http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/30.htm
November 30th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM:
Southampton: Following severe night attacks by the Luftwaffe, the King visits to see the damage. The business centre of the city bears the brunt of the attack with churches, shops, houses, a cinema and a newspaper office all destroyed. Some 137 people are feared to have died and nearly 500 injured in an attack lasting more than seven hours.
The style of the attack - using thousands of small incendiary devices to start fires, followed by heavy high-explosive bombs - followed the pattern of the raid on Coventry earlier this month. The HEs fractured 74 water mains cutting water pressure sharply and hampering fire fighting efforts. Many fires had to be left to burn themselves out while water was concentrated on the town centre and the docks. The local fire brigades were reinforced by 200 men from other authorities which sent 160 pumps from London, Newbury, even Newport, Monmouthshire and Nottingham. But many of them could not be used because their hose couplings did not fit Southampton’s hydrants.
Pressure is growing to evacuate all women and children, although some of the bravest ambulance drivers here are female.
Submarine depot ship HMS Adamant launched.
Light cruiser HMS Gambia launched.
Corvette HMS Polyanthus launched.
Minesweeping trawler HMS Chestnut mined and sunk off North Foreland. (Dave Shirlaw)
GREECE: Athens: Greek forces capture Pogradetz in eastern Albania.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA:
MERCHANT SHIPPING WAR: Losses: There are no British or Allied shipping losses in November.
CHINA: Nanking: Japan has formally recognised China’s breakaway Reformed Kuomintang government and its premier, Wang Ching-wei, after last minute secret peace talks with Marshal Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in Chungking broke down.
Chungking is now expected to go on a diplomatic offensive against what it calls Wang Ching-wei’s puppet government and warn foreign governments that it will break off relations with any power that recognises the new regime.
CANADA: Destroyers HMCS St Croix and Niagara departed Halifax for UK.
Minesweepers ordered - HMCS Bayfield, Caraquet, Canso, Guysborough, Ingonish, HMS Fort York, Parrsborough, Qualicum, Shippigan, Tadoussac, and Wedgeworth.
Corvette HMCS Rosthern launched Port Arthur, Ontario.
(Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC: Outward bound OB244 and UK-bound SC11 are attacked by two groups of U-boats west of North Channel. 15 merchant ships are sunk, including seven from SC11 by Schepke’s U-100 on the night of the 22nd/23rd.
Important steps are taken in the air war when an RAF Whitley Mk VI equipped with 1.5m wavelength (approximately 200Mhz) anti-surface vessel (ASV) radar locates a U-boat. This is the first success of its kind with a system that is mainly effective by day as contact is lost within two miles of the target. It is the addition of the Leigh light that will turn it into a powerful night-time weapon as well. Now Coastal Command is using depth charges instead of its ineffective A/S bombs.
Losses: 38 ships of 201,000 tons and 3 armed merchant cruisers.
2 German and 1 Italian U-boats.
Merchant Shipping War in European Waters:
Losses: 48 ships of 93,000 tons.
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 487 December 30, 1940
Operation Compass. Australian 6th Division continues perfecting tactics to breach Italian defenses at Bardia while RAF bombs these positions as well as Italian airbases at Tobruk, Derna & Benina. British anti-submarine trawler HMT Bandolero sinks in a collision with Australian destroyer HMAS Waterhen off Sollum, Egypt (no casualties). HMAS Waterhen is repaired at Port Taufiq on the Suez Canal (completed in January 1941). Australian destroyer HMAS Voyager captures Italian ketch Zingarella, transporting British POWs from Bardia to Tobruk. Zingarella will serve in the Royal Navy as a store carrier for the rest of the war.
Destroyer HMS Venomous hits a mine off Liverpool (under repair at Liverpool until February 18 1941).
British steamers Calcium and Sodium collide in the North Sea after Calcium hits a mine (1 killed). Calcium ultimately sinks.