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• During the night, 7 British Wellington bombers from Feltwell, Lincolnshire attacked battleship Tirpitz at Wilhelmshaven, which suffered light damage from near misses. ww2dbase [Tirpitz | CPC]
• British Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout Movement and hero of the Boer War, died in Kenya at the age of 84. ww2dbase [AC]
• British Wellington bombers from Malta attacked Italian battleships Guilio Cesare and Vittorio Veneto moored in Naples, Italy. Guilio Cesare was badly damaged by 3 near misses but Vittorio Veneto was hit without serious damage. Both ships would be moved to La Spezia, Italy and repaired, out of the range of the Malta bombers. ww2dbase [Giulio Cesare | CPC]
• Australian 6th Division began reconnaissance patrols around Tobruk, Libya. Overnight, a patrol reached the Italian defensive perimeter. ww2dbase [Operation Compass | CPC]

• Royal Thai Air Force aircraft attacked French positions at Siem Reap and Battambang in Cambodia, French Indochina. ww2dbase [Franco-Thai War | Cambodia | CPC]

• Adolf Hitler hosted a two-day military conference at his Berghof residence in southern Germany, where he stated that Germany would continue to support Italian efforts in North Africa despite it being a secondary theater, the Soviet Union must be brought down, southern France might need to be occupied, and, for the first time, told the military leaders to prepare Germany for the possibility of American entry into the war. ww2dbase [Adolf Hitler | Berchtesgaden, München-Oberbayern | CPC]

• Zuikaku departed Hiroshima, Japan for Truk, Caroline Islands. ww2dbase [Zuikaku | Hiroshima | CPC]

• British cruisers HMS Gloucester and HMS Southampton arrived at Malta to disembark 510 Army and RAF personnel, escorted by destroyers HMS Ilex and HMS Janus. HMS Gloucester, HMS Southampton, and HMS Ilex continued west to meet the Excess convoy from Gibraltar. ww2dbase [Malta Campaign | CPC]

• US President Franklin Roosevelt requested the US Congress to pass a defense budget in the size of US$10,811,000,000 for fiscal year of 1942. ww2dbase [Franklin Roosevelt | Washington | CPC]

8 Jan 1941 Interactive Map