Timeline of World War II (1942) - September 1942

September 1942

1: US Navy Construction Battalion personnel, Seabees, began to arrive at Guadalcanal.

3: The Battle of Stalingrad proper may be said to have begun on this date, with German troops in the suburbs; even civilian men and boys are conscripted by the Red Army to assist in the defence.

4: Irish Republican Army riots occur in Belfast during the night.
: Manhattan Engineering District is formally created, full-effort production of the atomic bomb is begun.
: Chief of State of Vichy France Philippe Pétain and Prime Minister Pierre Laval create what will become the Service du travail obligatoire (STO)

5: Australian and U.S. forces defeat Japanese forces at Milne Bay, Papua, the first outright defeat for Japanese land forces in the Pacific War. Their evacuation and the failure to establish an airbase eases the threat to Australia.

6: The Black Sea port of Novorossiysk is taken by the Germans.

9: A Japanese plane drops more incendiaries on Oregon, but with little effect.

10: RAF blasts Düsseldorf with large incendiary bombing.

12: RMS Laconia, carrying civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs, is torpedoed off the coast of West Africa and sinks.

12-14: American troops push back the Japanese in the Battle of Edson's Ridge

13: The Battle for Stalingrad continues; it is now totally surrounded by the Germans. On the Soviet Union side General Vasily Chuikov is put in charge of the defence.

14: The Japanese retreat again from Henderson Field, Guadalcanal.
: The Japanese are now within 30 miles of Port Moresby, New Guinea, on the Kokoda trail.
: Continued convoy losses in the Atlantic.

15: Americans send troops to Port Moresby as reinforcements for the Australian defenders.
: Light carrier USS Wasp is sunk by a Japanese submarine off Guadalcanal.

18: Battle of the "grain silo" in Stalingrad; the Germans are beaten back. The Red Army begins ferrying troops across the Volga at night.

19: Allied attack on Jalo, Libya is repulsed by Germans.

20: RAF bombs Munich and Saarbrücken.
: The Greek Panhellenic Union of Fighting Youths blows up the offices of the pro-Nazi National-Socialist Patriotic Organisation in central Athens, thwarting attempts to raise a Greek volunteer legion for the Eastern Front.

23: General Rommel leaves North Africa for medical treatment in Germany.

23-27: In the Third Battle of Matanikau River, Guadalcanal, Japanese naval bombardment and landing forces nearly destroy Henderson field in an attempt to take it, but the land forces are soon driven back.

24: United States of America deploys the I Corps to the Pacific Theater.

28: The Japanese continue their retreat back down the Kokoda Track in New Guinea.

30: The Eagle Squadron (American volunteers in the RAF) are officially transferred to the US Army Air Force.
: Hitler speaks to the nation and boasts that Stalingrad will be taken.