1941: Force H under Vice Admiral Somerville bombarded Genoa, whilst Fleet Air Arm aircraft from HMS Ark Royal attacked Spezia, Leghorn and Pisa.

1942: The Pacific War Council, composed of representatives from the U.K., Australia, Netherlands East Indies, and New Zealand, is formed in London

Approximately 8,000 Japanese troops landed near Makassar City and south of Makassar at Jeneponto on Celebes Island. They immediately advanced for Makassar City, where they capture a bridge and the Dutch troops who were guarding the bridge.

A company of native soldiers opened fire on the Japanese causing casualties and in reprisal, the Japanese tied the Dutch soldiers in groups of three and threw them from the bridge into the water to drown

1943: Organized Japanese resistance on Guadalcanal ends

1944: The very successful anti-submarine group led by Captain F J Walker in HMS Starling fought a notable action in defence of convoy SL.147, sinking U-238 and U-734. Over 150 depth charges were used in a long and relentless battle, one of the depth charges successfully exploding a German torpedo just a few yards before it would have hit Starling. Exhausted by his relentless patrols of the North Atlantic, Captain Walker, awarded the Distinguished Service Order no less than four times, suddenly died aboard ship in July 1944.

1945: U-864 was sunk in the North Sea west of Bergen by torpedoes from the British submarine HMS Venturer. While submerged west of Bergen, Lt Chalmers was in the control room when he heard faint underwater sounds on the hydrophones, and Launders spotted a periscope at about 5,000 yards range. Chalmers trimmed the boat in silence for three hours while Launders the Captain stalked his quarry, calculating the range by the loudness of its noise.

U-864, commanded by Korvettenkaptän Ralf-Reimar Wolfram, was making "suicidal" use of its periscope, which was protruding about four feet above the surface. Venturer fired four torpedoes, and two minutes 12 seconds later there was a loud explosion.

This is the only known sinking of one submarine by another when both boats were submerged throughout the engagement. Venturer was cued by Ultra on to U-864, which carried an Me 163 rocket-powered interceptor, 64 tons of mercury, heavy water, and some 20 Luftwaffe officers as well as German and Japanese engineers

Capt. Alexander Solzhenitsyn commander of an artillery battalion, is arrested and sentenced to eight years in a camp for criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend