Posted on 02/27/2013 4:25:52 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate
#1 - “There Are Such Things” - Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers
#2 - “I’ve Heard That Song Before” – Harry James, with Helen Forrest
#3 - “I Had the Craziest Dream” - Harry James, with Helen Forrest
#4 - “Moonlight Becomes You” - Bing Crosby
#5 – “You’d be So Nice to Come Home To” - Dinah Shore
#6 – “Brazil” - Xavier Cugat
#7 – “It Started All Over Again” - Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra, Pied Pipers
#8 - “Why Don’t You Do Right” - Benny Goodman, with Peggy Lee
#9 - “Moonlight Becomes You” - Glenn Miller, with Skip Nelson and the Modernaires
#10 – “Why Don’t You Fall in Love with Me,” Dinah Shore
* Some of our ships went down.
One of those downed ships was carrying Times London correspondent Robert P. Post.
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1943/feb1943/f27feb43.htm
Germans Counterattacking Soviet Flank
Saturday, February 27, 1943 www.onwar.com
German anti-aircraft gun fires on Soviet positions [photo at link]
On the Eastern Front... Manstein’s forces attacking from the south are now on a line from Lozovaya to Kramatorsk.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
February 27th, 1943 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Corvette HMCS Long Branch (ex-HMS Candytuft) laid down Glasgow.
Frigate HMS Trent commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
ENGLISH CHANNEL: ASW Trawler HMS Lord Hailsham sunk by E-boats. (Dave Shirlaw)
GERMANY: Count Konrad von Preysing, Catholic Bishop of Berlin, has made another attack on Nazi rule. In a pastoral letter issued throughout Germany he protests against totalitarianism, the execution of hostages and the Jewish persecution.
“In the other world nobody, not even Germans, has rights or wrongs,” he declared. “It is a Divine principle that the life of an innocent individual, whether an unborn child or an aged person, is sacred, and that the innocent shall not be punished with the guilty, or in place of the guilty. Neither the individual nor the community can create a law against this.”
The pastoral letter was published yesterday in the Swedish weekly, Trots Allt.
Daily Herald.
Berlin: Jewish slave workers in arms factories are deported to Auschwitz.
U-312, U-672, U-673 launched.
U-281 commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.S.R.: Black Sea Fleet and Azov Flotilla: MS “T-403 “Gruz”” - by shnellboat, close to cape Mishako and GB “Krasnaya Gruziya” - by field artillery and aviation, close to cape Mishako (Sergey Anisimov)(69)
German troops regain Lozovaya.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: Submarine HMS Tigris is located and depth charged by German A/S vessel UJ2210, 6 miles SE of Capri. There are no survivors. (Alex Gordon)(108)
U.S.A.:
Minesweepers USS Tumult, Pioneer and Heed commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: SS St Margaret sunk by U-66 at 27.38N, 43.23W.
Motor tanker Seminole in Convoy TE-16 damaged by U-565 at 35.33N, 02.33W.
Submarine tender HNLMS Colombia was inbound to Simonstown to dock, escorted by HMS Genista and several RAF aircraft. At 1141, U-516 fired a spread of three torpedoes from a distance of 1500 meters on a ship near Simonstown, which was identified as a passenger-cargo ship of the Blue Star Line of 10.000 tons. Four minutes later, one torpedo struck the Colombia at #2 hold, just before the bridge and a large column of water arose beside the ship, while the deckplanks were thrown in all directions. All hands immediately abandoned ship, apparently without any casualties and the ship sank after ten minutes. A headcount showed that eight men were missing. Almost 60 survivors in one whaleboat were picked up by a RAF air-sea-rescue launch. The corvette initially launched a counter-attack, but she returned soon and picked up the remaining survivors. (Dave Shirlaw)
After this, the Africa campaign was pertty much over for the Axis Powers. German forces were locked into a pocket on the coast of northern Tunisia. FM Rommel asked Hitler permission to withdraw his forces from Africa. Hitler refused, much as he did with Paulus at Stalingrad. After supplies and ammo ran out, over 300,000 German troops were taken into captivity-—3X the haul taken at Stalingrad. It amazes me how Hitler threw armies away like that. As Gen. Patton noted, what a waste of fine infantry-—whether that was said just in the movie or not, it is very true.
At least in Stalingrad the defense served some sort of purpose in buying time for troops to escape the Caucasus. No purpose at all was served by throwing away the North Africa army.
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