German heavy artillery began shelling Leningrad.
German and Rumanian troops captured the village of Vakarzhany, Ukraine.
Estonia is conquered by the Germans. Following the occupation of Tallin, the remaining 1,000 Jews are murdered by SS killing squads.
All Russian men aged 18 or over are called up for military service and all previous deferments are cancelled.
The equivalent of a whole Red Army Division under NKVD officers was sent south to round up and deport all the Soviet Union’s ethnic Germans they could find. By Jan 1942, 800,000 Germans from all parts of the Soviet Union had been shipped eastward.
Experimental trials of gas chambers at Block II of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland began, using Soviet prisoners of war and sick Jewish prisoners as test subjects. Since the autumn of 1939 the Germans have used carbon monoxide to kill their incurable mental patients and other “undesirables.” Today Rudolf Hoess, the commandant here, tried out a new method. He chose 600 Russian prisoners of war and 250 Jews from the infirmary to be his guinea pigs. Crammed into a cellar, they noticed that the windows had been blocked up. Suddenly the door opened and guards threw in a powder. Cyanide fumes filled the room and soon they were dead. The experiment was later judged a success. The powder, Zyklon B, is crystalline prussic acid, supplied by a Hamburg firm under license from the chemical giant IG Farben. It is usually used for killing rats.
Although most observers fail to read any deep significance into the desultory patrolling, raiding and artillery fighting now going on around Tobruk and the Cyrenaican border, they agree that there is at least one more really big battle due in the Western Desert.
Operation GAUNTLET ended in Allied success. An Allied task force has robbed the Nazis of their most northerly asset: the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen, 500 miles from the North Pole. The civilian population of 700 has been evacuated and valuable coal mines wrecked. It was a piquant operation. No Germans were present as an invasion force of Norwegians, Canadians and British landed to take over the radio station. When it was clear that the soldiers were welcome the force commander, from Saskatchewan, made a formal landing from a small commando craft and soon afterwards, at a community centre, was greeted by the commissar (Norway allows the USSR to mine on the island) and handed gifts of Russian cigarettes. At the Norwegian settlement of Svalbard nearby, a Norwegian major read a proclamation from the exiled King Haakon. For several days the invaders billeted cheerfully with the locals. Before the final evacuation of Norwegians and Russian miners, parties took place and a dance at which Norwegian girls danced with the soldiers.
Operation EGV.1, which involved an air attack on German targets at Tromsø, Norway by carrier aircraft from HMS Victorious, was cancelled due to lack of cloud cover.
German bombers damaged British ship Fort Richepanse at noon in the Atlantic Ocean; at 2042 hours, German submarine U-567 caught up with the damaged ship 450 miles west of Ireland, sinking her with 41 deaths; 22 survived.
The 6,338-ton Italian motor vessel MV Andrea Gritti, part of a convoy heading from Naples, Italy, to Tripoli, Libya, was torpedoed by British aircraft about 25 nautical miles (46 kilometers) off the coast of Sardinia. The ship blows up and sinks with the loss of 347 men.
In England, United Kingdom, Alan Brooke inspected 70 Welsh Young Soldiers’ Battalion at Duxford, A Company of 70th King’s Royal Rifle Corps at Debden, and B Company of 70th King’s Royal Rifle Corps at Castle Camp in the morning. After lunch with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, he inspected A and B Companies of 70th Suffolks regiment at Martlesham and A and B Companies of 70th Essex regiment at Southend. He was disappointed by the progress of the training of the Essex regiment.
RAF Bomber Command, Night of 3/4 September 1941
Brest
140 aircraft – 85 Wellingtons, 30 Hampdens, 19 Whitleys, 4 Stirlings, 2 Manchesters. All aircraft of 1, 4 and 5 Groups were recalled, probably because of worsening weather at bases, but 4 aircraft from these groups did not hear the signal and, with the 3 Group aircraft, proceeded to the target. 53 aircraft bombed the estimated positions of the German warships through a smoke-screen. No aircraft were lost but 2 Wellingtons and 1 Whitley crashed in England.
Minor Operations: 2 Wellingtons to Le Havre, 5 Hampdens minelaying off Denmark and Flensburg. No losses.
Aircraft carrier HMS Victorious’s air strike in Operation EGV.1 against Tromso was canceled due to the lack of cloud cover.
Minelayer HMS Manxman arrived from Loch Alsh. The minelayer, escorted by light cruiser HMS Kenya and destroyer HMS Lightning, departed Scapa Flow at 1000 to laid minefield EH off Stadtlandet during the night of 3/4 September. The force arrived back at Scapa Flow at 0015/5th. The minelaying cruiser departed Scapa Flow later on the 5th to return to Loch Alsh.
Submarine HMS Trident, returning to Polyarnoe, unsuccessfully attacked U-566.
Destroyer HMS Wolfhound was damaged by a near miss of a German air bomb in the North Sea. The destroyer was under repair for nineteen months at Chatham.
U-567, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Theodor Fahr, sank British steamer Fort Richepanse (3485grt) in 52-15N, 21-10W. At 2042 hours on 3 September 1941 the unescorted Fort Richepanse (Master Charles Draper) was torpedoed and sunk by U-567 about 450 miles southwest of Bloody Foreland. The steamer had been slightly damaged by German bombing seven hours before U-567’s attack. The master, 25 crew members, five gunners and five passengers were lost. 15 crew members and seven passengers were picked up by Polish destroyers ORP Garland (H 37) (LtCdr K.F. Namiesniowski, ORP) and ORP Piorun (G 65) (Cdr E.J.S. Plawski, ORP) and landed at Greenock. The 3,485-ton Fort Richepanse was carrying general cargo, including eggs and mail and was headed for Liverpool, England.
Destroyer HMS Encounter departed Gibraltar for South Africa, via the Cape. She refueled at Ponta Delgada and then joined battlecruiser HMS Repulse escorting convoy WS.11. The destroyer operated off East Africa for a time. Destroyer Encounter arrived at Alexandria on 16 October for operations with the Mediterranean Fleet.
Battleship HMS Valiant, light cruiser HMAS Hobart, and destroyers were at sea exercising from Alexandria during the day.
Submarine HMS Otus attacked a southbound convoy in 35-40N, 18-07E. The submarine reported two hits on a steamer.
Dutch submarine HNLMS O.23 departed Gibraltar for Dundee for refitting from 23 September to 4 February 1942.
Greek submarine RHS Papanicoulis, on passage from Alexandria to Port Said for docking, broke down. The submarine was towed back to Alexandria arriving during the night of 3/4 September. It was determined the submarine would be out of action for at least two months.
Greek destroyer RHS Panther departed Port Said to return to Alexandria after repairs at Suez.
Italian steamer Commandant Bafile (1790grt) was lost when she ran aground near Cape Comino, Sardinia.
In Washington today, President Roosevelt named a five-man mission to represent the United States in the three-power conference at Moscow and issued two proclamations, one setting the week of October 5 as “Fire Prevention Week” and the other creating an Office of Defense Health and Welfare Services with Paul V. McNutt, Federal Security Administrator, as director.
The Senate opened debate on the tax bill, confirmed the nominations of Frederick Osborn to be a brigadier general in charge of Army morale, and of Artemus L. Gates to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics, and recessed at 3:30 PM until 11 AM tomorrow. The Finance Committee revised the yield of the tax bill to the figure of $3,679,800,000; the Judiciary Committee confirmed the nomination of Francis Biddle to be Attorney General; the special gasoline investigating committee heard J. J. Pelley of the Association of American Railroads.
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Admiral Nomura Kichisaburo, replies to the message and the statement received from the Ambassador on August 28, 1941. In formulating his replies, Roosevelt could not overlook the attendant circumstances and developments. Because of these circumstances and developments, Roosevelt and his consultants felt that, to ensure any hope of the success of a meeting between Roosevelt and Japanese Prime Minister Prince Konoe Fumimaro, the achievement of a prior meeting of the minds on basic principles was necessary. Hence, the President in replying expressed a ‘desire to collaborate with the Japanese Prime Minister to see whether there could be made effective in practice the program referred to by the Japanese Government in its message of 28 August and whether there could be reached a meeting of minds on fundamental principles which would make practical a meeting such as the Japanese Minister has proposed… At no time, then, or later, did the Government of the United States reject the Japanese proposal for a meeting; it strove hard to bring about a situation which would make the holding of such a meeting beneficial.
Skipping the more controversial provisions for the time being, the Senate started fast-paced consideration of the unprecedented $3,679,800,000 revenue bill today and approved net increases of $127,000,000 over similar legislation passed by the house. As the debate started, Chairman George, Georgia Democrat, of the finance committee, told his colleagues that all groups would have to practice “grim patience and high patriotism,” in bearing a heavier tax load. “Under this bill.” he declared, “every corporation and individual will know in their pocket-books that we are in a grave emergency.” Approved by the Senate was the schedule of rates for individual incomes, but it decided to hold over for later consideration the question of lowering exemptions on individual incomes from $2,000 to $1,500 for married persons and from $800 to $750 for single persons. Also deferred was the amendment placing taxpayers in community property States on the same basis as those in the other forty States.
The federal government, moving on two fronts to smash German spy activities in this country, indicted four more persons today on charges of conspiring to send vital defense information to Germany, and immediately obtained guilty pleas from three of them, including an 18-year-old girl. Simultaneously, 16 persons arrested in June in the government’s nationwide roundup of spy suspects, went on trial in Brooklyn federal court after three others pleaded guilty to being unregistered agents of a foreign power. There was no connection, authorities said, between the quartet indicted today and those who went to trial in Brooklyn. Shortly after their Indictment, Lucy Boehmler of New York City, blonde, blue-eyed and well dressed; Hans Pagel, 20, a Brooklyn brewery employee who camo here in 1931 from his native Wunstorf, Germany, and Frederick Edward Schlosser, 19, a native New Yorker, pleaded guilty.
Americans who want to defeat totalitarianism but who refuse to buy defense bonds because they dislike the Administration’s fiscal policy were warned yesterday by Wendell L. Willkie that circumstances much more disastrous than being in debt might arise if the defense program was delayed. “I would rather own a bond of the United States as part of an indebtedness of $150,000,000,000 with Hitler out of the world than a bond of the United States which is part of a $50,000,000,000 debt with Hitler still in the world,” he said, identifying himself as “one who has dealt much in securities.”
Three minutes after hearing nearly six hours’ of testimony, aiming to prove Francis Biddle as Acting Attorney General responsible for the alleged tapping of Harry Bridges’ telephone in a Newport hotel, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved today the nomination of Mr. Biddle as Attorney General.
The U.S. government negotiates currency stabilization agreements with Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador. The United States is engaged in negotiating currency stabilization agreements with Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador as part of the economic war against Germany, authoritative quarters disclosed tonight.
James B. Carey, national secretary of the C.I.O., was ousted from the presidency of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America today, after delegates to the organization’s seventh national convention had rejected his appeal for condemnation of communism, Nazism and fascism.
Senator Johnson, Colorado Democrat, proposed today that all enlisted men of the land forces, including selectees, reservists, national guardsmen and regular army personnel, be granted a flat 25 percent pay increase beginning October 1. The legislation also would guarantee the men a minimum of $40 monthly.
American shipyards will turn out 130 to 134 merchant ships this year, or 25 per cent more than was estimated as possible in May, according to figures made public today by Rear Admiral Emory S. Land, chairman of the Maritime Commission.
To cope with rationing imposed by Washington and with other trade difficulties resulting from the gasoline shipping shortage, filling station proprietors of the Eastern Seaboard formed a permanent organization in Philadelphia today. They want to raise gas prices at the pump.
A broad program to aid construction of strategic roads in the United States, the Inter-American Highway and two militarily important roads in Panama through the granting of high preference ratings which help in getting materials was outlined today by the Priorities Division of the Office of Production Management.
Twenty-two-year-old Cornelia Van Ireland plunged more than 200 feet into the ocean today in a headlong dive from the Golden Gate Bridge, but lived to tell her story to rescuers. Doctors later found to their amazement that her only injuries apparently were two broken arms. It was the first time anyone escaped death in the long plunge from the bridge into the water. The chance passing of a United States warship under the bridge at the time of the girl’s dive resulted in an almost immediate rescue. Breathless, and her arms hanging limply, she was hauled aboard the vessel and later sent ashore. Police identified her as a clerk in the state employment office here.
The government today sued Al Capone and 13 members of his gangland hierarchy for $119,367 taxes allegedly due on nearly 20,000 barrels of illicit beer. The federal court action stemmed from Capone’s control of liquor distribution and production in Chicago during the lush prohibition era. The beer was seized in the 12 years preceding repeal in 1933, the government charged. Today’s suit was the latest in a chain of belated tax levies against the former overlord of Chicago gangdom. He was released from federal prison last year after serving seven and a half years of an 11-year sentence imposed for income tax evasion.
Major League Baseball:
Hurtled into an overtime struggle on the wings of Tommy Henrich’s twenty-seventh homer, the Yankees jammed through another tally in the eleventh inning to vanquish the Red Sox, 2–1, today and advanced to a position from which they may clinch the American League pennant within the next twenty-four hours. The Cleveland Indians were eliminated today, and the Yankees’ magic number for clinching is down to 1.
The Dodgers split with the Phillies and drop .004 behind the rained-out Cards. Brooklyn wins the opener, 4–1, behind Whit Wyatt’s 19th win. The Phillies win the nitecap by the same score behind Lefty Hoerst’s 4-hitter. Rookie Danny Murtaugh, brought up in mid-season, swipes 3 bases in the 2 games to tie for the lead with 17. His 18 will lead the National League, accomplishing that mark in just 85 games.
Reds manager Bill McKechnie jumps on a plane at the Chicago airport thinking he is bound for Pittsburgh. He ends up in Detroit instead. His Reds lose, 3–2, at Forbes Field without him. Johnny Lanning tonight set back the Reds with one really damaging blow, a seventh-inning homer by Ernie Lombardi with a mate on base, as the Pirates beat Cincinnati, in the opening game of a crucial series with third place in the National League standings at stake.
Washington mustered five runs in the ninth inning today to hand the Athletics a 9–8 defeat after Philadelphia had produced five runs with two out in the eighth inning. The Athletics hurt themselves with seven errors in the ballgame, including one in the fatal last inning.
The scheduled game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cubs at Chicago was postponed due to wet grounds. The game will be made up as part of a doubleheader tomorrow.
New York Yankees 2, Boston Red Sox 1
Brooklyn Dodgers 4, Philadelphia Phillies 1
Brooklyn Dodgers 1, Philadelphia Phillies 4
Cincinnati Reds 2, Pittsburgh Pirates 3
Philadelphia Athletics 8, Washington Senators 9
The Japanese have been pressing for a summit meeting between Prince Konoye and President Roosevelt for weeks in the hope that this could lead to better relations between the two powers. After much hesitation and deliberation, on 3 September 1941. the Americans finally tell the Japanese that President Roosevelt will not agree to such a meeting.
This decision effectively scuttles settlement talks. The Japanese hold an emergency liaison conference where it is decided that:
“…if by the early part of October there is still no prospect of being able to obtain our demands, we shall immediately decide to open hostilities against the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.”
The Japanese fleet already is planning a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor under the direction of Admiral Yamamoto. However, there are many moderates in both governments — almost all outside of the military — who continue to hold out hopes for a peaceful resolution in the Pacific.
The Chinese recapture Foochow (Fuchow), the first time they regain a major seaport since the Japanese sealed off the south China coast.
Japanese aircraft sank Chinese vessel Ganlu at Bazhong, Sichuan Province, China.
The Japanese ship Kongo Maru begins conversion to an auxiliary cruiser / gunboat at Harima Zosen. 4.7-inch (120-mm) guns are installed at the bow and the stern.
Canadian Lieutenant-General Arthur Grasett MC, DSO (1888-1971), the former General Officer Commanding in Hong Kong, suggested to the Chiefs of Staff in London, England, United Kingdom that with the addition of two or more battalions, the colony’s garrison would be strong enough to resist, for an extensive period, any Japanese siege. He further affirmed that Canada might be prepared to provide the battalions.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 127.91 (-0.4)
Born:
Jim Dunaway, AFL-NFL defensive tackle (AFL Champions-Bills, 1964, 1965; AFL All-Star, 1965–1968; Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins), in Columbia, Mississippi (d. 2018).
Dave Herman, AFL-NFL guard and tackle (AFL Champions, Super Bowl III Champions-Jets, 1968; AFL All-Star 1968, 1969; New York Jets), born in Bryan, Ohio (d. 2022).
Jenny Maxwell, American actress (“Blue Hawaii”), in Beverly Hills, California (d. 1981, murdered).
Billy Hawks [Hawkes], American R&B and jazz Hammond B-3 organist {“Got My Mojo Working But It Just Won’t Work On You”), in Richmond, Virginia.
Sergei Dovlatov, Russian journalist and writer, in Ufa, USSR (d. 1990).
Naval Construction:
The U.S. Navy SC-497-class (110-foot wooden hull) submarine chaser USS PC-629 (later SC-629) is laid down by the Quincy Adams Yacht Yard Inc. (Quincy, Massachusetts, U.S.A.).
The Kriegsmarine (German Navy) Type VIIC U-boat U-225 is laid down by F. Krupp Germaniawerft AG, Kiel (werk 655).
The Royal Navy River-class frigate HMS Ness (K 219) is laid down by Henry Robb Ltd. (Leith, U.K.); completed by Plenty.
The U.S. Navy Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Pittsburgh (CA-70) is laid down by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp. (Quincy, Massachusetts, U.S.A.). On 12 October 1942 she is renamed USS Canberra to honor the Royal Australian Navy cruiser HMAS Canberra, lost while operating with the American Pacific Fleet at the Battle of Savo Island. USS Canberra is the only USN warship named for a foreign warship or a foreign capital city.
The Royal Navy Bar-class boom defense vessel HMS Barcock (Z 177) is launched by the Blyth Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. Ltd. (Blyth, U.K.).
HMS Qualicum (J 138) is launched by the Dufferin Shipbuilding Co. (Toronto, Ontario, Canada); completed by Montreal-Loco.
The U.S. Navy 77-foot Elco patrol motor torpedo boat USS PT-51 is launched by the Electric Launch Company Ltd. (Elco), (Bayonne, New Jersey, U.S.A.). Transferred to the Royal Navy on completion, she commissions as HMS MTB 309.
The Kriegsmarine (German Navy) Type VIIC U-boats U-593 and U-594 are launched by Blohm & Voss, Hamburg (werk 569 and 570).
The U.S. Navy Aloe-class net tender USS Butternut (YN-4; later AN-9) is commissioned. Her first commanding officer is Lieutenant Andreas S. Einmo, USNR.
The Royal Navy harbor defence motor launch HMS HDML 1022 is commissioned.
The Royal Navy Fairmile C-class motor gun boat HMS MGB 317 is commissioned.
The Royal Navy MMS I-class motor minesweeper HMS MMS 55 (J 555) is commissioned. Her first commanding officer is Lieutenant M. R. Mills, RNVR.
The U.S. Navy 77-foot Elco patrol motor torpedo boat USS PT-45 is completed and placed in service with Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Two (PTRon 2).
The Kriegsmarine (German Navy) Type VIIC U-boat U-702 is commissioned. Her first commanding officer is Kapitänleutnant Wolf-Rüdiger von Rabenau.
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