http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/oct40/f28oct40.htm
Italy invades Greece
Monday, October 28, 1940 www.onwar.com
In Athens... An Italian ultimatum is presented to the Greeks during the night. It amounts to a declaration of war.
In the Balkans... At dawn, before the ultimatum expires, the Italian forces in Albania begin to cross the border into Greece. Patras is bombed. General Prasca leads eight of the 10 Italian divisions in Albania in the advance. They attack along three lines with the main effort being in the center from the Dhrina and Vijose valleys. General Papagos, the Greek Command in Chief, has not deployed his main force close to the border to avoid giving any provocation to the Italians. He hopes to use 8 divisions with the possibility of reinforcements being brought from the troops watching the Bulgarian border. The greatest obstacle to the Italians for the first two or three days is the very bad weather which grounds their air support. The Italians have chose a very unwise time of the year for their attack.
In Italy... Hitler and Mussolini meet at Florence. Hitler conceals his anger at not being kept informed of the Italian plans and says that German troops are available if it is necessary to keep the British out of Greece and away from the Romanian oil.
In Vichyt France... Laval become Foreign Minister of the Vichy government.
In the North Atlantic... U-32 completes the job and sinks the damaged Empress of Britain.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/28.htm
October 28th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM: Battle of Britain:
RAF Fighter Command: Losses: Luftwaffe, 11; RAF, 2.
VICHY FRANCE: Pierre Laval is appointed Foreign Minister.
ITALY: Hitler meets with Mussolini in Florence. Commenting on his recent meeting with Generalissimo Franco he says he would prefer to have three or four teeth extracted rather than meet with him again. (Marc James Small)
GREECE: Athens: At 5:30 AM Mussolini’s army invaded Greece. In the firm belief that they would meet little resistance from the dictator General Metaxas’s forces, Italian tanks and infantry crossed from occupied Albania into the mountains of Epirus before dawn. Hitler heard the news on his train ‘Amerika’ between Munich and Florence. When the arrived, the Italian leader was delighted to tell him, in German: “Fuhrer, we are on the march!” Hitler conceals his fury at news of the Italian invasion of Greece and pledges military support if Mussolini requires it.
In Hitler’s opinion Mussolini is making a critical strategic blunder. To Hitler the capture of Gibraltar, with assistance from Franco and Italy’s conquest of Egypt, especially the great naval base at Alexandria, would ensure Britain’s collapse.
Mussolini in turn was convinced that the pro-German Metaxas - who has based his Asfalia secret police on the Gestapo and abolished most democratic institutions in Greece - would succumb quickly offering little resistance.
Metaxas, however, has rejected the Italian ultimatum - which he received in his bed from an Italian envoy at six in the morning - half an hour after Italian troops crossed the border.
The first Greek communiqué reads: As of 5:30 am today, the Italian armed forces are attacking our troops protecting the Greek Albanian border. Our forces are defending our native territory.
The first Italian Communiqué reads: “At dawn on the 28th October our forces stationed in Albania crossed over the Greek border and gained entrance at several places. Our advance continues” (Steven Statharos)
General Visconti-Prasca, the Commander-in-Chief of the Italian aerial forces has not blocked the road to the north, thus allowing three newly-mobilised Greek divisions to move quickly to the front. The Italians are moving slowly, and the Greeks are mobilising quickly.
EGYPT: Cairo: Air Marshal Sir Arthur Longmore Air Officer C-in-C, Air HQ Middle East (an Australian) orders 3 squadrons of Blenheims and one of Gladiators to Greece.
Wavell is ordered to send also two A.A. batteries to Athens and an infantry brigade to Suda Bay, in Crete, to assist in the defence of the Greek islands.
SUDAN: Khartoum: The British Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, the C-in-C, General Sir Archibald Wavell, the South African Premier, General Jan Smuts and the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie meet to try to reconcile their different war aims in Africa.
CANADA: Convoy HX-84 sailed from Halifax.
Corvette HMCS Nanaimo launched Esquimalt, British Columbia. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The liner ‘Empress of Britain’ is sunk by U-32, which in turn is sunk.
RMS Empress of Britain, 42,348 tons, was the largest ship sunk in the U-boat war. U-32 was sunk 30 October 1940 northwest of Ireland, in position 55.37N, 12.19W, by depth charges from the Royal Navy destroyers HMS Harvester and HMS Highlander. 33 of the 42 U-boat crewmen survived. (Jack McKillop)
The Reuters News Agency in London reported:-
The Admiralty has announced that the English steamship Empress of Britain has gone down. The vessel was attacked by enemy aircraft and caught fire so that it had to be evacuated. Salvage manoeuvres were instituted at once, but when the steamer was taken in tow, it reared up and sank. Of a total 643 persons on board, 598 survivors were brought to land by British war vessels. They included the families of military men and a small number of military personnel. The energetic and effective action of the steamer’s anti-aircraft defence was largely responsible for the fact that so many people were saved.
The vessel was a 42,000 ton luxury steamer. The King and Queen sailed home on her last year from their trip to Canada and the United States.
Luftwaffe Front-Line Bulletin No. 26
On 26 October 1940, a FW-200 on armed reconnaissance and weather-scouting patrol over North-West Ireland sighted a large vessel with 3 smokestacks. Despite powerful AA fire which inflicted serious hits on the attacking aircraft, the German plane made 2 hits on the ship in a total of 4 low-level attacks. As the plane was flying away, the ship showed a slight list and was burning along its whole length. The assaulted ship burned for 24 hours and the following day its wreck was sunk by a U-boat. The vessel in question was the passenger steamer Empress of Britain, which at 42,000 tons was the tenth largest ship in the international merchant fleet.