Singapore, February 15th, 1942
The Japanese army attacking Singapore was heavily outnumbered, by more than two to one and its supply situation was at best dubious. But the British defenders had lost control of their own supply depots and water reservoirs and their morale was crumbling. A counterattack might had salvaged the situation but general Arthur Percival the commander of the British forces in Singapore between a counterattack and surrender had chosen surrender. General Auchinleck while his superior was two far away to countermand the order in time. 80,000 British, Indian and Australian soldiers would end in Japanese prisoner of war camps. General Yamashita Percival's Japanese counterpart had little more than 30,000 men at the time of the surrender. The defeat would only exacerbate the disagreements between the Australian and British governments over the disposition of the 6th and 7th Australian divisions, which alongside the 6th British infantry division had left the Near East for the Pacific in late January...
Iraq, February 16th, 1942
Indian troops entered Erbil. They had not been the first allied troops to the city, Kurdish militiamen loyal to
Mustafa Barzani had taken over the town the previous day as the Turkish and Iraqi armies had pulled out of it and proclaimed it the provisional capital of the republic of Kurdistan. It was a complication general Slim could live without. On one hand British authorities did not want to offend king Abdullah, nor to diminish his already questionable legitimacy with the Iraqi public. On the other hand they did not want to alienate the Kurds either, not with Lawrence and the SOE waging a guerrilla war in Turkish Kurdistan. And it was just the beginning of such problems for the British. Mosul fell 8 days later to French and British columns. As soon as the Allies were in the local Assyrians proclaimed their own state...
Berlin, February 20th, 1942
Hermann Göring, was concerned. The winter hadn't been particularly good for Germany so far. Soviet counterattacks had stopped the German army before Moscow and pushed the Germans back. Libya had been lost. The British were pushing north in Iraq. The United States had entered the war. Each even together did not matter much. But all together were concerning. They hardly meant Germany was losing the war, there was every chance that the Soviet Union would collapse this summer allowing Germany to turn the Reich's might elsewhere, but both he and Wever were in agreement that Germany should better promptly take action to retain her superiority, while the recent problems in German aircraft development projects could be politely described as concerning. The Bomber B problem appeared to be going nowhere, as both the DB604 and Jumo 222 engines suffered from severe development problems. Me-210 had been rushed into production, the first units flying it were about to become operational, but it was a difficult aircraft. The RLM had better rationalize and increase production to the extend possible. It was decided to stop development of DB604 and to seek stop-gap solutions for the Bomber B aircraft till Jumo 222 was ready, while Romania would be sold a licence for the BMW801 engine. Meanwhile Göring had certain more personal concerns. The contract for the follow up tank designs to deal with the Russian T-34s promised to be very lucrative, but the army did not seem particularly interested to the T-25 design being prepared by Skoda. Given how Skoda works were under the control of a certain Hermann Göring this could not do. No matter which tank actually won the competition Göring planned to make certain T-25 also got produced...
Murmansk, February 22nd, 1942
Convoy PQ.11, thirteen merchant ships reached Murmansk. The polar night was certainly helpful for the allied Arctic convoys. But it would not hold for much longer, as the nights kept growing shorter, adding one more problem to the allied convoys. The previous year had been costly for the Allied merchant marines. 2.3 million tons of shipping had been sunk in the Atlantic.Another 740,000t have been sunk around the British islands, another 550,000 tons in the Mediterranean and 458,000 tons in the Pacific. Even in the Indian Ocean 20 ships of 73,000 tons have been sunk bringing total Allied losses for 1941 to 4,122,000 tons. 1942 if anything looked to be going worse as in just two months 636,000 tons had already been sunk in the Atlantic... [1]
Casablanca, February 25th, 1942
The B-24 carrying Bernard Montgomery, landed in the French airport. Mongomery would spend the night in Casablanca before continuing en route to India, where a reorganization of the British command structure was underway. As soon as Mongomery reached India he was supposed to take over command of the Burma Corps, while Harold Alexander, currently in command of British forces in Burma would take over as commander in chief of all Allied forces in Burma.
New York harbour, March 1st, 1942
The Normandie, with 10,000 troops aboard left New York for Britain, which it would reach less than a week later. Over the following months the French ocean liner would be averaging at least one round trip per month, carrying ten to fifteen thousand men in each trip, with 120,000 in total transported to Britain and Ireland by the end of the year. The only comparable ships available to the allies would be the British Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth.
Fremantle, Australia, March 4th, 1942
HMS Ark Royal and 4 USN destroyers reached the port, the last survivors of the ABDA fleet. Over the previous week allied forces had been heavily defeated by Japanese navy in the Java sea with the casualties being particularly painful for the Royal Netherlands Navy, which had lost 2 cruisers and two destroyers, while the Japanese forces involved in the fighting had been left virtually unscathed. The presence of Ark Royal had not much affected results of the battle. Bad weather had adversely affected the ability of its aircraft to operate and the one daylight attack launched by her Swordfish and Albacores had proven the obsolescence of the "string-bag" in daylight operations, half a dozen had been shot down by the Japanese without managing to damage any Japanese ships. Ark Royal would soon leave Fremantle to join up with Somerville's fleet in Ceylon.
[1] The Allies do not know it of course but they are doing better overall. They have lost 49,000t more in the Mediterranean in the convoys supplying Greece nut have lost 327,000t less in the Atlantic thanks to control of Dakar and the Irish treaty ports. Add the Greek merchant marine being 547,000t larger and they have at the moment 825,000t of shipping in excess of OTL. Of course said 825,000t of shipping have to keep Greece and the Syrian and Iraqi fronts in supply...
en.wikipedia.org
