In the North Atlantic, the battleship USS Washington conducts a memorial service for Rear Adm. Wilcox, who died mysteriously when he jumped or fell overboard the day before. After the service, Capt. Benson speaks to the crew and tells them their mission is to escort convoys to Murmansk in the USSR. Washington is needed in case the mammoth German battleship Tirpitz (which is currently at sea) attacks one of the British convoys.

The RAF conducts one of its first major air raids, hammering Lubeck. The city is chosen for this first saturation raid because the town occupies an island site on a river, easily recognizable by moonlight.
The RAF sends in 234 bombers with 300 tons of high explosive, including 17 4,000-pounders, and thousands of incendiaries. Aided by a full moon, the RAF kills 312 German civilians and loses only 12 bombers. RAF Bomber Command Chief Sir Arthur Harris defends this attack in chilly fashion, saying, "Lubeck was not a vital target, but it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to toil to destroy a large industrial city. I wanted my crews to be well 'blooded' as we say in fox-hunting, to have a taste of success for a change."
15,000 Germans lose their homes, and 2,000 of the city's buildings -- some of which date back to the medieval period -- are destroyed, nearly 80 percent of the city.

Japanese propaganda is hard at work in the homeland, telling its citizenry of all kinds of heroic feats, some of them accurate -- like the conquest of Malaya -- others less believable, such as the story Japanese Olympic swimmers dove naked into the straits between Hong Kong and the mainland to disarm enemy mines to open a channel for Japanese assault troops. The Japanese also ridicule Gen. Douglas MacArthur for abandoning his troops in the Philippines. The Japanese say he should have let himself be killed there, as any general of the Rising Sun would have.
The Japanese also use, like other combatants, catchphrases in their official communiques. The Navy is the "invincible Navy," fliers are Japan's "wild eagles," and the dead are "hero-gods." A Japanese plane shot down is called "self-destroyed," as it is presumed that since a Japanese aviator is invincible, he must have deliberately dived on enemy troops or an enemy ship beneath him. The newspapers also refer to the Japanese people as "the rear front" or "the Hundred Million," disregarding the fact that Japan's population is 75 million.

The British government offers the Indian Congress Party full dominion status after the war. The Congress Party is divided on the offer, coming from British envoy Sir Stafford Cripps. Mohandas K. Gandhi, pointing out that Japanese troops are stampeding through Burma and may break British rule in a matter of weeks, argues to reject the offer and await the Japanese army. "Why take a postdated check from a failing bank?" Gandhi argues.

In the Arctic, a cold war heats up as four Allied ships separated from a convoy to Russia, are attacked and sunk by U- boats. Russian destroyers and U-Boats slug it out amid appalling cold. Sea-spray freezes solid on gun mountings. Even so, two German submarines are sunk.
Naval sparring off Norway ends when PQ 8, a British convoy to Murmansk, reaches its destination, having never seen the German battleship Tirpitz, which is also at sea. Heartily sick of groping around in foul weather for an invisible enemy, Adm. Schniewind, commanding the Tirpitz force, also decides to head back to Trondheimfjord.

March 30th, 1942...HMNZS Achilles Sailors and HMNZS Leander Sailors take a break in Fiji from beating each other up in bars when seven weeks of mail arrives for both ships. Both crews turn to sorting out the mountain of letters from home.

In Washington DC, the Pacific War Council convenes to figure out how to defeat Japan. New Zealand is one of the members.

In Burma, the battle for Toungoo wears out the Japanese, the Chinese 200th Division, and Gen. Joseph Stilwell's patience. "By Jesus I'm about fed up...Alternatives now at hand," Stilwell writes. "Let it ride and do nothing. Resign flatly. Ooze out and demand own force. Liao and Tu have dogged it again. No attack at all. Just craven."

The 200th Division, instead of attacking, gets surrounded, takes 3,000 casualties, and its men have to abandon their vehicles and break out in small parties. The 17th Indian Division and 1st Burmese Division attack with their armor, and are defeated when the Japanese use "hook" tactics, sending troops through dense jungle to surround the British.

As the British forces fall back in disarray, a British officer puts up a notice on the road north of Prome saying, "All last survivors of battalions report here."

USS Washington averages 324 miles a day through worsening North Atlantic weather. SN Mel Beckstrand writes, "Whenever you hear anyone telling how rough and rugged the North Atlantic is, please believe them, because I don't think it's possible to say rough enough! I haven't eaten anything for a couple of days. Last night I had a sandwich, but didn't have it long enough to get any energy out of it. A person can't go on the main deck because the water would wash you away. But every day I go out on the superstructure and view its 'snow-covered mountains.' I hear the wind howling and whistling through the masts and radio antenna at over 40 knots. I am chilled and mighty thrilled."

In Burma, life goes from bad to worse for the Flying Tigers, who are short of pilots, planes, spare parts, ammunition, and fuel. By launching attacks from one base and landing at another, with constant strafing missions, they keep the Japanese off-balance.

March 31st, 1942...New Zealand now has 61,368 servicemen overseas, 52,712 of them in the Army. Home Guard strength is 100,000. In Kaiapoi, the five members of the town's Home Guard unit share one rifle, with which to defend the Kaiapoi River Bridge against Japanese attack. "Lucky for the Japanese they never invaded," one of the five Guardsmen says at an ANZAC Day service 55 years later. Women aged 20 to 21 years are now required to register for work. Exemptions are provided for servicemen's widows and women caring for children under the age of 16.

In Burma, the Japanese drive on, with determination and barbarity...at one point they capture 17 British soldiers and strip them for bayonet practice. The British are forced to withdraw amid 110F heat.

British civilian casualties in the last four months are tabulated: 189 dead, 149 wounded. Allied merchant shipping losses for March: 273 ships sunk, 95 in the North Atlantic and 98 in the Far East, for 834,184 tons.

Japanese troops reach their most southerly point of conquest, seizing Christmas Island from the Australians, capturing its 100 British defenders. The island is a useful source of phosphate, but is too small and rocky for a port or airstrip, so the Japanese evacuate it four days later.

April 1st, 1942...HMNZS Achilles puts to sea from Fiji after lunch and serves as a training target for American P-39 fighters. After the mock attacks, Achilles heads south to the Kermadec Islands to meet the US heavy cruiser Chester, which is escorting two small ocean liners, SS Mariposa (18,000 tons) and SS President Coolidge (22,000) and one large, RMS Queen Elizabeth, 84,000 tons, carrying an American infantry division to Australia. Queen Elizabeth, one of the two prides of Cunard's fleet, stands 22 stories tall, is one-fifth of a mile long, and can cruise at 28 knots, impressing the New Zealand Sailors. Next stop for all ships concerned is Sydney.

USS Washington and Task Force 39 hook up with the British light cruiser HMS Edinburgh, flagship of Rear Adm. S.S. Bonham-Carter. His granddaughter is the actress Helena Bonham-Carter. American Sailors, seeing the rust-streaked cruiser, veteran of three years of service, break into spontaneous cheers.

19 merchant ships of Convoy PQ 13 set sail from Iceland for Russia. They will lose five ships and one of their escorting cruisers, HMS Trinidad, will be crippled by German torpedoes.

In Burma, Field Marshal Wavell studies the situation and warns Winston Churchill that the Japanese command of the air is setting the Allied command in Burma an extremely difficult task. Generals Slim and Stilwell meet for the first time and are impressed with each other. Stilwell then flies to Chungking to meet with Chiang Kai-Shek.

The meeting is stormy. Stilwell tells Chiang he will resign because the Chinese generals won't obey his orders. "What a gag," Stilwell writes. "I have to tell Chiang Kai Shek with a straight face that his subordinates are not carrying out his orders, when in all probability they are doing just what he tells them. In justice to all of them, however, it is expecting a great deal to have them turn over a couple of armies in a vital area to a foreigner."

Operation Performance kicks off in Sweden, as 10 Norwegian merchant ships in the port of Gothenberg try to flee through the Skagerrak to Britain. Five are sunk before they clear the Skagerrak, one is too badly damaged to continue, two turn back, only two reach Britain. Not much of a return on that investment.

In New Zealand, Lt. Gen. E. Puttick is named commander of New Zealand Military Forces and remains Chief of the General Staff.

Japanese troops invade Dutch New Guinea at Vogelkop, Hollandia, and other places, seizing yet more appalling jungle terrain.

April 2nd, 1942...TF 39 is joined by three RAF Lockheed Hudson twin-engine patrol bombers, which drone over the force until Fairmile Motor Launches arrive to bring in Royal Navy liaison officers and harbor pilots. At 9:05 a.m., TF 39 stands into Scapa Flow, and anchor among the ship's treeless hills. Washington Sailors pour on deck to see British soil. Mel Beckstrand writes, "Around the heather-covered hills (at last, something brown) are British battleships, cruisers, tugboats and launches, sub chasers and torpedo boats, aircraft carriers, and rowboats by the hundreds as far as the eye can see. From each ship, hundreds of feet in the air are barrage balloons. After all, I guess we're at war now."

Chiang Kai Shek gives Joseph Stilwell a new executive officer, Gen. Lo Cho-Ying, who is mature and experienced. Stilwell and Lo hurry back down to the disintegrating Burma front.

In the Mediterranean, Gen. Albert Kesselring's Luftflotte 2 commences massive bombing of Malta, to neutralize the British island. The heavy bombing depletes Malta-based bombers and submarines, enabling more supply convoys to reach Gen. Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps.

April 3rd, 1942...The New Zealand Railway Construction and Maintenance Group begins to extend Western Desert railway beyond Fort Capuzzo in Libya.

Tyranny continues in Europe, as the Nazis deport 129 Jews from Augsburg to Belzec, ending 700 years of Jewish life in that city. The same day, 1,200 Jews from the Eastern Galician town of Tlumacz are deported to Belzec.

In the Philippines, it's Good Friday, and in Japan, it's the anniversary of the death of the Emperor Jimmu, the first occupant of the Imperial throne, according to legend. The Japanese celebrate by launching their final assault on the American defenses of Bataan, with 19 artillery batteries and 10 mortar batteries. The grand barrage kicks off at 9 a.m. with 150 guns opening up, wrecking American defenses. Airpower adds to the din. Smoke and flame swirls into the sky. The bombardment continues into the afternoon, when the infantry assault begins. 65th Brigade tanks, rivet-hulled monsters that are already obsolete by German standards, rumble across the Tiawar River. The 41st Philippine Division, exhausted, disintegrates completely.

April 4th, 1942...Nazi troops deport 1,500 Jews from Hordenka, in Galicia, to Belzec.