Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

HMS VORTIGERN (D-37) (March 14, 1942)

Launched in 1917, the British 1,090 ton destroyer, escorting British Coastal Convoy FS-749 in the North Sea off Cromer, Norfolk, on the east coast of Britain, was attacked by German motor torpedo boats (E-boats). The S-104 fired two torpedoes at the Vortigern which sank in about two minutes. Seven officers, including the captain, Lt. Cdr. R.S. Howlett, and 140 ratings, were drowned. There were only three officers and seven ratings saved.

[Peter Clare]

EMPRESS OF CANADA (March 14, 1943)

Liner of the Canadian Pacific SS Company, 21,516 tons (Capt. George Goold), converted to a troop transport. Referred to as the 'Phantom' by the German U-boat captains because she had escaped U-boat detection for three and a half years. While sailing from Durban, South Africa, to the UK via Takoradi on the Gold Coast, West Africa, she was sunk just after midnight, off Sierra Leone, by the Italian submarine Leonardo Da Vinci whose commander gave Captain Goold half an hour to abandon ship after the first torpedo struck. On board were 1,346 persons including 499 Italian prisoners of war and Greek and Polish refugees. A total of 392 people died including around 90 women and 44 crewmembers. The survivors, who had to endure exposure and vicious shark attacks, were picked up by the destroyers Boreas, Petunia and Crocus and the Ellerman Line vessel Corinthian. One man who did not survive was the naval officer in charge of the Italian prisoners, who failed to pass on the order 'Abandon Ship' to the lower deck thus causing great loss of life among the prisoners. On hearing this, angry survivors grabbed the officer and threw him overboard to the sharks. No formal action was ever taken over this murder. Da Vinci was later sunk with all hands by the destroyers HMS Active and HMS Ness on 24th of May, 1943, near Cape Finisterre.

[Bodston]

Saturday 15 March 1941

Winston Churchill to the British Admiralty Controller
Give me a report on the progress of the ships to carry and disgorge tanks. How many are there? What is their tonnage? How many tanks can they take in a flight? When will each one be ready? Where are they being built? What mark of tank can they carry?

[Bodston]

Monday 15 March 1943

Joseph Stalin to Winston Churchill
It is evident that the Anglo-American operations in North Africa have not only not been expediated, but on the contrary they have been postponed till the end of April. Even this date is not quite definite. Thus at the height of our fighting against the Hitler forces - i.e. in Feburary/March - the weight of the Anglo-American offensive has not only not increased, but there has been no development of the offensive at all, and the time limit for the operations set by yourself was extended. Meanwhile, Germany succeeded in transferring thirty-six divisions (including six armoured divisions) from the west against the Soviet troops. It is easy to see what difficulties this created for the Soviet armies and how the position of the Germans on the Soviet-German front was alleviated.

Secret Report of the German SS Security Service on internal affairs, No. 367 of 15 March 1943 (extract):
I. General comments: the statement in the Wehrmacht Report of 12 March 1943 that the Bolshevists' hope of regaining the Ukraine has been foiled, and the news of the fights around Kharkov culminating in its recapture (by Germany), have removed many Germans' last doubts about our ability to stabilise the (Eastern) front and again regain the initiative.

[Peter Clare]

March 15, 1939
Nazis take Czechoslovakia

On this day, Hitler's forces invade and occupy Czechoslovakia--a nation sacrificed on the altar of the Munich Pact, which was a vain attempt to prevent Germany's imperial aims.
On September 30, 1938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Although the agreement was to give into Hitler's hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia's coal, 70 percent of its iron and steel, and 70 percent of its electrical power. Without those resources, the Czech nation was left vulnerable to complete German domination.
No matter what concessions the Czech government attempted to make to appease Hitler, whether dissolving the Communist Party or suspending all Jewish teachers in ethnic-German majority schools, rumors continued to circulate about "the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the Reich." In fact, as early as October 1938, Hitler made it clear that he intended to force the central Czechoslovakian government to give Slovakia its independence, which would make the "rump" Czech state "even more completely at our mercy," remarked Hermann Goering. Slovakia indeed declared its "independence" (in fact, complete dependence on Germany) on March 14, 1939, with the threat of invasion squelching all debate within the Czech province.
Then, on March 15, 1939, during a meeting with Czech President Emil Hacha--a man considered weak, and possibly even senile--Hitler threatened a bombing raid against Prague, the Czech capital, unless he obtained from Hacha free passage for German troops into Czech borders. He got it. That same day, German troops poured into Bohemia and Moravia. The two provinces offered no resistance, and they were quickly made a protectorate of Germany. By evening, Hitler made a triumphant entry into Prague.
The Munich Pact, which according to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had purchased "peace in our time," was actually a mere negotiating ploy by the Hitler, only temporarily delaying the Fuhrer's blood and land lust.

[Gage]

16th March 1945

Germany.
Rudolf Hoess, the former commandant of Auschwitz declares that he gassed two million Jews on Himmler's orders between June 1941 and the end of 1943.

Hohenlychen.
Himmler takes to his bed, feigning an attack of influenza.

[Peter Clare]

March 16, 1945
Fighting on Iwo Jima ends

On this day, the west Pacific volcanic island of Iwo Jima is declared secured by the U.S. military after months of fiercely fighting its Japanese defenders.
The Americans began applying pressure to the Japanese defense of Iwo Jima in February 1944, when B-24 and B-25 bombers raided the island for 74 days straight. It was the longest pre-invasion bombardment of the war, necessary because of the extent to which the Japanese--21,000 strong--fortified the island, above and below ground, including a network of caves. Underwater demolition teams ("frogmen") were dispatched by the Americans just before the actual invasion to clear the shores of mines and any other obstacles that could obstruct an invading force. In fact, the Japanese mistook the frogmen for an invasion force and killed 170 of them.
The amphibious landings of Marines began the morning of February 19, 1945, as the secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, accompanied by journalists, surveyed the scene from a command ship offshore. The Marines made their way onto the island--and seven Japanese battalions opened fire, obliterating them. By that evening, more than 550 Marines were dead and more than 1,800 were wounded.
In the face of such fierce counterattack, the Americans reconciled themselves to the fact that Iwo Jima could be taken only one yard at a time. A key position on the island was Mt. Suribachi, the center of the Japanese defense. The 28th Marine Regiment closed in and around the base of the volcanic mountain at the rate of 400 yards per day, employing flamethrowers, grenades, and demolition charges against the Japanese that were hidden in caves and pillboxes (low concrete emplacements for machine-gun nests). Approximately 40 Marines finally began a climb up the volcanic ash mountain, which was smoking from the constant bombardment, and at 10 a.m. on February 23, a half-dozen Marines raised an American flag at its peak, using a pipe as a flag post. Two photographers caught a restaging of the flag raising for posterity, creating one of the most reproduced images of the war. With Mt. Suribachi claimed, one-third of Iwo Jima was under American control.
On March 16, with a U.S. Navy military government established, Iwo Jima was declared secured and the fighting over. When all was done, more than 6,000 Marines died fighting for the island, along with almost all the 21,000 Japanese soldiers trying to defend it.

[Peter Clare]

16 March 1940.

German aircraft attacked the Home Fleet base at Scapa Flow, causing the first civilian casualties in the British Isles. The cruiser Norfolk was damaged.

[Peter Clare]

March 17, 1940
Todt named Reich Minister for Weapons and Munitions

Dr. Fritz Todt, an engineer and master road builder, is appointed Minister for Weapons and Munitions, ushering in a new era in the efficient use of German industry and forced labor.
A civil engineer with a doctorate from the School for Advanced Technical Studies in Munich, Fritz Todt caught the attention of Adolf Hitler in 1932 as Todt spoke out about the importance of building new roads to jumpstart a moribund German economy. Once Hitler came to power, Hitler placed Todt in charge of a massive road-building project that remains remarkable today: the Autobahn, Germany's superhighway.
Todt designed the Autobahn so it would "harmonize with the German landscape." One of the unintentional outcomes of the project was that it provided a working model of the use of slave labor within the Nazi regime. In February 1940, realizing that mass executions in occupied Poland were not serving the Reich efficiently, Hitler decided to create a centralized and supervised source of mass slave labor. It was Todt who was chosen to command the project. The Todt Organization became the single largest employer of slave labor in Hitler's empire, disseminating workers to shorthanded munitions plants. And as Minister for Munitions and Weapons, Todt oversaw a more efficient use of raw materials in Hitler's arms machine.
Todt's engineering skills also proved useful in the war against France, with the design and construction of what was called the "West Wall," a fortress line of bunkers that divided the Franco-German border.
On February 8, 1941, Todt, after a conference with various government ministries on German arms production and distribution, was killed in a plane crash en route to Berlin. He had intended to tell Hitler of his decision to increase arms production a whopping 55 percent. A state funeral was given for Todt, at which Hitler, who had come to rely heavily on the engineer, gave the eulogy. "Much of what the man has done can be made known to the German people, or brought to the amazed attention of the world, only after the war," said Hitler. "I have lost in this man one of my most faithful coworkers and friends."

[Peter Clare]

SS DEMPO (March 17, 1944)

Dutch passenger liner (16,979 tons) serviced the Holland-Java route with 634 passengers in four classes. Used as a troopship from 1941 but was sunk in the Mediterranean by the U-371(Lt-Cdr. Mehl) A total of 498 US troops on board, died. The Dempo was part of convoy SNF.17. The year before, on October 13, 1943, the U-371 sank the US destroyer, USS Bristol, off Algeria. On May 4, 1944, the U-371 was herself sunk in the Mediterranean north of Constintine by depth charges from 4 destroyers including the American destroyer USS Pride and the British destroyer HMS Blankney. Three of her crew were killed and 48 taken prisoner.