Posted on 11/24/2010 5:08:59 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept
News of the Week in Review
Where the Warring Powers are Giving Blow for Blow (map) – 10
Twenty News Questions – 11
Fear of Japanese Felt by Filipinos – 12-13
Texas Favors Ban on Japanese Trade (by Walter Hornaday) – 13
Food Stamp Program Spread Across Nation (by Frederick R. Barkley) – 15
New Features in Corn Loan (by Roland M. Jones) – 16
Answers to Twenty Questions – 17
* Herbert Matthews wrote the part of this article filed from Rome. He was kicked out of Italy in October. Did the Fascisti forgive him or did he sneak back in the country?
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/nov40/f24nov40.htm
Slovakia joins Tripartite Pact
Sunday, November 24, 1940 www.onwar.com
In Berlin... The prime minister of the German sponsored state of Slovakia, Tuka, joins the Tripartite Pact powers in a meeting.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/24.htm
November 24th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM:
RAF Bomber Command: 2 Group: 101 Sqn. attacks the oil refinery at Wanne Eickel. one aircraft makes a crash landing injuring the crew.
RAF Fighter Command: The Luftwaffe bombs Bath.
The first Canadian graduates of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) arrive.
Northern Ireland:
Viscount Craigavon, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, since 1921, died tonight. He was 69. Formerly James Craig, a typical Ulsterman of Scottish descent, he was a rugged man with no claim to intellectual attainment. He had fiercely resisted Home Rule - the establishment of the Irish Free State and two separate parliaments in Ireland. After Sinn Fein outrages in 1922, he was responsible for a law instituting the punishment of the lash for carrying guns or bombs.
ASW trawler HMS Amethyst mined in the Thames Estuary.
Aircraft carrier HMS Formidable commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
VICHY FRANCE: On Dupuy’s first visit to Vichy he meets Petain, Darlan, Huntziger and Chevalier over the next 11 days. Petain assures Dupuy that ‘I am obliged officially to maintain the balance between both sides, but you know where my sympathies lie.’
Petain seemed willing to contemplate surrendering colonial bases to the Germans , regarding this as only ‘passive’ collaboration.
EUROPE: The German puppet government of Slovakia signs the Tripartite Pact.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The 7,448 ton British freighter SS Port Hobart sailed from Liverpool, England, on 4 November as part of a convoy bound for New Zealand. On 20 November, she left the convoy to head for the Panama Canal on her own. At 1115 hours today, smoke is spotted to the northwest and closing very fast and at 1157 hours the unidentified raider opens fire with 28 centimeter (11 inch) guns from a range of 2 miles (3,2 kilometers) and, as instructed, the Port Hobart stops. The raider, which turns out to be the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, puts an armed party aboard. The crew takes to the lifeboats and a launch is sent to disembark the only lady passenger before the Admiral Scheer sinks the Port Hobart with gunfire. (Jack McKillop)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 451 November 24, 1940
Operation Collar. Convoy ME4 from Britain passes the Straits of Gibraltar bound for Malta and Alexandria (merchant ships SS New Zealand Star, SS Clan Forbes and SS Clan Fraser, escorted by cruisers HMS Manchester and HMS Southampton carrying 1,370 RAF personnel to reinforce the garrison at Malta). Destroyer HMS Hotspur and 4 corvettes join to escort the convoy at Gibraltar. Mediterranean convoys are escorted from Gibraltar to Malta by Admiral Somerville’s Force H and then onwards to Alexandria, Egypt, by Admiral Cunningham’s Mediterranean fleet. Battleships HMS Ramillies and HMS Malaya, cruisers HMS Newcastle, Coventry and Berwick plus 5 destroyers are on their way from Alexandria to pick up the convoy in mid-Mediterranean.
Hitler continues to solidify alliances in Central Europe. Slovenia, a puppet state ceded from Czechoslovakia in the Munich Agreement, joins the Axis. Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka signs the Tripartite Pact.
German destroyers Galster, Lody and Beitzen leave Brest, France, overnight and cross the English Channel to attack shipping off Cornwall. They sink Belgian trawler Marguerite Simonne 12 miles off Land’s End and Dutch steamer Apollonia (15 lives lost) off Penzance. British destroyers HMS Javelin, Jersey, Jackal, Jupiter and Kashmir search unsuccessfully for the German destroyers which return to Brest the next day.
Anti-submarine trawler HMT Amethyst (captained by the Hon. William Rous, later the 5th Earl of Stradbroke) hits a mine and sinks in the Thames estuary (7 men wounded, all hands rescued by anti-submarine trawler Le Tiger).
German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer sinks British steamer Port Hobart near the Azores, taking the crew prisoner.
From 6 PM to midnight, Luftwaffe drops 156 tons of high explosive bombs and 12,500 incendiary canisters on Bristol, destroying large parts of the medieval city (Castle Park area), historic buildings (17th century timber framed Dutch House and St Peter’s Hospital), and four churches (St Peter’s, St Nicholas, St Mary-le-Port and Temple) and damaging 10,000 homes. 207 civilians are killed, 689 injured and 1400 made homeless. Lord Mayor of Bristol says “The City of Churches had in one night become the city of ruins.” http://www.bristolblitzed.org/?page_id=63
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