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WWII On This Day: November 15

What happened on November 15 during World War II? This date brings together 5 events from 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1943, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1939
Japanese Special Naval Landing Force troops in gas masks prepare to advance through rubble in Shanghai, August 1937.
Unknown photographer / Ministry of the Navy · public domain (Japan) as stated on the Wikimedia Commons file page
The Second Sino-Japanese War

Japanese troops land in Guangxi and take Nanning

On 15 November 1939 about 100,000 Japanese troops, including the 5th Division and units of the Imperial Guard, landed on the coast of Guangxi with air and naval support. Nanning fell on 24 November. The Japanese aim was to cut China's supply lines, and the operation cut Chongqing off from the sea, which left Indochina and the Burma Road as the remaining routes. The fighting for the Kunlun Pass began on 18 December 1939 and continued into January 1940, and the Chinese launched several major counteroffensives. By November 1940 the…

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1940
London, 7th September 1940 · London's dock area. Tower Bridge stands out against a background of smoke and fires. New York Times Paris Bureau Collection.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 541917) · Public domain
The Blitz

What Churchill knew about Coventry

The story that Churchill knew Coventry was the target and deliberately allowed the raid to proceed in order to protect Ultra has survived because it gives one secret decision a terrible human price. The surviving records do not support that version. British intelligence knew that a major operation, 'Moonlight Sonata', was approaching and possessed information about German navigation activity. The difficulty was turning fragments of decrypts, beam information and operational warning into a certain target prediction soon enough to act. Defences and countermeasures were not withheld to preserve the existence…

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1941
A Soviet 122 mm A-19 gun crew firing during the defence of Moscow on 3 December 1941.
RIA Novosti archive #46802 / Viktor Temin · 3 December 1941 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source
The Battle for Moscow

The November offensive begins on both flanks of Moscow

The hard freeze restored mobility and Army Group Centre resumed the offensive. The northern attack began on 15 November, with Third and Fourth Panzer Groups driving through the Klin and Volokolamsk sectors toward the Moscow–Volga Canal and the northern approaches. Guderian renewed the southern effort beyond Tula on 18 November. The German plan still sought an envelopment rather than a direct assault on the capital. The attacking divisions now entered the decisive phase with reduced infantry, worn vehicles and a supply system operating near its practical limit, while Soviet command…

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1943
Red Army troops crossing the Dnieper on the Kyiv axis in 1943.
Yefim Kopyt · Russian archival photograph · Public domain
The Dnieper Crossings

German armour counterattacks west of Kyiv

Manstein concentrated armoured formations west of Kyiv and counterattacked against the expanding Soviet salient. German forces retook Zhytomyr and forced Soviet formations to give ground, showing that the new bridgehead was still vulnerable while supplies and reserves crossed the Dnieper behind it. The counteroffensive reduced the immediate Soviet advance but did not recover Kyiv or eliminate the bridgehead. By December both sides were preparing for another round of operations in right-bank Ukraine rather than a return to the Dnieper line.

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Heavy seas breaking around HMS Sheffield while she escorts Arctic convoy JW 53 toward Russia in February 1943.
Royal Navy official photographer · Imperial War Museums A 14890 · Public domain
The Arctic Convoys

JW 54A reopens the winter convoy cycle

JW 54A sailed with nineteen merchant ships as the 1943–44 Arctic convoy season resumed after the summer interruption. It reached the Kola Inlet on 24 November without losing a merchant ship. The escort system was now deeper than it had been during the PQ series. Local and ocean escorts, cruiser cover and a distant heavy force were assigned around the sailing, while Allied radar, anti-submarine tactics and air power had improved across the wider Atlantic war. German U-boats and surface ships still mattered, but a convoy no longer entered the…

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