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• British Army Major Herbert Le Patourel won the Victoria Cross for single-handedly taking an enemy position near Tunis in which he was seriously wounded. ww2dbase [AC]
• US Air Transport Command began flying "the Hump" into China. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
• General Hitoshi Imamura arrived in Rabaul, New Britain to take command of the Japanese South Pacific Area and the Seventeenth Army. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

• The US merchant ship SS Coamo was sunk by German submarine U-604 off Bermuda while on route to New York from Gibraltar. The ship was detached from the convoy she started in and was never heard from again. A total of 186 lives were lost in what was the greatest loss aboard any US flag merchant vessel during WW2. ww2dbase [AC]

• Georgios Tsolakoglou was removed as the Prime Minister of the German puppet Hellenic State. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
• Konstantinos Logothetopoulos was made the Prime Minister of the Hellenic State. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

• Kamoi arrived at Jaluit, Marshall Islands. ww2dbase [Main Article | Tabular Record of Movement | CPC]

• Two transports arrived at Auschwitz Concentration Camp on this date. The first transport from Westerbork Concentration Camp in the Netherlands arrived with 826 Jews; 77 of them were registered into the camp, and the remaining 749 were gassed. The second transport from Grodno ghetto arrived with 1,000 Jews; 178 men and 60 women were registered into the camp, and the remaining 762 were gassed. ww2dbase [Main Article | Facility | CPC]

• British 2nd Parachute Battalion engaged elements of 3rd Battalion of German 5th Parachute Regiment at El Fedja, Tunisia. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

• USS Harder was commissioned into service with Commander Samuel Dealey in command. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
• Enrico Fermi's atomic reactor Chicago Pile-1 at the University of Chicago, Illinois, United States initiated the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

2 Dec 1942 Interactive Map