Year 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link will display the full 1942 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events of 1942

(Below, many events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.)

January

• January 1 - WWII: The United States and Philippines troops fight the Battle of Bataan.
• January 2 - WWII: Manila is captured by Japanese forces.
• January 7 - WWII: The siege of the Bataan Peninsula begins.
• January 10 - WWII: The last German air-raid on Liverpool destroys the home of William Patrick Hitler, Adolf Hitler's nephew. After his house is destroyed, William Hitler goes to the USA and joins the navy to fight against his uncle.
• January 11 - WWII:
  • Japan declares war on the Netherlands and invades the Netherlands East Indies.
  • WWII: The Japanese capture Kuala Lumpur.
• January 16 - Actress Carole Lombard and her mother are among those killed in a plane crash near Las Vegas, Nevada, while returning from a tour to promote the sale of war bonds.
• January 19 - WWII: Japanese forces invade Burma.
• January 20 - WWII: Nazis at the Wannsee conference in Berlin decide that the "final solution to the Jewish problem" is relocation, and later extermination.
• January 23 - WWII: The Battle of Rabaul begins.
• January 25 - WWII: Thailand declares war on the United States and United Kingdom.
• January 26 - WWII: The first American forces arrive in Europe, landing in Northern Ireland.
• January 31 - WWII: The last organized Allied forces leave Malaya, ending the 54-day campaign.

February

• February 2 - WWII: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs an executive order directing the internment of Japanese Americans and the seizure of their property.
• February 8
  • António Óscar Carmona is elected president of Portugal.
  • WWII: Top United States military leaders hold their first formal meeting to discuss American military strategy in the war.
  • Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States.
• February 9 - The SS Normandie Ocean Liner catches fire while being converted into the troopship USS Lafayette for World War II.
• February 10 - In the early hours of the morning the SS Normandie capsizes at pier 88 in New York City.
• February 11 - Operation Cerberus A flotilla of Kriegsmarine ships dash from Brest through the English Channel to northern ports; the British fail to sink any one of them.
• February 15 - WWII: Singapore surrenders to Japanese forces.
• February 19 - WWII:
  • Japanese warplanes attack Darwin, Australia.
  • President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs executive order 9066 allowing the United States military to define areas as exclusionary zones. These zones affect the Japanese on the West Coast, and Germans and Italians primarily on the East Coast.
• February 20 - Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.
• February 22 - WWII: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defense of the nation collapses.
• February 23 - The Japanese submarine I-17 fires 17 high-explosive shells toward an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California, causing little damage.
• February 24 - Propaganda: The Voice of America begins broadcasting.
• February 25 - Princess Elizabeth registers for war service.
• February 25 - Battle of Los Angeles: Over 1,400 AA shells are fired at an unidentified, slow-moving object in the skies over Los Angeles. The appearance of the object triggers an immediate wartime blackout over most of Southern California, with thousands of air raid wardens being deployed throughout the city. In total there are 6 deaths. Despite the several hour barrage no planes are downed.
• February 26
  • The worst coal dust explosion to date, in Honkeiko, China, claims 1,549 lives.
  • The 14th Academy Awards ceremony is held in Los Angeles.
• February 27 - WWII - Battle of the Java Sea: An allied (ABDA) task force under Dutch command, trying to stem a Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies, is defeated by a Japanese task force in the Java Sea.

March

• March - Construction begins on the Badger Army Ammunition Plant (the largest in the United States during WWII).
• March 9 - WWII: Executive order 9082 (February 28, 1942) reorganizes the United States Army into three major commands: theArmy Ground Forces, Army Air Forces, and Services of Supply, later redesignated Army Service Forces.
• March 28 - WWII: British Commandos raid St. Nazaire on the coast of Western France.

The Japanese aircraft carrier, Hiryu under attack by US aircraft at the Battle of Midway.

April

• April 3 - WWII: Japanese forces begin an all-out assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.
• April 5 - WWII: the Japanese Navy attacks Colombo in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Royal Navy Cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire are sunk southwest of the island.
• April 9
  • The Bataan Peninsula falls and the Bataan Death March began.
  • WWII: The Japanese Navy launches an air raid on Trincomalee in Ceylon (Sri Lanka); the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and Royal Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Vampire are sunk off the country's East Coast.
• April 13 - The FCC's minimum programming time required of TV stations is cut from 15 hours to 4 hours a week during the war.
• April 15 - WWII: King George VI awards the George Cross to Malta, saying, "To honour her brave people I award the George Cross to the Island Fortress of Malta, to bear witness to a heroism and a devotion that will long be famous in history (from January 1 to July 24, there is only one 24-hour period during which no bombs fall on this tiny island)."
• April 18 - Tokyo, Japan is bombed by B-25 Mitchells commanded by then-Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle.
• April 27 - WWII: A national plebiscite is held in Canada on the issue of conscription.
• April 29 - WWII: An explosion at a chemical factory in Tessenderlo, Belgium leaves 200 dead and 1,000 injured.

May

• May - The first undersea oil pipeline is tested in Operation Pluto.
• May 5 - WWII - Operation Ironclad: United Kingdom forces invade the French colony of Madagascar.
• May 6 - WWII: On Corregidor, the last American and Filipino forces in the Philippines surrender to the Japanese.
• May 8 - WWII: The Battle of the Coral Sea (first battle in naval history where 2 enemy fleets fight without seeing each other's fleets) ends in an Allied victory.
• May 8/May 9 - WWII: On the night of 8/9 May 1942, gunners of the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on Horsburgh Island in the Cocos Islands rebel. Their mutiny is crushed and 3 of them executed (the only British Commonwealth soldiers to be executed for mutiny during the Second World War).
• May 12 - WWII - Second Battle of Kharkov: In the eastern Ukraine, the Soviet Army initiates a major offensive. During the battle the Soviets capture the city of Kharkov from the German Army, only to be encircled and destroyed.
• May 14 - Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait is performed for the first time by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
• May 15 - WWII: In the United States, a bill creating the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) is signed into law.
• May 20 - The first African-American seamen are taken into the United States Navy.
• May 21 - WWII: Mexico declares war against Nazi Germany after the sinking of the Mexican tanker Faja de Oro by the German U-boat, U-160, off Key West.
• May 26 - WWII - Battle of Bir Hakeim: The Free French and British troops slow the German advance in North Africa.
• May 27 - WWII - Operation Anthropoid: Czech paratroopers attempt to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.
• May 31 - June 1 - WWII - Attack on Sydney Harbour: Japanese submarines infiltrate Sydney Harbour in an attempt to attack Allied warships.

June

• June 1 - WWII: Mexico declares war on Germany, Italy and Japan.
• June 4 - WWII: Reinhard Heydrich succumbs to wounds sustained on May 27 from Czechoslovakian paratroopers acting in Operation Anthropoid.
• June 4-June 7 - WWII - The Battle of Midway: The Japanese naval advance in the Pacific is halted.
• June 7 - WWII: Japanese forces invade the Aleutian Islands (the first invasion of American soil in 128 years).
• June 8 - WWII: Attack on Sydney Harbour: The Australian cities of Sydney and Newcastle are shelled by Japanese submarines. The eastern suburbs of both cities are damaged and the east coast is blacked out.
• June 9 - WWII: Nazis burn the Czech village of Lidice in reprisal for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich.
• June 10 - WWII: The Gestapo massacres 173 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia in retaliation for the killing of a Nazi official.
• June 12 - Holocaust: On her 13th birthday, Anne Frank makes the first entry in her new diary.
• June 13 - The United States opens its Office of War Information, a propaganda center.
• June 21 - Fort Stevens, Oregon is fired upon by a Japanese submarine.
• June 29 - The German Eleventh Army under Erich von Manstein takes Sevastopol, although fighting rages until July 9.

July

• July 1 - July 27 - WWII: the First Battle of El Alamein.
• July 3 - Guadalcanal falls to the Japanese.
• July 6 - Holocaust: Anne Frank's family goes into hiding in an attic above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
• July 13 - WWII: German U-Boats sink 3 more merchant ships in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
• July 16
  • Holocaust: By order of the Vichy France government headed by Pierre Laval, French police officers round-up 13,000-20,000 Jews and imprison them in the Winter Velodrome.
  • Georges Bégué and others escape from the Mauzac prison camp.
• July 18 - WWII: The Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me-262 (using only its jets) for the first time.
• July 19 - WWII - Battle of the Atlantic: German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their United States Atlantic coast positions, in response to an effective American convoy system.
• July 21 - The Japanese establish a beachhead on the north coast of New Guinea in the Buna-Gona area; a small Australian force begins a rearguard action on the Kokoda Track Campaign.
• July 22 - Holocaust: The systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.
• July 29 - The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR institutes the Order of Suvorov, the Order of Kutuzov, and reinstates the Order of Alexander Nevsky.
• July 31 - The Oxford Committee of Famine Relief (OXFAM) is founded.

August

• August 7 - WWII: Battle of Guadalcanal begins - USMC initiate the first American offensive of the war with a landing on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
• August 8
  • WWII: In Washington, DC, six German would-be saboteurs are executed (two others were cooperative and received life imprisonment instead).
  • Quit India resolution is passed by the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), which led to the start of a historical civil disobedience movement across India.
• August 9
  • Indian leader, Mohandas Gandhi is arrested in Bombay by British forces.
  • Start, led by the goalkeeper Nikolai Trusevich, play football against the German Luftwaffe team Flakelf in Nazi-occupied Kiev. Against all odds, they win 5-3. Eight of them are later arrested and tortured, and at least four are killed.
• August 13 - 14 night - In London instruments detect a massive burst of cosmic rays.
• August 15 - WWII: The American tanker SS Ohio reaches Malta as part of the convoy of Operation Pedestal.
• August 16 - Polish-Jewish teacher Janusz Korczak follows a group of Jewish children into the Treblinka death camp.
• August 16 - The U.S. Navy blimp L-8 (Flight 101) comes ashore near San Francisco, eventually coming down in Daly City (the crew is missing).
• August 19 - WWII - Dieppe Raid: Allied forces raid Dieppe, France.
• August 22 - WWII: Brazil declares war on Germany and Italy.
• August 25 - WWII: Japanese marines land at Milne Bay.
• August 30 - Luxembourg is formally annexed to the German Reich.
• August 31 - A general strike is launched in Luxembourg to protest against forced conscription.

September

• September 3 - A German attempt to liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Lakhva leads to an uprising.
• September 5 - WWII - Battle of Milne Bay: Japanese forces suffer their first defeat on land.
• September 12 - The RMS Laconia, carrying civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs, is torpedoed off the coast of West Africa and sinks.
• September 24 - Andrée Borrel and Lise de Baissac became the first female SOE agents to be parachuted into occupied France.

October

• October 2 - The British cruiser Curaçao collides with the liner Queen Mary off the coast of Donegal and sinks; 338 drown.
• October 3 - The first A-4 rocket is successfully launched from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. The rocket flies 147 kilometres wide and reaches a height of 84.5 kilometres, becoming the first man-made object to reach space.
• October 9 - The Statute of Westminster Adoption Act formalizes Australian autonomy.
• October 11 - WWII - Battle of Cape Esperance: On the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, United States Navy ships intercept and defeat a Japanese fleet on their way to reinforce troops on the island.
• October 14 - A German U-boat sinks the ferry SS Caribou, killing 137.
• October 16 - A hurricane and flood in Bombay kill 40,000.
• October 23 - Award-winning composer and Hollywood songwriter Ralph Rainger ("Thanks for the Memory") is among 12 people killed in the mid-air collision between an American Airlines DC-3 airliner and a U.S. Army bomber near Palm Springs, California.
• October 23 - November 4 - WWII - Second Battle of El Alamein: British troops go on the offensive against the Axis forces.
• October 26 - WWII - Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands: 2 Japanese aircraft carriers are heavily damaged and 1 U.S. carrier is sunk.
• October 28 - The Alaska Highway is completed.
• October 29 - Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews.

November

• November 2 - A USAF squadron, including B-24 Liberator's, intercepts many Luftwaffe patrols off the coast of Oran, Algeria.
• November 3 - WWII - Second Battle of El Alamein: German forces under Erwin Rommel are forced to retreat during the night.
• November 8 - WWII
  • Operation Torch - United States and United Kingdom forces land in French North Africa.
  • French Resistance Coup in Algiers: 400 French civil resistants neutralize the Vichyist XIXth Army Corps and the Vichyist generals (Juin, Darlan, etc.), so allowing the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers, and ultimately the whole of French North Africa.
• November 9 - WWII: U.S serviceman Edward Leonski is hanged at Melbourne's Pentridge Prison for the "Brown-Out" murders of 3 women in May.
• November 10 - WWII: In violation of a 1940 armistice, Germany invades Vichy France, following French Admiral François Darlan's agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.
• November 12 - WWII - Battle of Guadalcanal: A naval battle near Guadalcanal starts between Japanese and American forces.
• November 13 - WWII - Battle of Guadalcanal: Aviators from the USS Enterprise sink the Japanese battleship Hiei.
• November 15 - WWII:
  • The Battle of Guadalcanal ends: Although the United States Navy suffers heavy losses, it retains control of Guadalcanal.
  • A BOAC scheduled passenger flight, a DC-3 with registration G-AGBB, (formerly KLM PH-ALI, Ibis), enroute between Lisbon and Bristol, is attacked over the Bay of Biscay by German fighters. Although damaged, it escapes and lands in England. Other attacks follow on the same aircraft and scheduled route: April 19 and June 1, 1943 (fatal).

• November 19 - WWII - Battle of Stalingrad: Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counter-attacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.
• November 21 - The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (however, the "highway" is not usable by general vehicles until 1943).
• November 22 - WWII - Battle of Stalingrad: The situation for the German attackers of Stalingrad seems desperate during the Soviet counter-attack Operation Uranus, and General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German Sixth Army is surrounded.
• November 23 - A German U-boat sinks the S.S. Ben Lomond off the coast of Brazil. One crewman, Chinese second steward Poon Lim, is separated from the others and spends 130 days adrift until he is rescued on April 3, 1943.
• November 26 - The movie Casablanca premières at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.
• November 27 - WWII: At Toulon, the French navy scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of Nazi hands.
• November 28
  • In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove night club kills 491 people.
  • The large-scale German "pacification" of the Zamojszczyzna region of Poland begins.

December

• December 1 - Gasoline rationing begins in the United States.
• December 2 - Manhattan Project: Below the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (a coded message, "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world" is then sent to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt).
• December 4 - Holocaust: In Warsaw, 2 women, Zofia Kossak and Wanda Filipowicz, risk their lives by setting up the Council for the Assistance of the Jews.
• December 7 - WWII: British commandos conduct Operation Frankton, a raid on shipping in Bordeaux harbour.
• December 24 - French Admiral Darlan, the former Vichy leader who had switched over to the Allies following the Torch landings, is assassinated in Algiers.
• December 27 - The Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia is founded.

Undated

• The Grand Coulee Dam is finished in the Columbia River.
• DDT is first used as a pesticide.
• C. S. Lewis publishes The Screwtape Letters.
• Lions become extinct in Iran.

Ongoing

• Japanese Occupation of the Philippines (1941-1945)
• World War II (1939-1945)
• Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)

Births

January

• January 1 - Martin Frost, American politician
• January 1 - Gennadi Sarafanov, Russian cosmonaut
• January 1 - Country Joe McDonald, American musician
• January 2 - Dennis Hastert, American politician and former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
• January 2 - Hugh Shelton, American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• January 3 - John Thaw, English actor (d. 2002)
• January 3 - Laszlo Solyom, President of Hungary
• January 5 - Maurizio Pollini, Italian pianist
• January 5 - Charlie Rose, American talk show host
• January 5 - Jan Leeming, former BBC newsreader
• January 7 - Vasily Alexeev, Soviet weightlifter
• January 8 - Stephen Hawking, British physicist
• January 8 - Junichiro Koizumi, former Prime Minister of Japan
• January 8 - Yvette Mimieux, American actress
• January 8 - George Passmore, English artist (Gilbert and George)
• January 11 - Clarence Clemons, American musician
• January 14 - Yogesh Kumar Sabharwal, Chief Justice of India
• January 15 - Charo, American singer and actress
• January 17 - Muhammad Ali, American boxer
• January 17 - Ulf Hoelscher, German violinist
• January 17 - Nancy Parsons, American actress (d. 2001)
• January 19 - Michael Crawford, English singer and actor
• January 25 - Carl Eller, American football player
• January 25 - Eusébio, Portuguese footballer
• January 26 - Souad Hosni, Egyptian actress (d. 2001)
• January 31 - Derek Jarman, English director and writer (d. 1994)
• January 31 - Daniela Bianchi, Italian actress

February

• February 1 - Terry Jones, Welsh actor and writer
• February 2 - Graham Nash, American (English-born) rock musician (CSNY)
• February 5 - Roger Staubach, American football player
• February 9 - Carole King, American singer and composer
• February 12 - Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel
• February 13 - Peter Tork, American musician and actor
• February 14 - Michael Bloomberg, American businessman, philanthropist, and the founder of Bloomberg L.P., Mayor of New York City
• February 14 - Andrew Robinson, American actor
• February 15 - Sherry Jackson, American actress
• February 19 - Paul Krause, American football player
• February 20 - Phil Esposito, Canadian hockey player
• February 20 - Mitch McConnell, American politician
• February 21 - Margarethe von Trotta, German actress, film director, and writer
• February 24 - Joseph Lieberman, American politician
• February 25 - Karen Grassle, American actress
• February 27 - Robert H. Grubbs, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• February 27 - Michel Forget, Canadian actor
• February 28 - Brian Jones, English musician (The Rolling Stones) (d. 1969)

March

• March 2 - John Irving, American author
• March 2 - Lou Reed, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
• March 4 - Charles C. Krulak, U.S. Marine Corps commander
• March 4 - Gloria Gaither, American gospel songwriter
• March 5 - Felipe González Márquez, Spanish politician
• March 7 - Tammy Faye Bakker, American evangelist, singer and television personality (d. 2007)
• March 7 - Michael Eisner, American film studio executive
• March 9 - John Cale, Welsh composer and musician (Velvet Underground)
• March 12 - Jimmy Wynn, American baseball player
• March 13 - Dave Cutler, American software engineer
• March 13 - Scatman John, American musician (d. 1999)
• March 16 - James Soong, Taiwan politician
• March 17 - John Wayne Gacy, American serial killer (d. 1994)
• March 23 - Walter Rodney, Guyanese historian and political figure
• March 25 - Aretha Franklin, American singer
• March 25 - Richard O'Brien, English-born actor and writer
• March 26 - Erica Jong, American author
• March 27 - John E. Sulston, British chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• March 27 - Michael York, English actor
• March 27 - Michael Jackson, English writer (d. 2007)
• March 28 - Neil Kinnock, British statesman
• March 28 - Mike Newell, British film director
• March 28 - Conrad Schumann, East German border guard (d. 1998)
• March 28 - Jerry Sloan, American basketball coach
• March 29 - Scott Wilson, American actor
• March 30 - Ruben Kun, Nauruan politician and former President of Nauru

April

• April 1 - Annie Nightingale, British DJ
• April 2 - Hiroyuki Sakai, Japanese chef
• April 2 - Leon Russell, American singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist
• April 3 - Marsha Mason, American actress
• April 3 - Wayne Newton, American singer
• April 4 - Elizabeth Levy, American author
• April 5 - Peter Greenaway, Welsh filmmaker
• April 5 - Pascal Couchepin, Swiss Federal Councilor
• April 6 - Barry Levinson, American film producer and director
• April 8 - Roger Chapman, British rock singer (Family)