Things continued, on this day in 1941, to go downhill for the Italians as the British overran them in Ethiopia at the Babille Pass. By this point it was pretty obvious that the Italian army wasn't up to. . .well about much of anything. Italian fortunes were flagging.
Having said that, the Italians did put up a fight at Keren in Eritrea where they launched a massive counterattack at Ft. Dologorodoc. It failed, but it was fiercely fought.
In spite of the Italian misfortunes, Vichy France signed a bill to construct a trans Saharan railway, which admittedly didn't directly involve Italy, but given that Italy was losing badly to the British, should at least have signaled that North African construction projects were rather unlikely to be successful constructed. To make matters worse, the French government conceived of the project being built by POWs, which made them a quasi belligerent, and Jewish slave labor, which additionally made them racist criminals. So already, by this point in 1941, Vichy France was complicit in one of the greatest crimes of all time.
By some accounts the 99th Pursuit Squadron was activated on this day and Jimmy Stewart, who would go on to long service in the Air Corps and Air Force, was inducted, which demonstrates how even relatively recent dates can become confused. We've covered both of these events, attributed to earlier dates, within the last week.
More on the 99th Pursuit Squadron on this entry here, which also discusses the Grand Coulee Dam.
Today in World War II History—March 22, 1941
In the early morning hours, the German near battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were met by German Kreigsmarine destroyers operating out of Brest and were escorted into port. Their 60 day sortie had resulted in 22 merchant ships being destroyed. The Royal Navy attempted to intercept them, but was too late to do so. On the same day, the German armed merchant ship Kormoran stopped the British tanker Agnita and sank it.
No comments:
Post a Comment