Posted on 03/07/2013 4:42:00 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
You very kindly last time arranged to take some of the Red Cross stores in the destroyers to Murmansk. How did this work? Did it cause trouble or risk? Could it be repeated?
Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate
The News of the Week in Review
The 1943 Pattern of Allied Air Attacks on “Fortress Europe” (map) – 11
Twenty News Questions – 12
The Course of the Battle for Tunisia (map) – 13
Tide in North Africa Turns Against the Axis (Kluckhohn) – 14
A New Phase Impends in the Southwest Pacific (map) – 15
Japan Masses Forces Off Australia (Durdin) – 16
Answers to Twenty News Questions – 17
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1943/mar1943/f07mar43.htm
German counteroffensive continues
Sunday, March 7, 1943 www.onwar.com
On the Eastern Front... The 4th Panzer Army has been shifted slightly westward and now attacks northeast from around Krasnograd, linking up with the SS Panzer Corps.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
March 7th, 1943 (SUNDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: London: The latest National Savings campaign “Wings for Victory”, was launched this weekend with a target of £150 million for building bombers. By last night £30 million had already been collected.
A Stirling bomber stands in front of St Paul’s and a Lancaster in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Huge crowds have been attracted; they are urged to buy savings stamps to stick on to 500-pound bombs. The Lord Mayor of London launched 1,300 pigeons to carry messages to savings groups everywhere.
Destroyer HMCS Assiniboine arrived Liverpool for refit. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.S.R.: Panzer units attack Soviet-held Krasnograd.
Josif Stalin becomes a Marshal of the Soviet Union. This event marks Stalin’s growing confidence on the ability of the Red Army to beat Germany, and he obviously wants to identify with the glory the Army is winning. From this day on Stalin, who previously has not used any uniforms, is often seen in public in the Marshal’s uniform. (Mikko Härmeinen)
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: CICLONE, Italian Torpedo-Boat, 1pm Mined 70 miles north-east of Bizerta while rescuing survivors from a merchant ship mined in the same field. Taken in tow by the Groppo but sank in heavy seas on the 8th, 15 men lost. (James Paterson)
NORTH AFRICA: General George Patton takes command of the US II Corps. (Keith Allen)
PACIFIC OCEAN: Submarine USS Grampus lost under mysterious circumstances, possibly to 2 Japanese destroyers on this date. Sister sub Grayback reported seeing her in the area two days earlier nd the two Japanese destroyers were lost with their logs two days later. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.:
Destroyers USS Miller nd Braine launched.
Destroyer escort USS JRY Blakely launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: At 1227, the unescorted MS Jamaica was torpedoed nd sunk by U-221. The ship broke in two nd sank within two minutes. The survivors launched four lifeboats, but two had been damaged nd could not be used. The motor lifeboat was sucked down as the ship sank nd came up capsized. This boat was straightened, bailed and later held 13 survivors, while four other survivors were in the gig. The U-boat questioned the survivors and accidentally rammed a lifeboat, throwing the occupants into the sea. The third engineer was picked up by the U-boat nd was allowed to swim to the other boat, which picked up the remaining occupants swimming in the sea. On 9 March, the survivors in the lifeboat were spotted by a B-17 Fortress aircraft, which dropped first aid articles for them, but they were not rescued until 18 March, when they were picked up by corvette HMS Borage. The corvette altered course to rendezvous with another corvette that had a doctor onboard nd three of the survivors who were severely injured were transferred to her, to be taken to Gibraltar as quickly as possible. Borage first escorted a convoy to England and then landed the remaining survivors at Plymouth on 26 March, arriving at London the next day. The four men in the gig reached the Isle of Barra on 29 March, they later reached London on 6 April.
At 0210, U-230 attacked Convoy SC-121 SSE of Cape Farewell nd torpedoed SS Egyptian. Siegmann thought that his victim sank nd attacked the convoy again at 0925. He claimed the sinking of another ship of 5000 tons in the former position of the Egyptian, but it seems that both attacks were carried out on the same ship. The Empire Impala was ordered to pick up the survivors, dropped behind the convoy and was sunk with all hands by U-591 at 0906 hours. The master, 36 crewmembers nd nine gunners from Egyptian were lost. Three crewmembers were picked up by corvette HMCS Rosthern nd landed at Londonderry.
SS Sabor sunk by U-506 at 34.30S, 23.10E.
At 1820, U-638 attacked a straggler from Convoy ON-168 SW of Cape Farewell nd Bernbeck thought that he had missed, but SS Empire Light was damaged nd abandoned. 39 crewmembers and six gunners were lost. The master, three crewmembers and one gunner were picked up by destroyer HMS Beverley nd landed at St John’s. At 2212 on 12 March U-468 sank the abandoned Empire Light by two coup de grâce. (Dave Shirlaw)
On 6 February, Chappell fired two torpedoes at a light cruiser, claiming hits. Post war examination of Japanese records indicated no hits, and it is now presumed that the torpedoes, fitted with the notoriously unreliable—but then believed to be otherwise—Mark-6 magnetic influence exploder, prematured.
...
Sculpin's third war patrol, out of Fremantle, was plagued by torpedo problems, and ended with no results. On her fourth patrol she claimed hits on a 4,000-ton freighter, two 8,000-ton tankers, and a 7,000-ton freighter. She was credited with the latter, but JANAC was unable to confirm the sinking from Japanese records after the war.
Many years later the captain of the Sculpin, Lucius H. Chappell, had a minor role in the movie Operation Petticoat.
"German soldiers force Jews in Marseilles, France, aboard freight cars for deportation to Drancy or Compiègne, France.
Four thousand Jews were deported in the Aktion of March 1943.
In 1942 Monsignor Jean Delay, the archbishop of Marseilles, said his government was justified in defending itself against Jews, who, in his words, had done much evil and should be punished severely."
"Before United Nations flags and huge replicas of the Ten Commandments tablets, the Jewish pageant We Will Never Die opened in New York City on March 9, 1943.
The show starred such Jewish-American actors as Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, and Sylvia Sidney.
Ultimately, more than 100,000 Americans witnessed this pageant, including many government officials.
The spectacle was sponsored by Palestinian Jews, called the Bergson Boys, who worked in the United States to communicate the plight of European Jews.
They were unable, however, to change American policy."
...Led by Hillel Kook (1913-2001), who used the pseudonym “Peter Bergson,” the group sponsored hundreds of full page newspaper ads, lobbied in Congress, and organized a march by 400 rabbis to the White House to plead for U.S. action to rescue Jews from the Nazis.
But the group also sparked its share of controversy. The Roosevelt administration, which resented the group’s pressure for rescue, used the FBI to spy on Bergson and tried to have him deported. Some mainstream Jewish leaders were also unhappy with Bergson. World Jewish Congress co-chair Nahum Goldmann told the State Department in 1944 that his colleague, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, considered Bergson “as dangerous as Hitler” because Bergson’s activities might “cause pogroms” in the United States.
The fact that the Bergson Group made so many enemies may help explain why resentment against it lingered for so long, and why it was only recently that its activism has been gaining recognition and appreciation...
Here is another site related to the U.S.S. Sculpin. This one has some great photos, including the one shown in today’s N.Y. Times from the post above. Sculpin was involved in the salvage operation for Squalus back in 1939.
http://www.pigboats.com/subs/191.html
D’OH! That is the same site you linked to. Good photos, nevertheless.
My Holocaust related views on FDR come mostly from Robert Rosen's "Saving the Jews, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust".
For Churchill I use Martin Gilbert's "Churchill and the Jews, a Lifelong Friendship".
Both books defend the leaders, and cut them a lot of slack.
Their main point is that we have to remember the generally anti-Semitic context of that time.
So I can't judge whether either FDR or Churchill coulda or shoulda done more to help.
It’s relevant today because of the widely held Jewish belief (rightly or wrongly) that more could have and should have been done. There was already a full blown two-front war in Europe - it’s not like there was a fear of provoking the Germans. Germany was devoting scarce resources to killing Jews, leaving those resources vulnerable to attack.
It should be more understood that a lot of Israelis and Jews in general care not for theories nor for international legalities and niceties: Jews will have a refuge and will be able to defend themselves on a territorial basis. Anyone who objects can p*** up a rope! It’s not an invitation to argumentation.
Other than making it even more clear that we would hold those persons engaged in the murder of Jews accountable for war crimes, I’m not sure what we could have done about the Holocaust short of winning the war.
I have grown to enjoy the weekly news quiz. Assuming the average Times reader could do reasonably well with the quiz, they stand in quite a contrast to today’s “low information voter.”
Nor am I, but there is a whole school of thought condemning Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope for not doing "enough" to help.
I thought perhaps that's where jjotto wanted to lead us, but apparently not.
"Coulda, shoulda, woulda" is an easy game to play with the genius of hindsight.
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