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WWII On This Day: June 12

What happened on June 12 during World War II? This date brings together 3 events from 1940, 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
German troops in northern France during the campaign of 1940.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-299-1808-10A · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Battle of France 1940

French IX Corps and the British 51st Highland Division surrender

French IX Corps elements and the British 51st Highland Division were trapped against the Channel around Saint-Valery-en-Caux and entered captivity on 12 June after evacuation attempts failed. Fog, German artillery and control of surrounding high ground restricted the ships approaching the coast. Rommel's 7th Panzer Division and other German forces closed the land routes around the pocket. The surrender showed the shrinking value of coastal escape once German troops controlled the approaches to a port. Operations elsewhere continued to remove Allied personnel from western France, but isolated formations faced their…

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1942
Ground crew at Luqa load a torpedo onto a Bristol Beaufort for a sortie against the Italian naval force threatening Operation Harpoon, June 1942.
Ground crew at Luqa load a torpedo onto a Bristol Beaufort for a sortie against the Italian naval force threatening Operation Harpoon, June 1942. Lt H. E. Cook, War Office official photographer / Imperial War Museums GM 1024 · public domain (UK Government) Source
Malta: Air Siege and Convoy War

Two convoys fail to solve the supply crisis

The Allies attempted to supply Malta simultaneously from Gibraltar and Alexandria. Operation Harpoon fought eastward through air, submarine and surface attack; only two of its six merchant ships reached Malta. Operation Vigorous approached from Egypt but faced repeated air attack, submarine danger and the prospect of interception by the Italian battle fleet and turned back before reaching the island. The June operations delivered too little to create a secure reserve. Food and fuel remained under pressure, while the island's aircraft and submarines still required aviation spirit, torpedoes and spare parts…

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1944
American howitzers shelling German forces in Normandy.
American howitzers shelling German forces in Normandy. US Army Signal Corps · NARA · Public domain Source
Operation Overlord

Carentan falls

The 101st Airborne Division took Carentan after four days of fighting along the exposed causeway approaches, joining the Utah and Omaha beachheads into a single line some fifty miles wide. Churchill, Brooke and Smuts crossed the Channel the same day to visit Montgomery's headquarters, a measure of how far the situation had stabilised in under a week.

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