Posted on 02/28/2010 4:42:28 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/feb40/f28feb40.htm
Finns give up Viipuri
Wednesday, February 28, 1940 www.onwar.com
The Winter War... The Finns retire in the Viipuri area. Meanwhile, Finns storm the entrenched camp of the starving 34th Moscow Tank Brigade near Kitelae, capturing 105 tanks, 200 trucks and field cars.
In Palestine... The British government limits the acquisition of Arab land by Jews.
In Germany... Germany closes factories unnecessary for the war effort.
In Berlin... The Nazi propaganda minister, Dr. Goebbels, tells neutral countries to “curb their public opinion” and warns Sweden against aiding Finland.
In Britain... The first of a new class of battleship, HMS King George V, is launched.
In the North Atlantic... Divers recover three rotors from the Enigma enciphering machine on board the scuttled U-33.
In China... Communist troops retake Anding, near Yenan, from the Japanese.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/28.htm
February 28th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM:
‘The Times’
Four German airmen, the crew of the Heinkel bomber shot down off the Scottish coast yesterday, were picked up by a trawler and landed at a port on the east coast of Scotland. One of them, a photographer, was suffering from gunshot wounds in the mouth.
The trawler was fishing when the crew saw two British fighters attack the Heinkel, which was shot down in flames. The trawler made for the spot, where the Germans were found up to their knees in water in a collapsible rubber boat. The rescued men appeared overjoyed, and shook hands with the trawlers crew over and over again. One of them declared that war was “no good,” and that there was only one man in Germany who was allowed to open his mouth. During the journey back to port the skipper discovered that one of the Germans had voluntarily picked up a shovel and was cheerfully assisting the stoker.
RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group. Leaflets and Reconnaissance - Berlin. 51 Sqn. Two aircraft. One returned early U/S. Moderate opposition.
Royal Navy: The first of a new class of battleship, HMS King George V, is launched.
Scotland: Divers have recovered three rotors from the top-secret Enigma enciphering machine on board U-33. The U-boat, caught minelaying off Scotland, scuttled herself after being forced to the surface by depth charges from the sloop HMS Gleaner, which marked the spot and sent for the divers.
The rotors have been rushed to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire where code-breaking scientists are working furiously to solve the secrets of Enigma. The rotors could help break the vital U-boat code.
Corvette HMS Dahlia laid down.
Destroyer depot ship HMS Tyne launched.
Battleship HMS Duke of York launched.
Minesweeping trawler HMS Whitehorn commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
GERMANY:
Berlin: The propaganda minister, Dr. Göbbels, tells neutral countries to “curb their public opinion” and warns Sweden against aiding Finland.
The government closes factories unnecessary for the war effort. (Jack McKillop)
FINLAND: Finns receive an ultimatum from Moscow: Finland has to accept the Soviet terms for starting the negotiations in two days (by 11 am. on 1 March). The Finnish cabinet immediately gathers at Helsinki, where the majority of ministers agree that peace has to be made. PM Ryti and four other ministers travelled to Mikkeli to meet Mannerheim, who told them that the situation at the front is worrisome.
Lt. Gen. Ernst Linder’s Swedish volunteers take over the defence of North Finland from Maj. Gen. Kurt Wallenius. Five Finnish infantry battalions are freed to strengthen the defence at the western coast of the Bay of Viipuri, where the Red Army threatens to attack over the frozen gulf.
(Mikko Härmeinen)
PALESTINE: The British government limits the acquisition of Arab land by Jews. (Jack McKillop)
CHINA: Communist troops retake Anding, near Yenan, from the Japanese.
AUSTRALIA: The War Cabinet adopts a plan to form a second Australian Imperial Force division, the 7th, which with the existing 6th Division, would form an Australian corps. (Jack McKillop)
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Arvida laid down Quebec City, Province of Quebec.
U.S.A.: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announces a limited commercial television service will be authorized beginning on 1 September. Standards are not set, pending further research until the best system can be determined. (Two days later the FCC suspended its authorization for commercial service, declaring that the marketing campaign of RCA disregarded the commission’s findings and recommendations.) (Jack McKillop)
The National Broadcasting Company’s experimental TV station W2XBS in New York City broadcasts the first basketball game, Fordham vs. the University of Pittsburgh, from Madison Square Garden. Pittsburgh won, 50-37. (Jack McKillop)
Recovery that led to cracking of Enigma
0 Comments | Herald, The; Glasgow (UK), Feb 13, 2010
IT should not have been aboard in the first place but, 70 years after a German submarine was sunk in the Clyde estuary, the vital capture of an Enigma machine has been recalled.
The machine’s encoding, which the Germans believed to be unbreakable, was intended to keep their communications secret, and the retrieval of parts of the machine on board U-33, sunk off Arran on February 12, 1940, represented a break-through for Bletchley Park, the UK Government’s code-breaking centre.
The Enigma device has been a constant source of intrigue in the post-war decades, and inspired a film, Enigma, starring Kate Winslet and Dougray Scott, that was a hit in 2001.
The Clyde incident has been detailed in a new book, Action Stations!, by Alastair Alexander, the former BBC Scotland sports commentator.
“Strictly contrary to orders from Hitler himself, the submarine’s commander had his Enigma machine on board when he set off on its mine-laying mission to the Clyde,” Mr Alexander said yesterday.
The submarine, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Hans Wilhelm von Dresky, had sunk 11 British ships on previous missions by the time it entered the Clyde estuary.
But it was detected by HMS Gleaner, a patrolling minesweeper that closed in on U-33 and dropped 10 depth-charges. The second and third batches damaged the hull and caused water to leak into the submarine.
When U-33 finally broke surface at 5.22am, Gleaner was poised to ram her, but the German crew came on to deck, their hands held high in surrender.
“Von Dresky was planning to scuttle the submarine to ensure that Enigma did not fall into the enemy’s hands, and he ordered crew members to drop key components of the machine, including the rotors, into the Clyde as they surrendered,” added Mr Alexander.
“It took three attempts before the scuttling charges worked. The sub sank but the captain and three crew members went down with the ship. Their bodies have never been recovered.”
In all, 27 German sailors drowned or died of exposure, and another 17 were taken prisoner. The U-boat, still largely intact, lies on the sea-bed today. Small pools of oil are said to come to the surface at its location.
“A few days after the sinking, Royal Navy divers from HMS Tadworth went down on to the sea-bed. They recovered the rotors and other vital parts, and even ventured on board the U-33 to reclaim other important items,” said Mr Alexander. “This was the first time that parts of the machine had been recovered from the Germans. The German Navy - the Kreigsmarine - had a slightly different machine from the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht, the armed forces.
“The incident on the Clyde helped the boffins to break the Enigma code, and it was also the first instance in the war of the Royal Navy capturing parts of an Enigma machine.”
Bletchley Park’s website said three of the U-33’s Enigma code- wheels were captured, “perhaps from the pockets of a German seaman”. Two of the wheels had been unknown to the British until then.
“The capture of U-33 certainly helped Bletchley Park towards the breaking of the German Enigma naval keys, but it would not be until August 1941 that it could break a German naval key regularly,” it adds.
The bodies of the German sailors who died were buried in Greenock Cemetery but were exhumed and re-interred in a Staffordshire cemetery in 1962. The 17 survivors spent the rest of the war in PoW camps.
Mr Alexander said one survivor, Max Schiller, initially reported as dead, remained in Scotland after the war, married a local girl and became a farmer. Ten years ago, he laid a wreath on the Clyde where U-33 sank. He died in 2002.
Ten years after what the Royal Navy describes as Gleaner’s “most famous achievement” the minesweeper was withdrawn from service and scrapped.
According to the Divernet website, the U-33 wreck “is still largely intact, despite the depth-charging and scuttling charges. Its gun is still in place. The hull is heavily encrusted with growths which ... hold a fine silt that drastically reduces visibility when disturbed.”
During the course of the day Finnish troops beat back three enemy attacks on the Taipale strongholds.
Photo: SA-KUVA
Finnish troops pull back on the Isthmus
Alfred Neir at the University of Minnesota had gone to work, after Fermi wrote urging him again to do so, to prepare to separate measurable samples of U235 and U238. John Dunning sent him uranium hexaflouride, a highly corrosive compound that is a white solid at room temperature but volatilizes to a gas when heated to 140°F. "I worked with this for a couple of months in late 1939," Nier remembers. Unfortuanately the gas was too volatile; it dispersed through Nier's three-foot glass spectrometer tube despite the best efforts of his vacuum pump to clear it and contaminated the collector plates:Looks like we are homing in on the source material.Finally I said, "This won't do." A new instrument was built in about 10 days in February 1940. Our glass blower bent the horseshoe-shaped mass spectrometer tube for me; I made the metal parts myself. As a source of uranium, I used the less volatile uranium tetrachloride and tetrabromide left over from [his earlier] Harvard experiments. The first separation of U-235 and U-238 was actually accomplished on February 28 and 29, 1940. It was a leap year, and on Friday afternoon, February 29, I pasted the little samples [collected on the nickel foil] on the margin of a handwritten letter and delivered them to the Minneapolis Post Office at about six o'clock. The letter was sent by airmail special delivery and arrived at Columbia University on Saturday. I was aroused early Sunday morning by a long-distance telephone call from John Dunning [who had worked through the night bombarding the samples with neutrons from the Columbia cyclotron]. the Columbia test of the samples clearly showed the U-235 was responsible for the slow neutron fission of uranium. -Richard Rhodes "The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p.332
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/2010/03/day-181-february-28-1940.html
Day 181 February 28, 1940
At 0.45 AM, Soviet High Command permits 34th Tank Brigade to retreat from East Lemetti Motti. The Finns allow about 2750 Soviet troops including sick and wounded to escape on foot - about 1000 make the Red Army lines to the South (250 die en route), but all 1500 men moving East are hunted down and annihilated by Finns on skis. Finnish attacks continue overnight on the motti, which is notable for the large number of Soviet tanks (about 100 many of which are dug in as fixed artillery).
http://www.winterwar.com/Tactics/mottis.htm
Further North, Swedish Volunteer Corps (Svenska Frivilligkåren) takes over front line duty at Märkäjärvi in Salla. Although officially non-belligerent, 8,402 Swedes, 1,010 Danes and 895 Norwegians volunteer go to Finland. They will lose 28 dead, 50 wounded and 140 invalids with frostbite.
Allies again promise to send troops to Finland and urge Finland to legitimise their actions with a formal appeal for assistance.
British battleship HMS Duke of York is launched, although she will not be commissioned for active service until 4 November 1941. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Duke_of_York_(17)
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