News of the Week in Review
Japan Looks for Peace; China Plans Long War – 10
Seas and Coasts from which American Shipping is Banned (Map) – 11
New York Times Magazine
Pius XII: Militant for Peace – 12-14
Swing – 15-23
Rotogravure Picture Section in Two Parts
Fashions Out Of ‘Gone With the Wind’ – 24-28
In Europe’s Headlines – 29-33
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1939/nov39/f19nov39.htm
Warsaw Jewish quarter isolated
Sunday, November 19, 1939 www.onwar.com
In Occupied Poland... The first barricades are erected around the Jewish quarter in Warsaw.
In Occupied Czechoslovakia... Some 50,000 people are reportedly under arrest. Nazi authorities execute 3 more dissidents.
In London... First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, proposes mining the Rhine, between Strasbourg and the Lauter River, using mine-laying aircraft.
In China... The Nationalist government at Chungking orders a winter offensive against the Japanese.
http://www.capdantifer.org.uk/sweepers/textLMNO.html
Hitler had boasted of his “secret weapon” and it seemed that this might be the magnetic mine. It was not, however, a new invention, for the Royal Navy had used magnetic mines off the Belgian coast in the previous war, and, so far from its being a secret, an American citizen, Mr. Caesar Marshall, had been granted a British patent for such a device in 1918. Other inventors had experimented with mines of similar type, and the Mine Experimental Department of H.M.S. Vernon was well aware of their existence; indeed, its own magnetic mines were in an advanced state of development.
The magnetic mine is so called, not because it is attracted to a ship’s hull, but because it is detonated by a magnetic needle which becomes active when a large mass of iron passes in its field. When the mine is laid on the sea bottom it can operate only in comparatively shallow water, but within its range it can cause far more damage than the moored mine, since the moored mines blows a hole in a ship, usually for’ard, which may be localized, whereas the explosion from a ground mine strikes the vessel under her bottom amidships, opening up the plating of the hull, shattering the machinery and the pipes, and frequently breaking her back.
Against this weapon neither the existing sweeps nor the paravane availed. But counter-measures were taken, first with the “Bo’sun’s nightmare,” which was still in the experimental stage. This was a wire sweep to which a number of magnetized bars were attached and towed between two ships just off the sea bottom. Large electro-magnets and barges with coils of wire were also used; even aircraft were employed. The first magnetic mine was detonated in the Bristol Channel, but although the sweepers were rapidly fitted with new devices and the officers given instruction in their use, none was wholly satisfactory and the sinkings continued at an alarming rate.
A doctor cannot prescribe a remedy until he has had the opportunity of diagnosing the disease, and the officers of the Mine Experimental Department of H.M.S. Vernon could not find the effective antidote to the magnetic mine until they had studied a specimen and discovered its mechanism. Every effort was made to recover a magnetic mine intact, but for some time without success.
Then it appeared that the enemy was dropping the mines from aircraft. This was all the more serious, because it rendered our own mine barrages, which were a protection against surface-layers and submarines, of no avail. Between 18th and 22nd November, fifteen merchant ships were mined, including the Japanese liner Terukuni Maru and the Dutch steamer Simon Bolivar. H.M.S. Belfast was damaged and the destroyer Gipsy sunk.
The danger to shipping had suddenly become intensified, and it seemed that merchant traffic would be paralysed unless the remedy could be found. The men in the sweepers did all they could, but they were powerless against this weapon new to their experience. They looked to the scientists to give them the means to combat the offensive, but that the scientists could not do until they had discovered exactly what they had to fight.
The first definite evidence that the enemy mines were being laid from air came on the night of 21st November, when aircraft, believed to be Heinkel 115s, operating from bases on the islands of Sylt and Borkum, were seen to drop mines in the Humber and in the estuaries of the Stour and the Thames. Observers reported that the mines looked like sailors’ kit-bags suspended from parachutes. Officers from H.M.S. Vernon were sent to East Coast ports to investigate. They could discover no further information. None came in next day. The situation had become very grave. Shipping in three rivers was held up. The Minesweeping Division at the Admiralty and all officers ashore and afloat were working under a severe strain. But as yet there was no conclusive proof of the nature of the mine.
Two hundred rioters in Exalter Prison were confined to their cells today after a night-long uproar in which they had shouted, “We’re Englishmen; we want to fight”
The disturbance was characterized as the worst of a series since convicts from Wandsworth Prison were transferred to Exeter at the start of the war.