Posted on 02/22/2011 5:11:40 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance
#1 - “Frenesi”-Artie Shaw
#2 - “I Hear a Rhapsody” - Charlie Barnet, with Bob Carroll
#3 – “High on a Windy Hill” – Gene Krupa, with Howard Dulaney
#4 - “Anvil Chorus” – Glenn Miller
#5 – “I Hear a Rhapsody” – Jimmy Dorsey , with Bob Eberly
#6 – “You Walk By” – Eddy Duchin, with Johnny Drake
#7 - “High on a Windy Hill” - Jimmy Dorsey, with Bob Eberly
#8 - “It All Comes Back to Me Now” - Gene Krupa, with Howard Dulany
#9 - “Song of the Volga Boatmen” - Glenn Miller
#10 - “Concerto for Clarinet” - Artie Shaw
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/feb41/f22feb41.htm
Nazis raid Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam
Saturday, February 22, 1941 www.onwar.com
In Occupied Holland... SS troops raid the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam in reprisal for the ammonia incident of February 19th.
In the North Atlantic... Five ships from a dispersed convoy are sunk by the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
In Athens... The British leaders (Eden, Dill, Wavell and Cunningham) meet Greek King George and Premier Korizis.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/22.htm
February 22nd, 1941
UNITED KINGDOM: Not many young women dream of a life in uniform but increasing numbers are volunteering for the services. Most of them go into the Auxiliary Territorial Service - the ATS - though the Wrens, who work with the Royal Navy, are seen as the elite and the WAAFs have a certain glamour by association with pilots.
In the ATS, women are trained to do almost anything that does not involve them directly in combat. Many are learning to operate the aiming mechanisms of anti-aircraft guns, though they are not allowed to fire them; large numbers are also trained as drivers and mechanics. Cooking, cleaning and clerical work are the commonest jobs.
The most novel, and the physically hardest job in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) is crewing the barrage balloon operations. The balloons are so heavy that teams of ten men are being replaced by 16 women. WAAFs also train as mechanics, photographers, bombplotters and radio operators. But not everyone believes that the women are doing a good job. One woman told a mass observation survey: “Those ATS girls are a disgrace. They come in this pub at night and line up against that wall. Soldiers then give them drinks and when they’re blind drunk they carry them out into the street.”
Destroyer HMS Blean laid down.
ASW trawler HMS Mazurka commissioned.
Submarine HMS Union commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
NETHERLANDS: Amsterdam: SS troops arrest 400 Jews after a German officer is accidentally hurt in a Jewish-owned bar.
GERMANY:
U-257 laid down.
U-81 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
POLAND: Warsaw Ghetto: The daily bread ration is set at three ounces, as deaths from starvation reach 400 a week.
BULGARIA: German military staff arrive in Sofia as 17 divisions, eight of which are heading for Greece, cross the border.
GREECE: Athens: The Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, arrived in Athens today with a senior military mission including Sir John Dill, CIGS, General Wavell, Admiral Cunningham and Air-Marshall Longmore. The main item for discussion with King George and his government is the question of British military aid to Greece.
There is some reluctance on the part of the Greeks to accept the help offered by Eden, on the grounds that insufficient British help might serve only to precipitate an attack by the Germans.
Eden’s task is to reassure the Greeks that, although the forces being offered, which would have to be withdrawn from the army fighting the Italians in North Africa, are all that Britain can spare at the moment, they are well-equipped and trained and will acquit themselves well.
Talks are well under way this evening, and look like lasting well into the night, with the Greeks insisting that they will fight with or without British help.
LIBYA: The Monitor HMS Terror (15 inch guns) is damaged by bombing off Tobruk in position 32 40N 22 30E and loses all steam power. She is abandoned by her crew and sinks, but is hastened on by depth charges from HMS Salvia and Fareham. There are no casualties, 204 of the crew survive. (Alex Gordon)(108)
ITALIAN SOMALILAND: The cruiser HMS Shropshire bombards Brava, on the coast between Kismayu and Mogadishu.
General Cunningham’s forces attack the main Italian position at Jelib, from both flanks and from the rear. The Italians are completely routed, over 30,000 being killed, captured or dispersed into the bush. SAAF fighters kept the Regia Aeronautica out of the picture.
INDIAN OCEAN: Pocket battleship Admiral Scheer operates successfully off Madagascar before preparing to return to Germany.
AUSTRALIA: Minesweeper HMAS Echuca laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Edmunston launched Esquimalt, British Columbia.
HMC MTB 01 completed refit.
Corvette HMCS Chambly completed refit Halifax , Nova Scotia. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.: The big-scale Western film “Western Union,” directed by Fritz Lang, and starring Robert Young, Randolph Scott, Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Chill Wills and Barton MacLane is released. (Jack McKillop)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, sink five unescorted ships, the British merchantmen Kantara (3,240 tons), Trelawney (4,690 tons), Canadian SS AD Huff (6,219 GRT), tanker Lustrous (6,156 tons), and Harlesden (5,500 tons), 650 miles east of Newfoundland before heading for the Sierra Leone routes.
SS AD Huff, Canadian Atlantic Transportation Line freighter, 625 miles east of Cape Race in position 47.12N, 40.13W, by the Gneisenau. Two crewmembers are lost and the remaining 37 taken prisoner and eventually returned to Germany in the supply ship Ernland. AD Huff had been returning in ballast with a convoy after delivering a cargo of steel and newsprint to the UK.
Her convoy was dispersed off of Cape Race as the ships departed for their destination ports. Two German battle cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau came across the dispersal point soon after the convoy had split up. AD Huff was the fifth ship to be sunk. She tried to evade and was deliberately making smoke while sending a warning message by radio. With a top speed of only eight knots, her fate was already sealed. Thirty-two shots were fired at her with large (11-inch) and medium (5.9-inch) calibre guns before she finally went under. (Dave Shirlaw)
The Fleet Commander is Vice-Admiral Lütjens, Flagship Gneisenau is commanded by Kapitan Otto Fein, newly appointed when her previous Commander: Harold Netzbandt had been appointed Admiral Lütjens’ Chief of Staff. Kapitan Kurt Caesar Hoffmann was commanding Scharnhorst.
The unescorted ships were “empties” returning to the USA. When the German ships were spotted, the merchantmen began to scatter, and sent out radio signals, they ignored the initial warning shots so by 1100 the firing began in anger. During the next two hours, Gneisenau sank two ships totalling 7962 tons, and Scharnhorst despatched a 6000 ton tanker. At 1600 Gneisenau sank a 6200 ton freighter and the Scharnhorst went off in pursuit of another tanker whch escaped. It was known that a 5500 ton cargo ship “Harlesden” was about 50 miles away so a seaplane from Gneisenau was sent off to locate track her, and brought down her radio antenna which attracted some machine gun fire. Harlesden was sighted on radar and sunk by 2300.
The score for the day amounted to 25 000 tons with a considerable expenditure of ammunition as the firing took place at very long range.
During this operation, 180 merchant seamen were rescued, and later, on 26 February transferred to the supply tanker “Ermland”; only 11 lives having been lost from the crews of all the merchantmen sunk.
(Alex Gordon)
Italian submarine ‘Marcello’ is believed sunk to the west of the Hebrides by ex-US destroyer HMS Montgomery (ex USS Wickes [DD-75]) and other escorts of Liverpool-out convoy OB287. The convoy is reported by Kondors which sink two and damaged four merchantmen, but no other U-boats were able to make attacks.
SS Texelstroom hit by a torpedo by U-108 at 2224 below the rear mast. Surprisingly, nothing happened aboard the ship, which set course for the coast and made light signals towards the coast. A coup de grâce exploded prematurely, a third torpedo also malfunctioned and hit the bow as a surface-runner. The ship sank in three minutes and Scholtz reported lifeboats, which fired flares. They were only 25 miles from Iceland, but there were no survivors.
Motor tanker Scottish Standard sunk by U-96 at 59.20N, 16.12W. (Dave Shirlaw)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 541 February 22, 1941
300 miles Northwest of Ireland, U-48, U-69, U-73, U-96, U-107 and Italian submarines Bianchi, Marcello and Barbarigo attack convoy OB-287. Just after midnight, U-96 sinks British tanker MV Scottish Standard (which was bombed and damaged yesterday by German aircraft). U-96 is counterattacked and depth charged by escort destroyers. British destroyer HMS Montgomery (recently transferred from the US Navy in the ‘destroyers for bases’ deal) sinks Italian submarine Marcello.
Operation Canvas, Italian Somaliland, East Africa. 11th and 12th African Divisions attack Italian defenses at Jilib from Kismayu (South) and Afmadow (West). They defeat 30,000 Italian and colonial troops (many colonials down arms and disappear into the bush) to capture the road junction and open the way to Mogadishu.
Greek King George II and Commander-in-Chief General Papagos meet British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and General Wavell in Athens. Eden offers more troops than are in reality available. Confounding matters, they plan a defense against German invasion from Bulgaria that relies upon Yugoslav neutrality.
British monitor HMS Terror is spotted at midday by a German Ju-88. 5 Ju-88s take off from Sicily at 3.33 PM. At 6.30 PM 10 miles North of Derna, Libya, HMS Terror is holed by splinters from near misses. HMS Terror is abandoned at 10 PM and will sink at 4.20 AM next day after failed towing attempts by minesweeper HMS Fareham and corvette HMS Salvia.
Off the East coast of Africa, German cruiser Admiral Scheer sinks Dutch collier Rantau Pandjang. Distress signals are received by British cruiser HMS Glasgow which sends out an aircraft that spots Admiral Scheer. British warships will search the area fruitlessly until February 25 while Admiral Scheer slips away to the South around the Cape of Good Hope, reaching the South Atlantic on March 1.
500 miles East of Newfoundland, German pocket battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau attack an unescorted convoy of empty vessels returning to USA. They sink 3 British cargo ships and 2 tankers totaling 25,431 tons (10 merchant seamen killed, 180 taken prisoner).
Un-American Tone Seen in Textbooks on Social Sciences – 5
In January, 1941, I returned to the headquarters of First Army at Nancy. There I was informed by Colonel Röhricht, the chief of staff, that the conversations between Hitler and Molotov, held at Berlin in November, had ended in a complete fiasco.
Instead of entering the Tripartite Pact as Hitler had hoped, Molotov was said to have used blackmailing tactics and to have submitted impossible demands regarding Rumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Hitler's answer was to order the Wehrmacht to make[final] preparations for Operation Barbarossa— the invasion of Russia. D day was finally fixed for 22 June 1941—rather late in the year, but it was necessary to eliminate Greece first and then withdraw the panzer divisions from the Balkans to Russia
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