Posted on 05/10/2011 5:12:42 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance
#1 – “Amapola” ((Pretty Little Poppy) - Jimmy Dorsey, with Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell
#2 - “Dolores” – Bing Crosby and the Merry Macs
#3 - “Oh Look at Me Now” - Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers
#4 - “G’Bye Now” – Horace Heidt, with Ronnie Kemper
#5 - “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time” – The Andrews Sisters
#6 – “Alexander the Swoose,” - Kay Kyser, with Harry, Ginny, Jack and Max
#7 – “Let’s Get Away From it All” – Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers
#8 - “Dolores” - Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers
#9 - “Intermezzo” – Wayne King
#10 - “Perfidia” - Xavier Cugat
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/may41/f10may41.htm
Rudolf Hess parachutes into Britain
Saturday, May 10, 1941 www.onwar.com
In Britain... Rudolf Hess, the deputy leader of the NSDAP and second in line to Goring as heir to Hitler, flies to Britain on a bizarre peace mission. He lands by parachute at Eaglesham near Glasgow, hoping to contact the Duke of Hamilton whom he met at the 1936 Olympics. He believes that there is a considerable body of British opinion that is opposed to Churchill but is also anti-Communist and therefore prepared to consider making common ground on these terms with Germany. He is immediately disowned by the German authorities (he has left a note explaining himself to Hitler) and this prompt reaction detracts from the propaganda value that the episode might have had for the British.
In the Mediterranean... Benghazi is shelled again by part of Cunningham’s Mediterranean Fleet.
In East Africa... The Amba Alagi fighting continues. Indian forces take the Gumsa position.
In Iraq... British-led forces from the Jordanian Arab Legion take Rutba. A stronger detachment, Habforce, is being prepared for a move to Rutba. Part of this force, to be known as Kingcol, will then move on to relieve Habbaniyah.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/10.htm
May 10th, 1941
UNITED KINGDOM: Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s Deputy, lands in Scotland by parachute from Me 110. Asks to see Duke of Hamilton. Duke says: ‘He can wait until the morning.’
Hess says that he decided on his flight after astrologers told him he was destined to bring peace between Germany and Britain.
Hess was greeted by a ploughman armed with a pitchfork, who took him home. “My old mother got out of bed and made tea,” David Maclean said. “But the German said he did not drink tea at night.” After treatment for a broken ankle, the Deputy Fuhrer was taken to a secret hideout near London to be questioned by Ivone Kirkpatrick, a former first secretary at the British embassy in Berlin. Hess said that Hitler would give Britain a free hand in running the empire in return for Germany being given a free hand in Europe. Kirkpatrick declined the offer. Hess says that he flew to Scotland to see the Duke of Hamilton who he believes heads the anti-war party in Britain. Hess claims that they met at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but the duke has no recollection of this. In a letter to Hitler, Hess said that if his mission failed, no great harm would be done, for Hitler could simply deny all responsibility by saying that Hess had gone mad. Hitler used this to say in an official communiqué that Party Member Hess had for some years suffered from mental disturbances and frequented astrologers and mesmerists.
RAF Headquarters announced:
Last night a Dutch bomber squadron was deployed for the first time. Up to now Dutch air crews in the Dutch aerial formation, served as reconnaissance fliers. Shipments from the USA have now made it possible to set up the first Dutch bomber wing, which flew its mission last night against a German Luftwaffe base in Kristiansund, southern Norway.
London: Heavy raids take place during the night on the City and docks. 570 German bombers release 700 metric tons of HE bombs and 2,393 incendiary bomb bins that caused more than 2,000 fires. This raid inflicts more damage than previous raids with more than 3,000 people killed or injured. At the same time the Luftwaffe suffers its heaviest night-raid losses. 27 German aircraft are shot down, a toll which had previously only been reached during day raids.
London: The heaviest air-raid of the Blitz is in progress tonight. Over 2,000 fires are raging, nine of them classed as “conflagrations” requiring 100 pumps, but there is little water. Countless mains have been broken and the ebb tide of the Thames is very low.
The House of Commons, the roof of Westminster Hall and the top of Victoria Tower are alight. In the City of London, the Mint and the Tower are both ablaze.
GERMANY: A rocket engine (RII-203) for the Messerschmitt Me163 reaches a test speed of 623mph. The engine is not yet mounted and flying but in a test rig on the ground.
U-86, U-374 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
IRAQ: British led forces from the Jordanian Arab Legion take Rutba, Iraq.
The Germans in Athens set Operation Iraq in motion when several Me110s and a number of troop transports flew to Baghdad via Rhodes-Aleppo-Damascus-Mosul. The aim of this operation was to provide aid to the rebel Iraqi generals so as to threaten the flank of the British forces in North Africa. Churchill said later that at that time the Germans actually had an airborne landing troop strong enough to have enabled them to seize Syria, Iraq and Persia with their precious oilfields. No. 4 Squadron of the German 76th Destroyer Wing (Zerstorergeschwader 76 under Lt. Col. Holbein), formed part of the “Junck Special Aerial Force” which was to initiate the planned operation in Iraq. All the German aircraft carried Iraqi national emblems. Colonel Junck reported later: “The force was deployed overhastily with aircraft that were not equipped with tropical kits. Some of them did not even have the maps and charts which were indispensable for such missions.”
AUSTRALIA: Minesweeper HMAS Bendigo commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
CANADA: Submarine HMS Tribune departed Halifax with escort for Convoy HX-126 to UK. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: At 0442, U-556 attacked Convoy OB-318 SE of Cape Farewell in 59°23N/35°25W (grid AK 1470) and reported two ships of 10.000 tons sunk. The xB-Dienst assumed from a SOS message that one of the ships was the Dutch SS Hercules, but in fact the torpedo missed the British steam merchant Chaucer. In fact, only the Aelybryn was hit and damaged. The ship was towed to Reykjavik by HMS Hollyhock, arriving on 17 May. One crewmember was killed. ASW trawler HMS Daneman picked up the master and 43 crewmembers.
At 0752, the Empire Caribou, dispersed from Convoy OB-318, was torpedoed and sunk by U-556 about 465 miles SW of Reykjanes. The master, 31 crewmembers and two gunners were lost. Nine crewmembers and two gunners were picked up by destroyer HMS Malcolm, landed at Reykjavik and brought to Greenock by destroyer HMS Scimitar.
SS Gand sunk by U-556 at 57.54N, 37.34W. (Dave Shirlaw)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 618 May 10, 1941
Rudolf Hess (close confidant of Hitler and Deputy Führer of the Nazi party) flies a Messerschmitt Bf110 fighter from Augsburg, Southern Germany, to Scotland in an independent, unauthorized attempt to contact the Duke of Hamilton, Douglas Douglas-Hamilton. Hess believes Hamilton will introduce him to King George VI with whom he can broker peace directly, bypassing Hitler and Churchill. Instead he runs out of fuel 12 miles short of the Duke’s estate, parachutes out of the Bf110 breaking his ankle on landing and is captured by a Scottish farmer with a pitchfork, then sent to the Tower of London as a POW. He never sees freedom again. Convicted at Nuremburg in 1946, he will be held in Spandau Prison, West Berlin, until his death in 1987.
Ethiopia. Indian troops advance out of Falagi Pass and capture Mount Gumsa, 11,400 feet above sea-level, to the East of the Italian stronghold at Amba Alagi. Gumsa and other hills were occupied by Italian troops who have withdrawn overnight back to prepared defenses in the main fortifications.
U-556 continues the attack on convoy OB-318 between Greenland and Iceland, sinking British SS Empire Caribou (32 crew , and 2 gunners lost, 11 survivors picked up by destroyer HMS Malcolm), Belgian SS Gand (1 killed, 39 crew and 4 gunners rescued) and damaging British SS Aelybryn (1 killed, towed to Reykjavik, Iceland).
At 5 PM, British destroyers HMS Kelly, Kipling, Jackal, Kashmir & Kelvin from Malta bombard Benghazi. A counterattacked by German dive bombers causes no damage. Overnight, British gunboat HMS Ladybird shells the German-held coastal hamlet of Gazala, Libya, 30 miles West of Tobruk.
Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess flies to Scotland with the hope of rallying pro-Nazi Brits to overthrow Winston Churchill and make peace with Hitler.
Sounds like the kind of thing that our Deputy Leader Joe Biden would try.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ladybird_%281916%29
HMS Ladybird was an Insect-class gunboat of the Royal Navy, launched in 1916. This class are also referred to as “Large China Gunboats”.
Lost in the shuffle of the Hess affair is the fact that he did a very fair piece of piloting to get to the Duke of Hamilton, and he wasn’t spotted by the Brits. Hess was an aviator in WW I.
And it wasn’t spur of the moment. He needed to modify the 110 he flew for extra range, and organize various other aspects of the project on more than short notice.
I’ve always thought that the flight was an attempt by Hess to get back into the inner circle, from which he was being systematically excluded, and Hitler’s attention; having been eclipsed by Goering, to a degree Himmler, and being “attacked from the rear” by his deputy, Bormann.
Wasn’t the LADYBIRD attacked in China at the same time as the PANAY?
Yes.
Here’s another site with some good pics and writeups of her exploits.
http://articlesreserve.com/hmsfalcon/ladybird/ladybird.htm
That makes sense. If Hess had been able to trigger some sort of understanding between Germany and Britain on the eve of Barbarossa that would have allowed the Germans to concentrate fully on the eastern front, Hess would have moved to the head of the class in Nazi-land. He didn't have to be cuckoo to think that way, either. There was probably more than a little sentiment on his side in England at the time. In the U.S. also, for that matter.
“In the U.S. also, for that matter.”
Forgotten in the politically-corrected rewrites of history is the very large anti-Europe war “America First” movements. With Roosevelt basicly ignoring the 1939 Neutrality Act, even future President JFK donated the the largest of these groups, the “America First Committee”, saying they were doing “Vital Work”.
Charles Lindbergh was the group’s national spokesman. A couple of his quotes from Wiki:
“the three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.”
It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution the Jewish race suffered in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy, both for us and for them.
Instead of agitating for war the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.
Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few farsighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.
Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.”
After Pearl Harbor, these groups chose to break up. The last statement of the AFC was:
“Our principles were right. Had they been followed, war could have been avoided.
No good purpose can now be served by considering what might have been, had our objectives been attained...”
I like picking up the little ironic tidbits in these news stories. Today, the Soviet trade delegation is packing up and heading home from the US, their trade pact nearing its conclusion and with the note that they have practically suspended their purchases. I hope they kept their rolodexes; they will have need to re-connect with these sales contacts soon and their orders will be of a much greater magnitude.
As conceived by Lieutenant-Colonel Lossberg, this plan envisaged three army groups - 'South', 'North', and 'Centre' - aimed at Kiev, Leningrad, and Smolensk/Moscow respectively. The crucial difference between the OKH plans and the OKW appreciation was that the latter envisaged the three army groups advancing at the same rate, and therefore postulated that 'Centre' might halt near Smolensk until 'North' had made up equal ground.
It became now more imperative to have accurate data about the strength and deployment of the Soviet armed forces.
On July 26 (1940) Colonel Kinzel had presented an outline of operations viewed from the Russian side, and a general appreciation of Soviet strength. On September 4 General Kostring (German military attache in Moscow and an officer with a long, first-hand experience of the Soviet forces) discussed the Red Army with Halder, pointing out that it would need four years for the Soviet armed forces to recover ground lost in the great army purge, but strict Soviet security made efficient and extensive intelligence work difficult.
The German command therefore resolved to vault the barriers of the Soviet frontiers with camera-equipped aircraft.
In September Hitler had refused permission for reconnaissance planes to penetrate Soviet air space, but in October Colonel Rowehl's long-range reconnaissance group. was given authority to proceed with these missions.
Operating from bases in East Prussia, Poland, Hungary, and Rumania, high-flying Heinkel He-111s and Dornier Do-215B2s swept out as high and as fast as they could, ranging over Soviet defence lines, ports, airfields, and troop concentrations.
The first of their reports, covering Belorussia and the Ukraine, became available by October - air photographs loaded with information which could not otherwise have been obtained, and accompanied by short evaluation reports: one immediate consequence was that German estimates of Soviet strength at the centre of the potential front had to be sharply revised upwards.
For months afterwards, these German camera planes scanned more and more of European Russia, registering Soviet troop movements and concentrations, establishing details of the frontier defences and pin-pointing Soviet airfields As Rowehl's superbly tuned high-performance aircraft probed eastwards, Halder completed the first outline of a specific operational plan for an eastern campaign, codifying the result of the army's staff work so far in the Eastern Operation Order of October 29 - identified so far only as Operation 'Otto' (but also called Operation 'Fritz').
Army planning at this stage was perhaps more prosaic, but of fundamental importance, as Halder on November 12 inspected the General Quartermaster Branch's first proposals for the supply problem.
For an estimated 2,000,000 men, with 300,000 horses and 500,000 lorries, supply areas would have to be set up, food stocks laid in, and fuel supplies (plus truck repair facilities) built up to cover a 350 to 400 mile range. Each division would be served with two 'fills' of its ammunition requirement (Panzer divisions to have three), while additional stocks for 20 full divisions would be held, over and above these figures. (Certain ammunition stocks would be maintained locally in East Prussia and Poland to deal with the contingency of a Soviet attack.)
The Marshall Cavendish History Of The Second World War-The Wehrmacht Before Barbarossa
-John Erickson
On April 22 the Soviet government formally protested eighty instances of border violations by Nazi planes which it said had taken place between March 27 and April 18, providing detailed accounts of each.
In one case, it said, in a German reconnaissance plane which landed near Rovno on April 15 there was found a camera, rolls of exposed film and a torn topographical map of the western districts of the U.S.S.R., ”all of which give evidence of the purpose of the crew of this airplane.” Even in protesting the Russians were conciliatory. They had given the border troops, the note said, ”the order not to fire on German planes flying over Soviet territory so long as such flights do not occur frequently.”
The Rise & Fall Of The Third Reich
-William L Shirer
Theodor Rowehl's long-range air group had begun reconnoitring the Soviet Union in 1934.
His twin-engined aircraft, fitted with extra fuel tanks and flying at heights up to 9,144 m. photographed the naval port of Kronstadt and nearby Leningrad, the industrial areas of Pskov and Minsk in western Russia, and the Black Sea naval port of Nikolayev. The coverage of Kronstadt, which furnished a sequence of pictures of warships at intervals of several weeks, provided valuable data about the rate of Soviet naval construction. The other pictures seem to have yielded mainly intelligence about Russian factories.
At the start of September 1940 Hitler, apparently not wanting to anger Russia just as he was girding up for his invasion of Britain ordered a stop to all aerial reconnaissance against the Soviet Union. The ban lasted a month but the Army pressed for pictures and early in October, after he had postponed his cross-Channel invasion and had begun to regard the conquest of Russia as a means of forcing England's surrender Hitler rescinded the order.
He now allowed flights to a depth of almost 321 km into the Soviet Union from the borders of East Prussia and German- occupied Poland. At once the German machines began over-flying the Russian border and again the Russians began spotting them.
On 6 January 1941, for example one crossed the Soviet frontier, flew to a depth of about 24 km, and then paralleled the border for almost 161 km before returning to Germany. On 3 March the commander of the Red Navy ordered that such craft be shot down.
On 17 and 18 March two were fired on over the Latvian port of Liepaja; others soon appeared north-west of the Black Sea. Later Stalin countermanded the navy's order, apparently to avoid provoking the Germans, and directed that such planes he forced to land instead.
On 15 April 1941, while on a photographic reconnaissance from Cracow to the Zhitomir area of Byelorussia, a Ju 86P carrying the civilian marking D-APEW was compelled to reduce height through engine failure. Near Rovno in Russian-occupied Poland, the Junkers was intercepted by a Soviet fighter which opened fire and destroyed the port engine. The Junkers pilot, Uffz Schnetz was able to put the aircraft down and he and his observer, Uffz Walther, set explosive charges to destroy the cabin and camera installation but they were unable to determine if the cameras had been destroyed before they were arrested.
After initial interrogation they were taken to Rovno and handed over to the GPU, the political intelligence agency, for interrogation. Their original cover story was that they had crossed the frontier whilst flying by instruments from the Versuchsfliegerschule (Test-pilot school) at Cracow but when it became clear that their interrogators believed there had been others aboard the aircraft - the earlier Ju 86D carried a crew of four - the pilot and observer stated that a Russian and a Ukrainian had parachuted from the aircraft. Schnetz claimed that one of these men had set the blind-flying course from Cracow.
After the beginning of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June, Schnetz was told that he would be hanged or shot. He and Walther were to be moved to another prison but during the immediate confusion of the Soviet retreat they were abandoned by their captors, picked up by advancing German infantry and returned to be met by Rowehl in Warsaw.
The flights increased in number. In the three weeks between 27 March and 18 April, the Russians detected an average of more than three a day. On 4 April, for example, they spotted a plane at 7,010 m that violated the border near Przemysl at 13.20 hrs and penetrated 120 km into Russian-occupied territory before flying back to Germany at 13.50 hrs.
They had no illusions as to what the reconnaissance was for. From mid-April to mid-June, the flights became more systematic and remained at about the same rate of three a day. These mainly served to update older photographs, dating from May and October 1940 of Russian fortifications.
The priority for the new pictures ran from close to the Russo-German line of demarcation, the most urgently desired, through the areas around Rovno and Lutsk in western Russia and, last of all, to Kiev in the interior.
Some 300 mm square photos from 4 April 1941, showed artillery emplacements, antitank trenches, and field fortifications in Soviet-occupied south-east Poland around the small towns of Bobrowka, Wolka Zapalowska and Buczyna. None of this contributed much to the overall estimation of the size of the Red Army, by revealing the number and size of its camps, or of the industrial potential of the Soviet Union, by disclosing its total acreage. The size of the country precluded anything approaching complete coverage. So the Rowehl group provided some details of economic intelligence, additions to bomber target folders, and indications that the Russian roads were better than the Germans had thought, but mainly operational and tactical information about Russian fortifications in the expected path of the German armies.
KG-200, The Luftwaffe's Most Secret Unit by Geoffrey J Thomas
The fans agree. "Perfidia" will be the composite #28 song for all of 1941.
Regarding news coverage of the Hess magical mystery flight, the story will stay under wraps for a couple days, then break hard and fade fast.
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