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WWII On This Day: December 10

What happened on December 10 during World War II? This date brings together 3 events from 1940, 1941 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
Italian prisoners captured at Sidi Barrani are marched into captivity during the December 1940 battle.
Italian prisoners captured at Sidi Barrani are marched into captivity during the December 1940 battle. Capt Geoffrey Keating / No. 1 Army Film & Photographic Unit · Imperial War Museums E 1378 · public domain (UK Government) Source
Operation Compass

Sidi Barrani is cut off and attacked

With the Tummar camps collapsing, British formations moved north and west of Sidi Barrani while armoured patrols cut the road toward Buq Buq. Italian units attempting to leave the coastal camp system found their communications increasingly disrupted. The fighting continued into 11 December, when the remaining organized positions east of the frontier were cleared or abandoned. The objective that had justified the five-day raid had already been achieved.

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1941
Prince of Wales and Repulse underway off Malaya on 10 December 1941, the day both ships were sunk by Japanese land-based aircraft.
Prince of Wales and Repulse underway off Malaya on 10 December 1941, the day both ships were sunk by Japanese land-based aircraft. U.S. Navy / NARA 80-G-413520 · Public domain Source
The Fall of the Southern Empires

Force Z Is Destroyed from the Air

Prince of Wales and Repulse sailed from Singapore to find the Japanese invasion convoys and were themselves found off Malaya on 10 December. Land-based naval aircraft attacked with bombs and torpedoes through the late morning and early afternoon. Both capital ships sank. Force Z had been sent east to give the Singapore base a surface striking power. Its loss exposed the condition under which that power could actually be used. The ships had no sustained fighter protection, Japanese reconnaissance had located them, and the surrounding air war was already moving…

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1944
Men of the 101st Airborne Division moving toward Bastogne on 19 December 1944 as Allied reserves enter the Ardennes battle.
101st Airborne Division on the road between Bastogne and Houffalize, 19 December 1944 · US Army Signal Corps SC 329953 · NARA · Public domain · Source
The Battle of the Bulge

Dickson sees a counterstroke, not the exact offensive

First Army G-2 Colonel Benjamin Dickson issued Intelligence Estimate No. 37 on 10 December after noting German armoured reserves and other signs of concentration. He believed the enemy retained the capability for a major counterstroke. Later accounts sometimes turn the estimate into a precise prediction of an Ardennes attack. The surviving document is less exact. It discussed an all-out armoured counterattack but placed important possibilities farther north and contained the qualifications normal to an intelligence estimate. The larger failure remains. First Army, 12th Army Group and SHAEF did not assemble…

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