(The Admiralty announces the loss of HM Trawler Lady Shirley. Famed for having sunk U-111 on Oct. 4, 1941, the boat was sunk by U-374 on Dec. 11, 1941. There were no survivors from the 33-man crew.)

(The Japanese were the only belligerent country to use poison gas in combat in World War II, this was mostly, but not exclusively, against Chinese troops. In this case, however, I don't think there had been a gas attack.)

(The claim is that the U.S. Navy has sunk a total of 24 warships and merchantmen since the beginning of the war. Including a 17,000-ton passenger ship. None of the claims were true. A post-war assessment shows that the Japanese lost 14 warships [including submarines] and 19 merchantmen from Dec. 7, 1941 to Jan. 12, 1942. United States forces were responsible for sinking only thirteen of these ships.)

(Actress Carole Lombard, the wife of Clark Gable, her mother, one of Clark Gable's press agents, 15 U.S. Army servicemen, one female passenger and 3 crew members of the aircraft all died when it flew into a mountain outside of Las Vegas. Lombard was on a war bonds tour for the U.S. Government. It was later determined that the crash was caused by the absurd policy of shutting down the safety beacons because of the fear of air attack by the Japanese. Looking back one can see how insane the thought of the Japanese conducting an air raid on Nevada was, but the people in charge could not. They were in a major cover-your-rear end mode and nothing, no matter how ridiculous it was, had been taken off the table. You can look at the modern-day equivalent in the overreaction to the COVID epidemic. Any official could come up with any insane policy, in the name of "public safety" and it would be implemented. The destruction wrought by these policies is incalculable, but we are all paying for it still today.)

(The report of his death was true, but the cause is still unknown. Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Reichenau had a stroke on Jan. 14th and was being flown to Leipzig for treatment. His plane crash-landed and he received further injuries. It is unclear if he died from the effects of the stroke or the plane crash. His early death prevented him from being tried as a war criminal at Nürnberg, charges for which he very likely would have been executed. A rabid Jew hater and devoted Nazi, Reichenau oversaw the Kiev area where the Babi Yar massacre took place in Sept. of 1941. He was indicted at Nürnberg, even though he was dead, as part of the German General Staff and him specifically for the Reichenau Order, also known as the severity order.)

(It was true that the passenger ship Yawata Maru was converted into an escort carrier named Unyo, but it was not sunk until Sept. 16, 1944.)

(Coimbra was sunk by U-123 on Jan. 15 with the loss of 36 men, there were only 10 survivors.)

(Great losses of Soviet cavalry - air raids on Alexandria and English blast furnaces.)

(Japanese tanks annihilate British escape columns.)

[Korvettenkapitän Otto Kretschmer, commanding officer of U-99, awarded the swords to his Ritterkreuz. He was the 6th officer to receive the Eichenlaub [Oak Leaves, awarded Nov. 4, 1940] and the 5th officer to receive the swords.

Kretschmer would become the top U-boat commander of World War II, sinking 46 ships for over 270,000 tons. Which makes him the second highest scoring submarine commander in history. Kapitänleutnant (later Vizeadmiral) Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière sank 195 ships for an astonishing 455,000 tons during the Great War. Kretschmer may have caught him by tonnage had he had been at sea longer. He did all his damage in only a year and a half from Oct. 1939 to Mar. 1941. (The second highest scoring U-boat commander of World War II was Wolfgang Lüth, who sank 47 ships for a total of over 225,000 tons, but it took him 47 months to accomplish that.) In Mar. 1941 he was captured when his U-99 was sunk and he remained a prisoner of war until 1947. After the war he joined the Bundesmarine and retired as a Flotillenadmiral. Otto Kretschmer died in 1998.]