World War II Chronicle: Nov. 27, 1942

Today’s front page reports that the French Navy scuttled their fleet at Toulous. Dozens of ships are sunk in the harbor and some submarines have decided to sail for the Mediterranean to join the Allies… Below the fold: two future Hall of Fame football coaches are being inducted into the Navy. Washington Redskins skipper Ray Flaherty is swearing in after the Redskins play the Chicago Bears in the NFL Championship game. Dick Harlow is also signing up after Harvard’s football season is over… Another football coach is mentioned on the second page: former West Point assistant Col. LaVerne G. Saunders — commanding the 11th Bombardment Group — safely ditched a B-17 near Vella Lavella when enemy aircraft fire kills the pilot and mortally wounds the copilot. Although injured himself, Saunders removes the copilot from the seat and takes control of the crippled airplane.

Saunders is a veteran of Pearl Harbor, one of the few pilots able to get a bomber airborne and search for the Japanese fleet… He commands several outfits during the war, including XX Bomber Command. He organized and trained the first unit to fly the B-29 Superfortress and flew lead for the first bombing mission against mainland Japan since the Doolittle Raid. When Saunders is selected to lead a newly formed bomber group, his replacement is Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, a former classmate during pilot training. Shortly before Saunders was due to ship back to the States, he was in a deadly B-25 crash. LeMay found the Saunders among the wreckage and extricated him…

Maj. Tommy Hitchcock, former assistant air attaché to the U.S. Embassy in London, says the P-51 Mustang will be the war’s premier fighter in 1943. Hitchcock flew for the Lafayette Flying Corps during the First World War and captured by the Germans...

https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Tommy_Hitchcock,_Jr.

he was instrumental in the development of the P-51 Mustang fighter plane, particularly in replacing the original Allison engine with the Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin. He was killed in a crash while piloting one such aircraft near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England when he was unable to pull out of a dive while doing tests.

Initial orders were to scuttle the ships by capsizing them, but engineers, thinking of recovering the ships after the war, managed to have the orders changed to sinking on an even keel.

Under armistice provisions, the French ships were supposed to have their fuel tanks almost empty; in fact, through falsification of reports and tampering with gauges, the crews had managed to store enough fuel to reach North Africa.

The Germans eventually seized three disarmed destroyers, four badly damaged submarines, three civilian ships, and the remains of two battleships of no value, the semi-dreadnought Condorcet and the disarmed former Jean Bart, renamed Océan in 1936.

The French destroyed 77 vessels, including three battleships, seven cruisers, 15 destroyers, 13 torpedo boats, six sloops, 12 submarines, nine patrol boats, 19 auxiliary ships, one school ship, 28 tugs and four cranes. Thirty-nine small ships were captured, most of them sabotaged and disarmed. Some of the major ships were ablaze for several days, and oil polluted the harbour so badly that it would not be possible to swim there for two years.

https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_French_fleet_at_Toulon

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