UNITED KINGDOM: Reuter - News Chronicle
To-day Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes, whose son, Lt-Col Geoffrey Keyes, was killed in a raid on Rommel's headquarters in North Africa in 1941, said:
"I shall always regret that I never had the opportunity to thank Rommel for his generous behaviour to my son. Rommel paid my son a great honour. He went to kill Rommel and, although he failed in his mission, he killed four of the German Commander's staff officers.
"Rommel not only gave orders that my son be laid before the altar of an Italian church with the four officers, but also paid public tribute to his leadership and bravery, and accorded him a full military funeral."
BELGIUM: The 101st Airborne Division will launch an attack to the north and northeast of Bastogne. In preparation for the attack the 501st Parachute Infantry attacks at 1405 and seizes a segment of the Foy - Margaret road 500 yards in front of its Main Line of Resistance. The attack secures the Line of Departure to be used by the 327th GliderInfantry as it attacks through the 501st on the 13th. The 501st takes 42 casualties during the attack, mostly from artillery and mortar fire. (Jay Stone)
GERMANY: U-2355, U-2356, U-3021, U-3520, U-4702 commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
Norway: U-427 attacked heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk off Egersund (Norway) with five torpedoes, but all missed. (Dave Shirlaw)
FINLAND: Minelayer Louhi hits a mine off Hanko and sinks with loss of 10 men. (Dave Shirlaw)
EASTERN FRONT: A major Soviet attack begins. The Red Army today unleashed its major winter offensive, hurling 163 divisions at the German positions in Poland and East Prussia, and is sweeping forward with massed tanks under a massive artillery bombardment and clouds of warplanes against 30 German divisions. The Germans are fighting from well-prepared defensive positions, but they are outnumbered by five tanks to one.
Hitler refused to believe intelligence reports of a massive Russian build-up, and rejected calls from General Guderian, now chief of the general staff, to transfer troops from the Ardennes offensive or call off attacks near Budapest. Yet today's attack by General Konev's First Ukrainian Front in southern Poland is only the first round of Russia's winter offensive.
From Memel, on the Baltic, to Warsaw, some 300 miles further south, the Red Army is poised to attack, with Warsaw the prime target for Marshal Zhukov's First Byelorussian Front when it joins the fray. The Russian commanders have their eyes on the industrial cities of Upper Silesia, but if they can cross the Vistula the German border will be less than 60 miles away. Russia has stockpiled supplies to sustain a broad advance.
At 0400 on January 12th, 1945 the attack began from the Baranow bridgehead [the 'Vistula-Oder operation'] with Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev's formidable "1st Ukrainian Front" hammering the skeletal frontline positions of 48.Panzerkorps, commanded by General der Panzertruppe Maximillian Reichsfreiherr von Edelsheim, with an unrelenting barrage for some 6 hours. By the time the cannon-fire let up, and the wary but confident Russian "frontovik" footsloggers moved forward into the main line of battle riding on and accompanied by T-34/85's, Su-100's and JSII's attached to special 'breakthrough' units, a heavy windswept snowfall had risen up to obfuscate the terrain details of the cratered battlefield from both attacker and defender alike. Nevertheless, the determined Soviet spearheads quickly advanced beyond the devastated trenches and weapons pits of the "hauptkampflinie" [HKL] (main line of resistance) of the German 48.Panzerkorps, leaving a swath of dead, destroyed, and dazed German defenders in their wake. 48.Panzerkorps consists of the 68th, 168th and 304th Infenterie-Divisions.
Genobst.Josef Harpe's Heeresgruppe 'A' reserve, deployed with 4.Panzerarmee to the north and west of the tottering 48.Pz. Kps.position, included reforming elements of the battered 16th and 17th.Panzer Divisions, which were almost immediately engaged and bypassed by the onrush of Soviet armor and tank-borne infantry. At the main breach German defenses virtually ceased to exist - simply pulverized beneath the onslaught; with the two 'anchor' formations; the 68th, and 168. Infanterie Divisions losing cohesion, and in full rout.
Despite it's designation as a "Panzerkorps", Edelsheim's command had no integral Panzer units, and could boast only some 30 or so assault guns without petrol attached to the infantry units in static defensive positions, along with some 12 "schwere" or heavy tank-destroyers, the lumbering and mechanically unreliable "Elefants" of the 614th Army Heavy Panzerjaeger Battalion, recently arrived from the Italian front, to give his lines any sort of backbone. What strength did exist was parcelled carefully among the (static) infantry echelons, and supported by divisional artillery batteries, some 300 barrels strong, strung out over a front of nearly a hundred kilometres; which, though strategically placed, were severely limited in ammunition.
In a mere matter of hours, the Baranow-Sandomierz bridgehead had exploded wide open, allowing Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front to bypass hastily staged and ineffective local German counterthrusts on it's way west. (Russ Folsom)
GREECE: Athens: Maj-Gen Ronald Scobie, the British GOC in Greece, today faced four rebel leaders at a conference table and laid down his terms for a truce in the Greek civil war. And the indications are that the left-wing ELAS (National Liberation Army) will accept a form of armistice and agree to exchange prisoners.
Minesweeper HMS Regulus is mined during clearance operations off Sista Island near Corfu and loses her propellers. She is taken in tow, but capsizes an hour later. (Alex Gordon)(108)
BURMA: 3 Commando Brigade of the Royal Marines conducted an amphibious assault at Myebon, seizing the position from the Japanese and threatening their line of retreat. (Dave Shirlaw)
PACIFIC: Aircraft carrier TF 38, under the command of Vice Admiral John S. McCain, hits Japanese shipping, airfields, and other shore installations in the South China Sea and in southeastern French Indochina. Among the sunken vessels is the Ch 43 (442T). This subchaser, with the help of Ch 15 and W18, sank the submarine U.S.S. Wahoo (SS-238) in La Perouse Strait on 11 October 1943. (Chris Sauder)
The US submarine Swordfish (SS-193), commanded by Keats E. Montross, is sunk by Japanese ASW forces near Okinawa. All hands are lost. (Joe Sauder)