Posted on 02/10/2011 5:04:10 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/feb41/f10feb41.htm
Italians hold British offensive
Monday, February 10, 1941 www.onwar.com
In East Africa... The attacks of 4th Indian Division at Keren go on with renewed effort. The fighting is fierce over the next two days but Italian counterattacks prevent the Indian troops from making any gains. A long lull follows for the rest of the month while British commanders bring up more forces and supplies for the formal offensive which will be necessary to break the Italian positions.
From London... Churchill formally instructs Wavell to regard help for Greece as having a higher priority than exploiting the success in North Africa. He mentions the important effect on American opinion of being seen to fulfill promises to smaller nations. Colonel Bill Donovan has recently been on a tour of the Balkans on Roosevelt’s behalf and is known to value the idea of fighting the Germans there. The British also hope to make a good impression on Turkey and perhaps even establish a Balkan coalition against Hitler.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/10.htm
February 10th, 1941
UNITED KINGDOM:
Prime Minister Winston Churchill formally instructs General Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander in Chief Middle East Command, to regard help for Greece as having a higher priority than exploiting the success in North Africa. He mentions the important effect on American opinion of being seen to fulfil. promises to smaller nations. Colonel William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, the U.S. Coordinator of Information (COI), has recently been on a tour of the Balkans on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s behalf and is known to value the idea of fighting the Germans there. The British also hope to make a good impression on Turkey and perhaps even establish a Balkan coalition against Hitler. (Jack McKillop)
London: General Ion Antonescu’s decision to allow Romania to be used a base for a massive German expeditionary force led today to a diplomatic rupture with Britain. After a half-hour meeting with Antonescu, later described as “extremely painful”, the British envoy, Sir Reginald Hoare, returned to the legation to pack his bags.
Most of Germany’s oil supplies come from Romania, and German engineers have for some time been running the country’s oil wells. When German troops began arriving, Antonescu said that they were to train the Romanian army. The British told him that a full expeditionary force was not needed to train a few Romanians.
RAF Bomber Command:
221 aircraft set out to bomb Hanover and its U-boat component factories. Airfields in Holland were also attacked during the night.
Destroyer HMS Blackmore laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
NORTH SEA: U-147 was damaged by ice in the North Sea and sailed to Cuxhaven. (Dave Shirlaw)
GERMANY: Berlin: Spain signs a secret treaty with Germany, undertaking to resist any Allied attack.
U-443, U-444, U-601 laid down.
U-202 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
ITALY: Tonight the British carried out their first paratroop mission with a surprise assault on the Tragino aqueduct near Monte Vulture (Calabria, Italy). This aqueduct supplies Taranto, Brindisi and Bari with water, and it is hoped in London that its destruction will weaken Italian morale.
Operation Colossus ends in fiasco. Eight officers and 31 soldiers took off from Malta in Whitley V bombers of Nos. 51 and 78 Squadrons and make a parachute landing onto a virtually uninhabited area. After they had fulfilled their mission and were marching toward the coast where a submarine was waiting for them, they were spotted and taken captive.
ETHIOPIA: Keren: 4th Indian Division launches a two-battalion attack on the heights east of the gorge. Both sides fought with stubborn gallantry; Brig’s Peak was taken twice and lost twice; two other fiercely-held features were taken and given up. Subadar Richpal Ram, of the 4/6 Rajputana Rifles, was awarded a posthumous VC; his battalion suffered 123 casualties and the other 4/11 Sikhs, lost more than 100 men.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: USAT Etolin docked at Manila with 24 personnel for the 17th and 20th Pursuit Squadrons. Elizalde informs Quezon that he had attempted, and failed, to get the Philippines included under Lend-Lease. (Marc Small)
U.S.A.: The 104th AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion (Mobile) is activated at Birmingham, Alabama as Sep CA Bn AA-AW. (Jean Beach)
Submarine USS Growler laid down.
USS SC-508 laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-93 was attacked in the North Atlantic by an RAF Whitley aircraft with two bombs. The boat was damaged badly and had to return to base.
At 0633, U-37 fired two torpedoes at a big tanker in convoy HG-53 west of Gibraltar but missed and heard later two detonations. Clausen thought that he had hit two other ships in the convoy. In fact, the Brandenburg was hit twice and sank immediately. The master and 22 crewmembers were lost.
At 1435, the Canford Chine, a straggler from convoy OG-52 since 8 February, was torpedoed and sunk by U-52 SSW of Rockall. The master and 34 crewmembers were lost. (Dave Shirlaw)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 529 February 10, 1941
600 miles West of Gibraltar, U-37 attacks convoy HG-53 again at 6.33 AM sinking British SS Brandenburg (all 23 hands lost plus 26 of the 27 survivors rescued from SS Courland yesterday, 1 survivor picked up by destroyer HMS Velox and landed at Gibraltar). At 2.35 PM 200 miles West of Ireland, U-52 sinks British SS Canford Chine (all 35 hands killed).
Churchill orders General Wavell to prioritise helping Greece over continued operations in North Africa. In addition to honouring British commitments to Greece, Churchill hopes to sway American opinion and establish a Balkan coalition against Hitler.
German convoy carrying troops to Libya (steamers Ankara, Arcturus & Alicante, escorted by Italian destroyer Turbine and 3 torpedo boats) leaves Palermo, Sicily, on the final leg to Tripoli.
East Africa. Battle resumes in the Dongolaas Gorge near Keren, Eritrea. Indian 3rd Battalion, 1st Punjab Regiment retakes Brig’s Peak. Further South, British General Cunningham launches Operation Canvas against Italian positions on the Juba River in Italian Somaliland.
Overnight, RAF Short Stirlings of No.7 Squadron bomb oil storage tanks at Rotterdam, Holland, and another 222 aircraft bomb Hannover, Germany.
Operation Colossus. 38 paratroops of No. 11 Special Air Service Battalion, known as X Troop, fly from Malta in 6 RAF Whitley bombers of No. 91 Squadron. At 10 PM, they parachute near the Tragino aqueduct, Southern Italy (which supplies fresh water to many Italian civilians and military facilities) and plant explosives on one of the columns.
From the Regia Marina website on the shelling of Genoa:
At the beginning of 1941, the British government sought to further the already low Italian moral, thus forcing the weaker of the Axis powers to a separate peace. After the successful arrival of the Luftwaffe in Italy in early 1941 and the sinking of the cruiser Southampton, the British were in need of re-establishing their control over the Mediterranean. The same action which saw the destruction of the Southampton, also saw the damaging of the cruiser Gloucester and the carrier Illustrious.
British
Commander at Sea: Sommerville
Battleship: Renown, Malaya
Carrier: Ark Royal
Cruiser: Sheffield
Destroyer 10
Italian
Commander at Sea: Iachino
Battleship: Vittorio Veneto, Cesare, Doria
Heavy Cruiser: Trento, Trieste, Bolzano
Destroyer 10
A new action called for the bombardment of Genoa where the Italian battleships Littorio and Cesare were thought to be undergoing repairs. Even after it was ascertained that the battleships were not in port but were actually being refitted in La Spezia, Genoa was kept as the primary target.
The overall command at sea was assigned to Admiral Sommerville, commander of the Gibraltar-based force H. The action was very audacious; it called for a large naval force to sail the 700 miles between Gibraltar and the Ligurian coast to bombard port and industrial facilities.
The operation was scheduled for the end of January, and on the 31st Force H left Gibraltar. Adverse atmospheric conditions dissuaded the commander from continuing the action, when the ships had already reached Sardinia. The airplanes of the Ark Royal tried, without success, to torpedo the dam on the Tirso River in Sardinia.
Again, the British force left port on the 6th of February. On the 8th, alerted by various sources, the Italian fleet consisting of the Vittorio Veneto, Cesare and Doria left La Spezia with the escort of 8 destroyers. Later, three cruisers of the 8th squadron along with two more destroyers joined the search.
Undetected, the British force arrived near Genoa on the 9th and began a naval bombardment, which started at 8:15 AM and lasted one hour and 30 minutes.
The Malaya targeted the docks, while the Renown and the Sheffield focused on the industrial area. The Sheffield fired 782 salvos, while the battleships expended 272 15” shells and over 400 4.5” shells. Four merchant ships and a training vessel were sunk, while another 18 were damaged. The Italians suffered 144 casualties, many of whom were amongst the local population. The British lost one of the Ark Royal’s Swordfish.
While the British forces were sailing out of the Tyrrhenian sea, Admiral Iachino was steaming on a 330’ course which was going to bring him into contact at around 15:00. Instead, due to faulty instructions from Supermarina, the Italian forces changed direction toward Italy on a 30’course. The Italians were so sure of imminent battle that the Vittorio Veneto even had her 15’ gun loaded. A great opportunity was lost, and the British were completely unaware that they had escaped a possible deadly confrontation.
Almost non-existing aerial reconnaissance and erroneous sighting hampered the Italian fleet. At 12.00 o’clock, an Italian airplane sighted the British formation but before it could give its position, it was shot down. Its crew was later picked up by the torpedo boat Masa but only at 17.55 was the alarm finally given: too late for the Italians to catch the fleeing British. So, after having given chase to a French convoy mistaken for the retreating British, the Italian fleet ultimately returned to port.
The material damage was not too serious, but the fact that the British fleet could come to the doorsteps of Italy without been intercepted was troublesome. Ultimately, the bombardment of Genoa was an Italian humiliation, which further destabilized the Fascist Party’s grip on Italy.
It should be mentioned that Antonio Trizzino, in his book Ships and Armchairs (Navi e Poltrone), assert that the principal reason for the British action was the intention of sending a message to the Spaniards in advance of the meeting between Mussolini and Franco which was held in Bordighera, near Genoa, on February 11.
Why? “Electric” as an adjective to describe Annibale Bergonzoli a.k.a. “barba elettrica”, “Electric Whiskers”.
OK they are stick out -
Did they shock the ladies when he got close -
They sure didn’t shock the Brits much....
Today’s news is uniformly bad for Italy. Britain, with one hand tied behind her back, is beating Italy like a red-headed step child. The total rout of the Libyan army is followed by naval shelling of a northern Italian city by Force H from Gibraltar. While the Italian navy put to sea to head off the British, they didn’t make contact. From reading between the lines in the post from the Regia Marina website, I strongly suspect that the Regia Marina “declined” to tangle with the Royal Navy. And so the lesson is that the Royal Navy can go anywhere it wants, right up the the shores of Italy, with impunity.
No wonder that two years from now, Joseph Stalin will consider operations against Italy in the Mediterranean to not constitute a real “second front.”
I see Harry Hopkins is once again in the news. Any opinions on whether he was a Soviet agent, or not?
My gut reaction is no, I don’t think he was. I think he was “sympathetic” to the USSR, perhaps to the point as to call him a “Communist sympathizer.” If not a “sympathizer” he was at least a “useful idiot.” He clearly favored Stalin over Hitler, when both were evil men. Hopkins was typical of the left-wing types that FDR surrounded himself with.
I don’t think he was an outright spy, though.
In a way, I’m a bit surprised that Lease-Lend has a chance of passing right now. On the surface it looks as if the British are starting to get the upper hand. In the theaters that are active (Ethiopia, Libya, Greece) they are taking ground from the Italians or at least they are supporting those who are. The Nazi’s seem to have given up on a cross channel invasion, or at least they are not throwing the air assets into it as they were last summer. If I were an isolationist looking at the situation I would say that they don’t really need us.
Two reason why not.
1. Legislative momentum.
2. Profits for private industry.
Exactly. Below the surface it is another story. The percentage of freight carrying vessels falling prey to U-Boats reaching an alarming level at this point, if I am not mistaken. Then again, is convoying an issue seperate from Lend-Lease? I mean Lease-Lend?
The politicians certainly have more information and there’s no doubt that FDR wants this done. As just a common citizen though, it looks very different. I’m sure this provided fodder for the America First Committee and the like, but I’m a bit surprised that there is not more public uproar that the British have it in hand. It makes me think that there was a general sense (and wisely so) by the bulk of the population that American involvement was simply a matter of time.
On Jan. 31 I posted a link to a clip from "Buck Privates," the date that movie opened. The clip was the Andrews Sisters singing "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." If you had asked me last year when that song came out I would have guessed some time in 1942. This week's Life mag has a feature on the finer points of manning a 75mm howitzer. I recently prepped a story for posting (forget what day, exactly) that reported on a speech given by some reserve army officer who said much the same thing you did. It's just a matter of time.
It appears to me that at some level the American people have come to terms with the idea that the United States is going to be doing much more than simply lending and leasing stuff to Britain.
Yep. So was Roosevelt’s aide, whose name, I believe, was Laughlin Curry. Wallace approached the NKVD before his run in ‘48 and made offers of service if he won the White House.
My gut reaction is no, I don’t think he was. I think he was “sympathetic” to the USSR, perhaps to the point as to call him a “Communist sympathizer.” If not a “sympathizer” he was at least a “useful idiot.” He clearly favored Stalin over Hitler, when both were evil men. Hopkins was typical of the left-wing types that FDR surrounded himself with. I don’t think he was an outright spy, though.
For many years I felt the same way, feeling that it was both too depressing and in general, just too unbelievable. Many years have passed and we've seen the world, and many of our beliefs, turned upside down several times since those days so I have to admit that I'm not so sure anymore.
for many years I've also been interested in a rather unknown Soviet spy who during the war spied against Hitler. His codename was "Werther" and he was responsible for giving Stalin many warnings about planned German attacks in Russia. To this day he hasn't been identified but some pretty smart intelligence people believe he was someone very close to the Fuhrer.
Oh crimanitly I’m going to be in trouble with Par again. There’s another nudie in this issue.
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