander Albert Burrows.
» In-depth article
9 Feb 1945
- British and Canadian troops forced their way through a main Siegfried Line/Westwall defensive zone. Meanwhile, half of German 19.Armee was evacuated back into Germany before the final Rhine River bridge in the Colmar Pocket in France was blown.
» In-depth article - Elbing and Posen in Germany (now Elblag and Poznan in Poland) were surrounded by the Soviet forces.
- In a rare instance of submarine-to-submarine combat, British HMS Venturer sank German U-864 off the coast of Fedje, Norway.
- Between this date and 12 Feb 1945, US submarine Batfish sank three Japanese destroyers.
» In-depth article - Soviet submarine S-13 sank the German ship Steuben, killing 3,000 to 4,000, most of which were military personnel being evacuated from East Prussia, Germany.
» In-depth article
- Soviet Captain Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested for his private criticism of Joseph Stalin; he would eventually be sentenced to 8 years imprisonment at labor camps for this crime.
9 Feb 1946
- Hammerhead was decommissioned from service.
» In-depth article
- At the Bolshoi Theater in central Moscow, Russia, Joseph Stalin made a speech which effectively claimed that the Western Allies played little or no part in the Soviet victory over Germany in WW2.
» In-depth article
9 Feb 1955
Photo(s) dated 9 Feb 1955
Photo(s) dated 9 Feb 1955
9 Feb 1957
- Miklós Horthy passed away.
» In-depth article
9 Feb 1996
- Adolf Galland passed away.
» In-depth article
Timeline Section Founder: Thomas Houlihan
Contributors: Alan Chanter, C. Peter Chen, Thomas Houlihan, David Stubblebine
Special Thanks: Rory Curtis
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