The German submarine U-162, which had sunk 14 merchant ships in six months, was depth charged and sunk northeast of Trinidad by British warships. However, 49 of its 51 crew survived and were able to supply allied intelligence with information about the design of the German submarines..
Service du travail obligatoire: The Vichy French government passed a law requiring all able-bodied men age 18 to 50 and single women 21 to 35 to be subject to do any work the government deemed necessary.
Gorazd Pavlík, Orthodox Bishop of Prague, together with two priests and lay officials, was executed by firing squad at Kobylisy Shooting Range, having taken the blame for Czech resistance fighters implicated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich hiding in his cathedral. This effort to spare wider Nazi retribution among his flock earned him canonization.
Died:Zsigmond Móricz, 63, Hungarian novelist and social realist
The Battle of Alam el Halfa, fought in Egypt with General Bernard Montgomery leading British and New Zealand troops against the Axis forces of Germany and Italy led by Erwin Rommel, ended after six days in Allied victory, at the cost of 1,750 Allied and 2900 Axis casualties, and without putting an end to Germany's Afrika Korps.
The Soviet 24th and 66th Armies counterattacked the XIV Panzer Corps at Stalingrad, but the offensive was called off after losing 30 of 120 tanks, mostly to the Luftwaffe.
The Battle of Milne Bay, fought in the territory of Papua, ended with an in Australian victory over the Japanese attackers. Australia lost 167 men killed or missing, while the Japanese lost 625. U.S. fighters in the 101st Coast Artillery, from the Georgia Army National Guard, suffered 14 deaths.
The German 6th Army attacked Mamayev Kurgan, the dominant height overlooking Stalingrad.
Cuba signed an agreement with the United States allowing a flotilla of a dozen American-crewed patrol ships to operate out of Havana under Cuban colors.
Winston Churchill reviewed the course of the war in an address to the British House of Commons.
The U.S. government shut down gold mines to release labor for the war effort.
The characters of Pogo the Possum and Albert the Alligator made their first appearances in the story "Albert Takes the Cake" by Walt Kelly in Animal Comics issue #1.
The first of the two Lookout Air Raids occurred in Oregon. A Japanese Yokosuka E14Y floatplane launched from a submarine dropped two incendiary bombs with the intention of starting a forest fire. One of the bombs struck the Wheeler Ridge of Mount Emily about 10 miles (16km) east of Brookings, Oregon. The damage done was limited because of the work of a patrol of American civilians with the U.S. Forest Serice who performed as fire lookouts and firefighters.
German forces of the 29th Motorized Division broke through to the Volga River on the southern side of Stalingrad. The Soviet 62nd Army was hit along the frontline, with its forces defending just 2 km from the heart of the city.
The Italian hospital ship Arno was torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean by British aircraft. Arno had no patients on board, and most of the medical staff were able to evacuate on boats before Arno sank nine hours after it was attacked, but 27 of its crew died in the bombing.
Died:Walter Zellot, 21, German fighter ace (shot down over Stalingrad)
An Anglo-Norwegian raiding party of 12 commandos began Operation Musketoon, an attack on the German-held Glomfjord power plant in Norway. While the group put the power plant out of commission, one commando was killed in the battle, and seven others captured as prisoners of war at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then executed on October 23.
The Canadian corvette HMCS Charlottetown was torpedoed and sunk in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by the German submarine U-517. Out of her crew of 64, nine people were killed including the ship's ranking officer, Royal Canadian Navy Lieutenant Commander John W. Bonner.
The Japanese destroyer Yayoi was bombed and sunk off Vakuta Island by U.S. and British aircraft, with the loss of 77 of her 150 crew.
The British troopship RMS Laconia, a converted Cunard White Star Line cruise ship, was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of West Africa by the German submarine U-156. The ship was carrying 2,741 people, of whom 1,809 were Italian service members taken as prisoners of war. As the captain of U-156 realized that the ship had been carrying 87 civilians and the Axis prisoners, he signaled a U.S. B-24 bomber to assist in the rescue, and called for other German U-boats to assist. Instead, the captain of the American B-24 attacked the German U-boats and the Germans abandoned the rescue attempts. Estimates were made that at least 1,083 people survived while another 1,658 — almost 1,400 of whom were the Italian prisoners— died in the attack on the Laconia. As a result of the attack on the rescue efforts, Germany's Admiral Karl Dönitz issued the Laconia Order, ordering submarine commanders to not attempt to rescue survivors.
The destruction of the German garrison in Lenin by Soviet partisans took place near Pinsk in what is now Belarus as a followup to the August 14 liquidation of the Jewish internees of the Lenin Ghetto. The Soviet partisans killed 17 Germans (including the ghetto's commander) as well as 13 local police.
The German submarine U-88 was depth charged and sunk off Spitsbergen, along with its crew of 46, by the British destroyer Faulknor.
The Wehrmacht began a massive ground assault to try to take the city of Stalingrad, marking the beginning of the house-to-house fighting that most characterized the battle.
The Allies launched Operation Agreement, a series of ground and amphibious operations carried out by British, Rhodesian and New Zealand forces against Axis-held Tobruk.
The Canadian destroyer Ottawa sank with 114 of its 183 crew after it was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean by the German submarine U-91 while traveling as part of the Allied Convoy ON 127.
The Battle of Edson's Ridge, fought at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands as part of the U.S. Marines defense against the occupying Japanese 35th Infantry Brigade, ended two days after it began as the Japanese forces retreated into the jungle. At least 830 Japanese troops were dead or missing, along with at least 104 U.S. Marines.
Near Guadalcanal, the American aircraft carrier USS Wasp, carrying 2,139 crew and 71 aircraft on was struck by at least two torpedoes fired by the Japanese submarine I-19. The strike set off several explosions, destroyed the ship's water-mains and its power, and started fires that could not be fought. In the blaze, 193 U.S. Navy crew were killed and 366 wounded, and 46 aircraft were lost. USS Wasp was evacuated, and scuttled later in the day. The destroyer USS Lansdowne, which rescued 447 of the Wasp crew, torpedoed the wreckage, which would be relocated more than 76 years later on January 14, 2019.
In the same attack, I-19 mortally damaged the destroyer O'Brien, which would founder and sink a month later while being escorted to Pago Pago for repairs.
The German submarine U-261 was depth charged and sunk west of the Shetland Islands with the loss of all 43 crew.
Laconia incident: A controversial event occurred when a USAAF B-24 Liberator attacked the U-156 while survivors rescued from the September 12 RMS Laconia sinking stood on the foredeck. The U-156 was forced to dive and abandon the survivors. Karl Dönitz shortly thereafter issued the Laconia Order, forbidding any such rescue work in the future.
Vidkun Quisling reintroduced the death penalty to the Norwegian criminal code.
Masayuki Tani became the new Japanese Foreign Minister.
The British submarine Talisman was lost in the Mediterranean, along with all 59 crew, while en route from French Algeria to Malta, after its path took it through Italian naval mines off of Sicily.
Nazi authorities killed 116 people in Paris in retaliation for increasing attacks on German officers.
The British destroyer Somali was torpedoed and mortally damaged in the Greenland Sea by German submarine U-255. Somali was taken under tow by destroyer HMS Ashanti but would sink four days later.
Four British de Havilland Mosquito bombers conducted the Oslo Mosquito raid, intended to boost morale of the Norwegian people. The operation failed as the Mosquito bombs failed to destroy the Gestapo HQ but caused 80 civilian casualties and one bomber was lost.
The Oslo Mosquito raid against Gestapo HQ was scheduled to coincide with a rally of Norwegian collaborators, led by Vidkun Quisling; from September 25 to 27 his Norwegian Nazi party Nasjonal Samling ('National Unity') held its 8th national convention in Oslo, Norway.
The German submarine U-253 sank in the Atlantic Ocean northwest of Iceland, with the most likely explanation being that it had struck a British naval mine.
Hitler gave a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast informing his audience that "it will not be the Aryan peoples, but rather Jewry, that will be exterminated."
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