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WWII On This Day: August 12

What happened on August 12 during World War II? This date brings together 3 events from 1940 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
A formation of Heinkel He 111s in the Battle of Britain
Imperial War Museums, MH6547 · Public domain · Source
The Battle of Britain

The radar chain is attacked

German formations attacked several Chain Home stations and associated targets on 12 August. Ventnor on the Isle of Wight was put out of action for a period, while other stations suffered damage that was repaired comparatively quickly. The tall lattice towers were difficult to destroy permanently, but the radar network was not invulnerable. Power, transmitters, receiving equipment and communications could be disrupted even when the towers remained standing. The Luftwaffe did not sustain a systematic campaign against the network. That decision mattered less because radar was a magic weapon than…

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1944
A survivor looks over a grave at Sant’Anna di Stazzema in a U.S. Army Signal Corps photograph dated 14 December 1944.
A survivor looks over a grave at Sant’Anna di Stazzema in a U.S. Army Signal Corps photograph dated 14 December 1944. U.S. Army Signal Corps / National Archives · Public domain Source
Reprisal and Massacre

Civilians are killed across Sant’Anna di Stazzema

Units of the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS moved through Sant’Anna di Stazzema and surrounding hamlets during an anti-partisan operation. Civilians were assembled and killed at several locations, and houses were burned. About 560 people were murdered, many of them women, children and elderly civilians displaced by the fighting elsewhere. Later Italian investigations treated the massacre as part of a terror operation directed at the civilian environment around the resistance. The massacre was dispersed across several hamlets and killing sites, which is why later reconstruction depends on local testimony, graves,…

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Pipeline being paid out over the stern of a converted cable ship.
Pipeline being paid out over the stern of a converted cable ship. Imperial War Museums · IWM Non-Commercial Licence Source
Operation PLUTO

Latimer lays the first BAMBI cable

HMS Latimer laid a HAIS cable from near Cherbourg to Sandown in about ten hours. Before it could enter service, an escorting vessel damaged the cable with its anchor. The technical success of the lay did not produce an operational pipeline.

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