Remembering History by day WW2

[spidge]

May 26, 1940 - Evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk begins.

See this weeks discussion on casualties for the campaign.

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/battle-...vacuation.html

[Peter Clare]

1940 : Britain's Operation Dynamo gets underway as President Roosevelt makes a radio appeal for the Red Cross


On this day in 1940, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes known the dire straits of Belgian and French civilians suffering the fallout of the British-German battle to reach the northern coast of France, and appeals for support for the Red Cross
"Tonight, over the once peaceful roads of Belgium and France, millions are now moving, running from their homes to escape bombs and shells and machine gunning, without shelter, and almost wholly without food," broadcast FDR.
On May 26, the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk in France. Ships arrived at Calais to remove the Force before German troops occupied the area, and it was hoped that 45,000 British soldiers could be shipped back to Britain within two days. The German air force, though, had other plans. Determined to prevent the evacuation, the Luftwaffe initiated a bombing campaign in Dunkirk and the surrounding area. British, Polish, and Canadian fighter pilots succeeded in fending off the German attack in the air, allowing finally for a delayed, but successful, evacuation nine days later. But the cost to civilians was great, as thousands of refugees fled for their lives to evade the fallout of the battle.

[spidge]

1946 - A patent was filed in the United States for the H-bomb.

[Peter Clare]

1941 - Catalina flying boat of RAF Coastal Command 209 Squadron discovers the Bismarck about 700 NM from Brest. The Catalina was fitted with a recently improved ASV radar device. Swordfish strike from Force H's Ark Royal attacks the Sheffield in error. She is not hit. A second strike takes place in the evening by 810, 818 and 820 squadrons with 15 Swordfish led by Lt-Cdr Coode. They torpedo Bismarck twice and one hit damages her propellers and jams the rudders. As Bismarck circles, destroyers of the 4th Flotilla (Capt Vian) come up around midnight, and make a series of torpedo and gun attacks but with uncertain results. Destroyers HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu and ORP Piorun have been detached from troop convoy WS8B, an indication of the seriousness of the Bismarck’s threat. By this time Adm Tovey's force of heavy ships has lost the Repulse to refuel, but been joined by HMS Rodney. They now come up from the west but do not attack just yet

[Peter Clare]

BISMARCK (May 27, 1941)
Hitler’s greatest warship. Fully loaded she weighed 50,153 tons. After her encounter with HMS Hood (20 years older than the Bismarck) she headed for St. Nazaire, the only port on the coast of France with a dry dock big enough to hold her. An order was given by Churchill to "Get the Bismarck". The hunt for the battleship dominated the world’s press, the chase lasting four days and covering 1,750 sea miles. Spotted by a Coastal Command Catalina flying boat, her position was reported to the Royal Navy ships. Finally, on May 27, the mighty battleship met her end after 277 days of war service. Severely damaged by salvos from the battleships HMS King George V, HMS Rodney, and by torpedoes from the cruiser HMS Dorsetshire, she was finally scuttled by her crew. Casualties amounted to 2,097 officers, men and cadets lost including Admiral Lutjens and Captain Lindemann. There were 115 survivors, picked up by the Dorsetshire and the destroyer Maori. In 1989, the wreck of the Bismarck was found. She lies intact and upright at 4,763 metres about 602 miles off the coast of Brittany.

Germany's greatest warship, the battleship Bismarck

[Peter Clare]

1940 : British evacuation of Dunkirk turns savage as Germans commit atrocity


On this day in 1940, units from Germany's SS Death's Head division battle British troops just 50 miles from the port at Dunkirk, in northern France, as Britain's Expeditionary Force continues to fight to evacuate France.
After holding off an SS company until their ammo was spent, 99 Royal Norfolk Regiment soldiers retreated to a farmhouse in the village of Paradis, just 50 miles from the Dunkirk port. Ships waited there to carry home the British Expeditionary Force, which had been fighting alongside the French in its defensive war against the German invaders. Agreeing to surrender, the trapped regiment started to file out of the farmhouse, waving a white flag tied to a bayonet. They were met by German machine-gun fire.
They tried again and the British regiment was ordered by an English-speaking German officer to an open field where they were searched and divested of everything from gas masks to cigarettes. They were then marched into a pit where machine guns had been placed in fixed positions. The German order came: "Fire!" Those Brits who survived the machine-gun fire were either stabbed to death with bayonets or shot dead with pistols.
Of the 99 members of the regiment, only two survived, both privates: Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan. They lay among the dead until dark, then, in the middle of a rainstorm, they crawled to a farmhouse, where their wounds were tended. With nowhere else to go, they surrendered again to the Germans, who made them POWs. Pooley's leg was so badly wounded he was repatriated to England in April 1943 in exchange for some wounded German soldiers. Upon his return to Britain, his story was not believed. Only when O'Callaghan returned home and verified the story was a formal investigation made. Finally, after the war, a British military tribunal in Hamburg found the German officer who gave the "Fire" order, Captain Fritz Knochlein, guilty of a war crime. He was hanged.

[spidge]

Originally Posted by Peter Clare

Finally, after the war, a British military tribunal in Hamburg found the German officer who gave the "Fire" order, Captain Fritz Knochlein, guilty of a war crime. He was hanged.

Sounds good to me!

[Peter Clare]

1940 : Belgium surrenders unconditionally


On this day in 1940, after 18 days of ceaseless German bombardment, the king of Belgium, having asked for an armistice, is given only unconditional surrender as an option. He takes it.
German forces had moved into Belgium on May 10, part of Hitler's initial western offensive. Despite some support by British forces, the Belgians were simply outnumbered and outgunned from the beginning. The first surrender of Belgium territory took place only one day after the invasion, when the defenders of Fort Eben-Emael surrendered.
Disregarding the odds, King Leopold III of Belgium had tried to rally his forces, evoking the Belgian victory during World War I. The Belgian forces fought on, courageously, but were continually overcome by the invaders.
By May 27, the king of Belgium, realizing that his army was depleted and that even retreat was no longer an option, sent an emissary through the German lines to request an armistice, a cease-fire. It was rejected. The Germans demanded unconditional surrender. Belgium's government in exile, stationed in Paris, repudiated the surrender, but to no avail. Belgium had no army left to fight. In the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill defended King Leopold's decision, despite the fact that it made the British troops' position, attempting to evacuate Dunkirk, in northern France, more precarious.
King Leopold refused to flee the country and was taken prisoner by the Nazis during their occupation, and confined to his palace. A Belgian underground army grew up during the occupation; its work including protecting the port of Antwerp, the most important provisioning point for Allied troops on the Continent, from destruction by the Germans.

[Peter Clare]

1942 : Jews in Paris are forced to sew a yellow star on their coats


On this day in 1942, on the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler orders all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.
Joseph Goebbels had made the persecution, and ultimately the extermination, of Jews a personal priority from the earliest days of the war, often recording in his diary such statements as: "They are no longer people but beasts," and "[T]he Jews ... are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is pretty barbaric and is not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews."
But Goebbels was not the first to suggest this particular form of isolation. "The yellow star may make some Catholics shudder," wrote a French newspaper at the time. "It renews the most strictly Catholic tradition." Intermittently, throughout the history of the papal states, that territory in central Italy controlled by the pope, Jews were often confined to ghettoes and forced to wear either yellow hats or yellow stars.

[Peter Clare]

1940 - 47,310 men are evacuated today in Operation Dynamo. The French allow evacuation of their troops. Three RN destroyers are sunk off the beaches - HMS Grafton torpedoed by U-62, HMS Grenade by bombs, and HMS Wakeful by a torpedo from E-boat S30. The arrival of French warships improves the take off rate. V & W class destroyer HMS Wakeful is attacked and sunk by German Schnelboot S30. She was taking part in the Dunkirk evacuation at the time and carrying 600 troops who were below decks and of whom only 1 survived. Casualties numbered about 650 crew and soldiers, and only 25 plus an embarked soldier survived the sinking. Destroyer HMS Grafton is torpedoed by U-62 in the English Channel, 13 miles north of Nieuport, but does not sink. Alongside at the time was Trawler HMS Comfort. Grafton is scuttled by HMS Ivanhoe later the same day after crew and troops had been taken off. Destroyer HMS Grenade whilst alongside the east mole at Dunkirk is damaged and disabled by aircraft attacks. The destroyer is abandoned and her burning hull towed clear of the main channel. After burning for some hours, she then blows up. In connection with these same evacuation operations, Trawler HMS Comfort is attacked by own side forces and then rammed in the English Channel 13 miles north of Nieuport. After suffering some flooding and damage whilst alongside Grafton, Comfort pulls away only to be mistaken for a German S boat by HMS Lydd who opens fire with 4-inch and Lewis guns. Lydd then rams the trawler and cuts her in half. Some of the crew of Comfort attempt to jump on to Lydd, but are mistaken for Germans and repelled with gunfire. Minesweeper HMS Waverley, a paddle steamer, is bombed in the English Channel near Kwint Bank Buoy by German aircraft. Four of the 600 embarked troops are killed outright and another 150 drown as Waverley sinks