Posted on 12/31/2010 5:25:32 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
We will read Churchill’s “appreciation” on January 6.
Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/dec40/f31dec40.htm
RAF bombs by day
Tuesday, December 31, 1940 www.onwar.com
Over Northern Europe... There are RAF daylight raids on Cologne, Rotterdam (oil supplies), Ijmuiden (docks) and the bridge over the Rhine River near Emmerich.
Over Albania... Valona is bombed during the day by British aircraft.
In East Africa... RAF planes attack Assab in Italian East Africa.
In Britain... The threat from incendiary bombs results in the stationing of “fire-watchers” in all factories, shops and offices.
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 488 December 31, 1940
As the year ends, Germany controls Europe from the English Channel to the Russian border and from the Arctic in Norway to the shores of the Mediterranean (with allies Italy, Vichy France and Balkan states). Italian and Vichy French colonies cover the North coast of Africa.
Greek submarine Katsonis sinks Italian tanker Quinto with the deck gun off the major Albanian port of Vlorë, directly across the Adriatic Sea from Brindisi, Italy. Vlorë is also bombed by RAF.
RAF mounts daylight bombing raids on Dutch ports of Rotterdam & Ijmuiden, the Rhine bridge at Emmerich, Germany (just across the border from Netherlands) and Köln, Germany.
Overnight, destroyer HMS Dainty captures Italian schooners Tiberio and Maria Giovanni between Bardia and Tobruk, Libya. HMS Dainty escorts the schooners to Sollum, Egypt.
Happy New Year! All 33 crew and 2 passengers drown in the freezing water 200 miles South of Iceland when U-38 sinks Swedish MV Valparaiso at 11.12 PM. Around the same time 200 miles off Dakar, Senegal, U-65 hits British tanker British Zeal with 2 torpedoes (she is in ballast and does not explode). The crew abandons ship, then reboards and takes British Zeal safely to Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Katsonis, together with its sister ship, Papanikolis (Υ-2), formed the first class of Greek submarines ordered after the First World War. It was built at the Gironde Bordeaux shipyards between 1925-27, and commissioned into the Hellenic Navy on 8 June 1928. Its first captain was Cdr Κ. Arvanitis.[1] Under the command of Cdr Athanasios Spanidis, she participated in the 1940-41 Greco-Italian War, carrying out four war patrols, and sinking one vessel, the 531-ton Italian freighter Quinto, on December 31, 1940. After the German invasion of April 1941, together with the rest of the fleet, Katsonis fled to the Middle East, from where she would operate during the next years, with the British pennant number N 16. On 2 July 1942, she was damaged while exiting a dry dock at Port Said.
After overhaul, under the command of Cdr. Vasileios Laskos, she went on further three patrols in the Aegean. During these patrols, Katsonis ambushed and sank a German minelayer in the port of Gytheio on 2 April 1943, the Spanish 1,500-ton merchant vessel San Isidoro off Kythnos three days later, and the freighter Rigel near Skiathos on 29 May.[2] On September 14 however, while trying to intercept a German troop transport, she was attacked and sunk by the German submarine chaser UJ-2101. 32 men of the crew, including Cdr Laskos, went down with her, and 15 were captured. Among them was Konstantinos Stamoulis, a survivor who was considered dead for decades. However, Lt Eleftherios Tsoukalas, the ship's XO, and petty officers Antonios Antoniou and Anastasios Tsigros, managed to swim for 9 hours and reach Skiathos. There they hid and eventually managed to return to Egypt and rejoin the Greek fleet.[3]
This site was showing October 31st this morning. It is fixed now.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/31.htm
December 31st, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM:
Lancashire: Sub-Lt Francis Haffey Brooke-Smith (1918-52), RNR, working head down and by feel only, gagged the fuse of a bomb wedged aboard a fire-float on the Manchester Ship Canal, seconds before it was due to go off. (GC)
Civilian casualties this month are 3,793 people killed and 5,244 injured.
London: Churchill sends a message to Petain via Dupuy. He offers to send six divisions to aid the defence of Morocco, Algiers and Tunis should the Vichy French government decide to cross to North Africa and resume the war against Germany and Italy.
Submarines HMS Sea Dog and Sibyl laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
GERMANY:
Hitler writes to Franco telling him that he is sorry that Spain decided not to join the Axis.
At least 200,000 ethnic Germans now living in countries outside Greater Germany are to be resettled within the Reich under agreements signed this year. Most will come from Romania and Bulgaria, but there are also 50,000 Germans in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia whose transfer has been agreed with Russia. So far, however, it has been easier to reach international agreements than to cope with the physical upheaval of so many people, and few have yet to arrive in their notional fatherland.
U-126 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
CANADA: Minas Basin Ferry Kipawo removed from service. Requisitioned for naval service as HMCS Kipawa (clerical error) and served rest of war as an examination vessel.
Patrol vessel HMCS Raccoon (ex-yacht Halonia) commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.:
Roosevelt proposes programme of relief for unoccupied France and Spain. Specifically to send milk and vitamin concentrates for children along with some medical supplies. Roosevelt telegrams Churchill to allow the ship through the British blockade.
Harbour tug USS Hoga is launched at Consolidated Shipbuilders, Morris Heights, New York. (John Nicholas)
Destroyer USS Boyle laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC:
Convoy HX-97 straggler MS Valparaiso sunk by U-38 60.01N, 23.00W - Grid AL 2787.
Tanker British Zeal damaged by U-65 at 15.40N 20.43W - Grid EJ 6315. (Dave Shirlaw)
Losses: 42 ships of 239,000 tons and 1 armed merchant cruiser.
1 Italian U-boat.
MERCHANT SHIPPING WAR:
Losses: 34 ships of 83,000 tons.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA:
MERCHANT SHIPPING WAR: Losses: There are no shipping losses in December.
United States: The Dow-Jones Industrial Average finished the year at 131.13 -12.72%
down on the year.
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