Posted on 04/05/2011 4:29:13 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance
#1 – “Ampola” ((Pretty Little Poppy) - Jimmy Dorsey, with Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell
#2 - “Oh Look at Me Now” - Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers
#3 - “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Harlem” – Glenn Miller
#4 - “Frenesi”-Artie Shaw
#5 - “Song of the Volga Boatmen” - Glenn Miller
#6 - “Perfidia” - Xavier Cugat
#7 - “Blue Flame” – Woody Herman
#8 - “It All Comes Back to Me Now” - Gene Krupa, with Howard Dulany
#9 - “Dancing in the Dark” – Artie Shaw
#10 – “There’ll Be Some Changes Made” – Benny Goodman, with Louise Tobin
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/apr41/f05apr41.htm
Axis desert forces advancing
Saturday, April 5, 1941 www.onwar.com
In North Africa... The Axis advance continues. On the coast Barce is taken while inland Tengeder falls and Mechili is threatened.
In Moscow... A Soviet-Yugoslav Nonaggression Pact is agreed and is signed in the early hours of April 6th but is too late to have any effect in halting the imminent German attack.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/05.htm
April 5th, 1941
FRANCE: An RAF Beaufort torpedoes and badly damages the Gneisenau at Brest; the plane is shot down.
NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN: Slow Halifax/UK convoy SC26 is attacked by U-boats for two days and loses 10 merchantmen. Escorting destroyer HMS Wolverine and sloop HMS Scarborough sink U-76 (Type VIIB), only one U-boat crewmember dies the other 42 survive.
GERMANY: Marienehe: The He 280 V1 jet fighter prototype is demonstrated before Luftwaffe and RLM officials including Udet, Lucht, Eisenlohr, Reitenbach and Schelp.
YUGOSLAVIA: Associated Press reports:
Italy closed the Yugoslav border at Fiume tonight and mined the international bridge. The Yugoslav consul at Fiume departed hurriedly for home.
The German plan of operations provides for a concentrated three-pronged armoured attack on Belgrade from Sofia, Banat [region in Hungary and Yugoslavia], and Austria. First, Field Marshal List’s Twelth Army advanced from Bulgaria, preparing to move into Yugoslavia and then march on Greece out of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Twelth Army was to be followed a few days later by von Weich’s Second Army that just assembled in Austria. The Italian High Command then ordered forces of General Ambrosio’s Second Army to march along the Adriatic coast and strike at Greece from Istria and Ljubljana [Yugoslavia] and simultaneously to support the defence of Albania against the Greeks. A total of approximately 85 Axis divisions entered the field against Yugoslavia and GREECE: 35 German, 45 Italian and 5 Hungarian. 52 of them - 24 German, 23 Italian and 5 Hungarian - were deployed against Yugoslavia, and 27 against Greece, with one division securing the border with Turkey and 5 divisions kept in reserve.
The Yugoslavian plan of operations, “R-41,” provides for the defence of the entire length of the border. Almost the whole Yugoslav army - 27 divisions or 88% of all its forces - was to be deployed in defensive operations, leaving only minimal reserves. The Yugoslavs planned only one offensive action in which they were to combine with Greek forces along the Albanian front. The dispersal of the Yugoslav forces along an extended border front limited their operational capability.
GREECE: General Maitland Wilson formally takes command of the forces in central Macedonia with his advanced headquarters at the foot of Mt Olympus on the main Larisa-Florina road. The 1st Australian Corps commanded by General Thomas Blamey is situated from the sea to the Veria Pass. The Greek forces, two divisions called the Central Macedonian Army are in the Vernion mountains, north of Veria. (Anthony Staunton)
U.S.S.R.: Moscow: The government offers Yugoslavia a treaty of friendship and non-aggression but not mutual assistance. The Yugoslav government accepts the offer and a treaty is signed in Moscow; the German government condemns the treaty. (Jack McKillop)
The MiG-3 fighter plane makes its maiden flight.
LIBYA: German troops take Barce, 200 miles from their start point at El Agheila. The main reason why Rommel is meeting so little resistance is that so many men have been withdrawn from Wavell’s army to join the British expeditionary force to Greece. The 2nd Armoured Division is new in the desert; its men are untrained in this unique form of mobile warfare, and many of its tanks have broken down.
U.S.A.: The motion picture “The Great Lie” is released in the U.S. This soap-opera drama, directed by Edmund Goulding, stars Betty Davis, George Brent, Mary Astor and Hattie McDaniel. The plot centers around two women, Davis and Astor. Brent marries Davis but gets Astor pregnant and then he is lost in an airplane crash in South America leaving the two women to battle for the child. Ms. Astor won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. (Jack McKillop)
Day 583 April 5, 1941
Overnight, 350 miles South of Iceland, prolonged depth-charge attack by British destroyer HMS Wolverine, corvette HMS Arbutus and sloop HMS Scarborough forces U-76 to the surface. U-76 is scuttled crew by her crew to prevent capture by a British boarding party (1 dead, 42 survivors rescued by the British ships).
At 3.38 AM 800 miles Northwest of Natal, Brazil, U-105 sinks British SS Ena de Larrinaga carrying coal from Britain to Argentina (4 crew, 1 gunner killed). 38 survivors are rescued (1 lifeboat is found after drifting for 13 days) and taken to Brazil.
Afrika Korps races across the desert towards British position at Msus and Mechili, Libya.
The new Yugoslavian regime of Prime Minister Dušan Simović and young King Peter II agrees a Soviet-Yugoslav Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. Despite pressure from Britain to join the Allies, Simović has reaffirmed Yugoslavia’s commitment to the Tripartite Pact to avert the risk of German invasion, but it is too late to placate Hitler.
5th Indian Division reaches Massawa, Eritrea, on the Red Sea. At 1.30 PM, Italian Admiral Bonetti asks for surrender terms for his garrison of 10,000 (troops withdrawn from Keren, a naval battalion, coastal defense and customs). Bonetti seeks clearance from Rome before surrendering but he is ordered to defend the port to the last man, so hostilities resume at 1 AM next morning.
Looks like the Yugoslavs have learned nothing from the Poles. They can’t defend the ENTIRE border from an army like the Germans’.
Well, as they say in Spain, “Manana”.
So Eden and Dill [and Wavell] see Rommel’s offensive as a diversion. Must explain the lack of forcefulness and speed in concentrating their forward units, wherever they’re going to concentrate.
Will Fowler-The Balkans and North Africa 1941-1942
Reminds one of the quote by Frederick The Great-In trying to defend everything-we defend nothing
RUN AWAY!!!
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