http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/mar40/f23mar40.htm
Royal Navy shadows German ships
Saturday, March 23, 1940 www.onwar.com
In the South Pacific... The British Royal Navy forms the “Malaya Force” to shadow 17 German merchant ships trapped in Dutch East Indies ports.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/23.htm
March 23rd, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM:
Devon: IRA prisoners stage a riot in Dartmoor prison.
Heston airfield: The Lockheed 12A civil aircraft, registration code G-AGAR, leaves on a south-east heading. At the controls is Hugh MacPhail, Sidney Cotton’s personal assistant. MacPhail and Cotton are to carry out aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet oilfields in the Caucasus as directed by F.W. Winterbotham, the Chief of MI6. After intermediate landings at Malta and Cairo, the Lockheed will reach RAF Habbaniya where its identifying marks will be painted over and the several high-powered hidden cameras that it carries will be inspected.
GERMANY: Field Marshal Göring orders a halt to transports of Jews in eastern Europe, but is ignored.
Commerce raider ‘Atlantis’ leaves harbour in Suederpiep to begin her first war patrol. She is masquerading as a Norwegian freighter. (Alex Gordon)
PACIFIC: The British Royal Navy forms the “Malaya Force” to shadow 17 German merchant ships trapped in Netherlands East Indies ports. (Jack McKillop)
U.S.A.: The 30-minute radio show “Truth or Consequences” makes its debut this Saturday night on CBS radio at 2145 hours Eastern Time sponsored by Ivory Soap. The radio show was originally heard on only four CBS stations but in August, NBC picked up the show where it eventually became the most popular of all radio quiz shows. Hosted by Ralph Edwards, the show ran for 16 years. Supposedly a quiz show, contestants were paid only US$15 for right answers (= US$197 in 2003 dollars); for wrong answers, guests were required to perform outrageous stunts—pushing walnuts across the stage with their noses, howling like a dog, collecting hundreds of thousands of pennies, digging for buried treasure, and a wide range of other pranks. Some of the shows more elaborate setups took months to arrange: A New Jersey woman, for instance, was taken to a New York theater and told to play the violin for 1,500 unsuspecting people who had turned up to see a European musician promoted for weeks as the Great Yiffniff. It only took a moment for the audience to realize they’d been had; after an explanation by the show’s host, they were treated to a real concert, though not by the fictional Yiffniff. (Jack McKillop)