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• USS Lexington made rendezvous with USS Yorktown and sailed for a raid on Rabaul, New Britain. ww2dbase [Lexington (Lexington-class) | CPC]
• USS Yorktown made rendezvous with USS Lexington and sailed for a raid on Rabaul, New Britain. ww2dbase [Yorktown (Yorktown-class) | CPC]
• Japanese hospital ship Hikawa Maru departed Palau. ww2dbase [Hikawa Maru | CPC]
• HMS Indomitable launched the Hurricane fighters of No. 30 Squadron for Colombo, Ceylon. ww2dbase [Indomitable | CPC]
• German submarine U-505 sank Norwegian tanker Sydhav off Sierra Leone, British West Africa at 1131 hours; 12 were killed, 24 survived. Also in that morning, Italian submarine Tazzoli sank Dutch freighter Astrea in the Central Atlantic. Tazzoli struck again at 2215 hours, sinking Norwegian ship Tønsberg Fjord; all 33 aboard survived. At 2306 hours, 150 miles south of Iceland, U-701 sank British fishing trawler Rononia, killing all 11 aboard. Italian submarine Finzi sank French tanker Melpomene; all 49 aboard survived. Finally, 50 miles south of Newfoundland, German submarine U-587 sank Greenland merchant ship Hans Egede, killing all 23 aboard. ww2dbase [Second Happy Time | Giuseppe Finzi | CPC]
• Merchant ship El Occidente and Soviet anti-submarine whaler Stefa fell out of Allied convoy PQ-12 in poor weather. ww2dbase [Arctic Convoys | CPC]
• Commander Gerald D. Linke was named the commanding officer of USS Helena, relieving Captain Robert Henry English, Jr. ww2dbase [Helena (St. Louis-class) | CPC]
• Karl Burk was promoted to the rank of SS-Standartenführer. ww2dbase [Karl Burk | CPC]
• Ariake and Yugure received fuel from ships of the First Supply Unit. ww2dbase [Yugure | CPC]

• German Type IXC U-Boat U-505 torpedoed and sunk the Norwegian tanker Sydhav off British West Africa (Sierra Leone). 12 were killed and 24 were rescued. ww2dbase [U-505 | Second Happy Time | DS]

• Anglo-Indian and Japanese troops clashed at various roadblocks near Rangoon, Burma. ww2dbase [Invasion of Burma | Rangoon | CPC]

• Japanese aircraft attacked Surabaya, Java, Dutch East Indies, damaging Dutch minesweeper Jan van Amstel, killing 23. Dutch sailors scuttled minesweepers C and Pieter de Bitter, also at Surabaya, to prevent capture. ww2dbase [Dutch East Indies Campaign, Java | Surabaya, Java | CPC]

• The first conference on the plan to sterilize persons of mixed blood in Germany was held. ww2dbase [CPC]

• Joseph Rochefort's cryptanalytic team at Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii began noticing a target location code named AF appearing in Japanese Navy radio messages, and that this target might be struck within a short time. ww2dbase [Pearl Harbor Navy Base and Ford Island Naval Air Station | Joseph Rochefort | Honolulu, Oahu | CPC]

• Japanese killed many civilians, mostly ethnic Chinese, in Benut, Johor in Malaya. ww2dbase [Invasion of Malaya and Singapore | Benut, Johor | CPC]

• German battleship Tirpitz and 4 destroyers departed Trondheim, Norway to intercept Allied convoys PQ-12 and QP-8, which departed from Reykjavik in Iceland for Murmansk in Russia and from Murmansk in Russia for Hvalfjörður in Iceland, respectively. The British Royal Navy learned of this departure via Ultra decryption and dispatched a fleet centered around battleships HMS Duke of York, HMS King George V, and HMS Renown to attack. ww2dbase [Tirpitz | Trondheim, Sør-Trøndelag | CPC]

• USS St. Louis shifted from Mare Island to San Francisco, California. ww2dbase [St. Louis | San Francisco, California | DS]

6 Mar 1942 Interactive Map