16 Sep 1940
  • Battleship Bismarck entered the Kiel Canal. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
  • US Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act. ww2dbase [TH]
  • Italian troops of the 1st Blackshirt Division "23 Marzo" captured Sidi Barrani, Egypt and stopped the advance due to supply problems. This would prove to be the farthest the Italians would go. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
  • British bombers attacked German invasion barges in French ports along the English Channel, interrupting an amphibious training exercise and causing many casualties. ww2dbase [CPC]
  • German submarine U-99 sank Norwegian ship Lotos north of Ireland at 0241 hours; the entire crew of 17 survived in two lifeboats. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
  • German bombers damaged British troop ship Aska in the Irish Sea, kill 11 British crew and 19 French soldiers. ww2dbase [CPC]
  • French ship Poitiers, sailing from Libreville, French Equatorial Africa to Dakar, was intercepted by British cruiser HMS Cumberland. After taking the entire crew aboard, HMS Cumberland sank Poitiers by gunfire. ww2dbase [CPC]
  • The presence of German troops in Finland, despite the fact that they were ultimately destined for Norway, alarmed the Soviet Union. ww2dbase [CPC]
China
  • Communist Chinese New 4th Army captured Jiangyan (now a district of Taizhou), Jiangsu Province, China. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
United Kingdom
  • At 0730 hours, more than 100 German Bf 109 fighters made a raid on Kent, England, United Kingdom to draw British fighters, which never rose to meet them. Overnight, German bombers attacked London, Liverpool, Manchester, Coventry, Birmingham, and Bristol. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

Timeline Section Founder: Thomas Houlihan
Contributors: Alan Chanter, C. Peter Chen, Thomas Houlihan, Hugh Martyr, David Stubblebine
Special Thanks: Rory Curtis




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Random Photograph

A sailor sitting in the starboard steering gear ram room of the USS Intrepid seen through a torpedo hole in the hull 15 feet below the waterline, taken as the water receded in Pearl Harbor Drydock #1, 26 Feb 1944.




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Famous WW2 Quote
"All that silly talk about the advance of science and such leaves me cold. Give me peace and a retarded science."

Thomas Dodd, late 1945