May 2nd, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM:
RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group. Bombing - Stavanger and Fornebu airfields.
51 Sqn. Six aircraft. All bombed Fornebu. Severe opposition. One crew abandoned aircraft on return.
58 Sqn. Six aircraft to Stavanger. One returned U/S, four bombed. Light opposition.
Blenheims of 107 Sqn. raid Stavanger and Rye aerodromes in daylight. Wellingtons raid Rye at night.
RAF Coastal Command: Escorting ships evacuating British forces from Norway.
Destroyer ORP (ex-HMS) Garland commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
NORWEGIAN CAMPAIGN: Namsos, Norway. Lt. Richard Been Stannard (1902-77), RNR, of HMS Arab (trawler of 15th A/S Striking Force), showed great courage during 31 attacks on his ship from 28 April to 2 May, in one case saving a jetty ablaze from burning ammunition, and is awarded the VC.
Under heavy Luftwaffe bombardment, Allied forces start to evacuate Namsos; 5,400 soldiers embark today. The evacuation of Mauriceforce is scheduled for the nights of May 1 and 2. A dense offshore fog settled in yesterday and most of the French and British relief ships lay to, waiting for it to lift. General Carton de Wiart, unaware of the offshore weather, had all his men out of hiding and waiting down by the battered docks. Morning found them still waiting. There was barely time to get them back under cover before the first German reconnaissance planes arrived at daylight. Not until late today does the fog lift and the rescue begin.
Åndalsnes: After midnight the last available cruiser edged in, expecting to retrieve a 240 man read guard - and instead found almost 1,000 soldiers waiting on the dock. All of them crammed aboard, and by 2 a.m. on May 2 the last of Sickleforce’s survivors were away. Behind them they left 1,402 men of the 148th and 15th Brigades, either killed, wounded or POW. This afternoon when advance elements of the German 196th Division march into Åndalsnes, they found the port ruined by bombs of the Luftwaffe - and empty of British troops.
HMS Ark Royal and HMS Glorious, in company with battleship HMS Valiant, heavy cruiser HMS Berwick, and destroyers HMS Fury, HMS Encounter, HMS Escort, HMS Fearless, HMS Acheron, HMS Antelope, HMS Fortune, and HMS Kimberley continue to steam towards Scapa. HMS Furious in dockyard hands at Greenock. (Mark Horan)
ITALY: Rome: Mussolini proposes a bargain with Roosevelt; he will refrain from invading the USA if the President keeps America out of the war in Europe.
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Collingwood laid down Collingwood, Ontario. (Dave Shirlaw)
If you can pardon a brief digression:
As the allies evacuate Norway, and May 9 - 10 approaches with Hitler's Fall Gelb "Case Yellow," we might take note of Patrick Buchanan today on C-Span again defending his 2008 book, "Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War."
I've argued here that Buchanan's logic, while interesting, is based on several false premises. Among them are:
- A quote from David Llyod George, British Prime Minister during the First World War, speaking of the Great War:
"We all blundered into the war." No. The German Kaiser and military wanted the First World War in 1914 -- no later -- because they believed Russia was quickly becoming too powerful to defeat.
Neither Serbia, Russia nor France declared war on Germany. And, none attacked until after Germany declared war and unleashed its "Schlieffen Plan."
So the only way for the Allies to avoid prolonged war in 1914 was immediately accept defeat by Germany.
- That the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty was "unjust" and thus reasonable cause for grievances leading to WWII.
No. Based on peace terms Germany imposed on countries it defeated -- i.e., Belgium in 1914 and Russia in 1917 -- the Versailles terms were totally just and expected for a defeated nation.
Indeed, Germany received the least harsh treatment of all the defeated empires.
So the problem was not "unjust terms," but rather: the Germans did not feel defeated, and soon convinced themselves they had not been defeated, indeed, had never lost a battle, and so justice naturally demanded a "round two."
- A quote from Churchill: "One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called.
"I said at once, 'The Unnecessary War.'
"There never was a war more easy to stop than that which was left of the world from the previous struggle.' " Easy for Churchill to say, since in his mind (and ours) blame fell entirely on Chamberlain and his Appeasement policy.
But Buchanan wants us to shift the blame from Chamberlain's appeasement to Churchill's defense of the British Empire.
- Specifically, Buchanan blames Chamberlain's war guarantee to fascist-antisemitic Poland.
And in Buchanan's mind, this reckless act, though proposed by Foreign Minister Lord Halifax and committed by Prime Minister Chamberlain was actually the fault of an out-of-favor and out-of-power MP named Winston Churchill. Well, in Chamberlain's defense, he had taken Hitler's measure, judged Hitler a untrustworthy madman, and learned from bitter experience that to appease one Nazi demand after another was simply to invite more and more unreasonable demands.
It had to be stopped somewhere, and since that could not be Czechoslovakia, it must be Poland.
Chamberlain was fully prepared to negotiate minor adjustments to Versailles, but not to turn all of Europe over to Hitler.
Churchill, of course, had argued all along there was no way to appease Hitler, he must be opposed.
- Buchanan claims Hitler did not want war with France & Britain, he simply wanted to restore Germany to its pre-Versailles (1918 Brest Litovsk Treaty) borders.
But that would also mean those parts of France which Germany conquered -- and in which Corporal Hitler had served -- during the First World War. Such an outcome would have converted its Great War defeat into total victory -- an outcome which millions of young French and Brits had died to prevent.
Such an outcome was unthinkable to Neville Chamberlain, and to any reasonable person since.
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 245 May 2, 1940
Vice-Admiral John Cunningham’s flotilla (3 cruisers, 5 destroyers & 3 transports) joins Mountbatten’s 4 destroyers off Namsos to evacuate General de Wiart’s 146th Brigade. However, yesterday’s evacuation at Åndalsnes alerted the Luftwaffe to British intentions at Namsos. Bombing runs start as the destroyers move up the Namsenfjord to begin embarking troops. HMS Maori is damaged by a near miss (5 lives lost, 18 wounded), delaying the operation until weather or nightfall blinds the Luftwaffe to their activities. In the evening heavy fog comes in and the destroyers safely ferry 5350 men out to the cruisers & transports overnight. 146th Brigade has lost 153 men killed or captured.
While the French & British are distracted by events in Norway and withdraw troops from the Western Front, Hitler prepares for his knockout punch against the Allies. 93 front-line divisions (including 10 armored & 6 motorised) are assembled to invade Northern France and the Low Countries (Fall Gelb).