Western Front
Britain: Airplane raid on London: 67 killed, 166 injured; one enemy machine down. A 660lb bomb from the Giant R 12 hits London Odhams Press, Long Acre (118 casualties of night’s total 233). This raid carried out by 3 Gothas and 1 Giant actually reaching London; overall, 13 Gothas and 2 Giants were dispatched, 7 Gothas and 1 Giant attacked somewhere in England, and 3 Gotha & 1 Giant reached London. Record 103 defence sorties (1 Bristol Fighter lost to Giant R 12, 1 Sopwith Camel shot down by own anti-aircraft fire). The first unqualified air combat victories at night against another airplane takes place, when two Sopwith Camels of No.44 Squadron, piloted by Hackwill and Banks, shoot down a Gotha bomber, and the loss of the Bristol Fighter during this raid. Banks’ Camel is special (3-gun) model with illuminated Neame ringsight.
Western Front: All British aircraft leaflet-dropping stopped (until October 31); balloons instead.
French make two small attacks in Champagne and one in Upper Alsace.
Air attacks by British on Roulers and other aerodromes.
German trench raid “repulsed” between Lens and Arras.
Chinese Labour Corps members in Crecy Forest, France put on a sword display: © IWM (Q 8515):
https://twitter.com/CenturyAgoToday...331150023938049
British soldiers fishing over the Yser Canal in Belgium. One is using his rifle as a fishing rod: © IWM (Q 10637):
https://twitter.com/CenturyAgoToday...668360325681152
Eastern Front
Finish Civil War: (until May 15): 9 Red Guard battalions take Helsinki but Mannerheim seizes Vaasa and Russian garrisons (5,000 PoWs, 37 guns, 34 MGs, 8000 rifles for 20 casualties until January 31).
Kullervo Manner is appointed Prime Minister of the Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic, a rebel state:
https://twitter.com/CenturyAgoToday...653262387372032
Ukraine: Heavy fighting between Bolsheviks and Ukrainians at Lutsk.
Don: Cossacks mutiny and depose Alexei Kaledin.
Southern Front
Italians attack between Asiago and Brenta Valley and capture Col del Rosso and 1,500 prisoners.
“Suspicious” Italian civilians are escorted by Austro-Hungarian troops across a field in Veneto:
https://twitter.com/CenturyAgoToday...592863004594177
Naval and Overseas Operations
Further naval air attacks on Aertrycke and Engel.
Submarine Depot Ship (converted from a torpedo-gunboat) H.M.S.
Hazard sunk in collision in Channel.
Dardanelles: HM Submarine
E.14 (11 survivors PoWs) mined (another source says accidental internal explosion, forcing it to surface, and subsequently shelled and sunk) and sunk off Kum Kale in vain attempt to torpedo
Yavuz Sultan Selim. (Lieutenant Commander G S White posthumous Victoria Cross in only Royal Navy vessel to have 2 captains with VC).
Picture of the crew:
https://twitter.com/CenturyAgoToday...576514077421568
The British submarine
E.11, sister to the
E.14, operated since 1915 in the Dardenelles and managed to sink the already obsolete Turkish pre-dreadnought
Barbaros Hayreddin.
Spain: U-boat torpedoes SS
Giralda, Government protests on February 6.
Mozambique: Ankwalu occupied by British.
Asiatic and Egyptian Theaters
Battle of Tafila: Actions for Et Tafile by the Arab forces end (see 1st).
War Office reports further operations near Hejaz railway.
Political, etc
Germany: Great strikes in Berlin, (until February 4). More than 100,000 people demonstrating in the streets of Germany to protest food shortages and the continuation of the war.
Russia: Romanian Legation ordered to leave Petrograd.
Lenin orders ‘
Send grain, grain and again grain! Otherwise Petrograd will starve to death … for God’s sake!’
Council of People’s Commissars in Soviet Russia issues a decree forming the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.
Estonia: Baron Eduard Dellinghausen invites Germans to occupy Estonia.
Romania: Ion Bratianu Cabinet resigns.
United States: Secretary of War Mr. Newton Baker makes statement on strength of Army.
(Listed for yesterday): U.S. government fires all lobbyists and lawyers employed by the railroads. American railroads were nationalized last December.