Tuesday, December 21, 1943. Arrests of the former Vichy officials.

Pierre-Étienne Flandin, a former Prime Minister of France, and briefly Premier of Vichy France, was arrested in Algiers along with former Vichy Interior Minister Marcel Peyrouton, former Vichy Information Secretary Pierre Tixler-Vignacourt, member of parliament André Albert, and Pierre François Boisson, the Vichy Governor-General of French West Africa.

Flandin had been a French pilot during World War One.

Albert had been serving with the Free French forces since June 1943, after he had fled from Vichy.

They would all survive their arrests and falls from grace.

The U-284 was scuttled by the Germans after it received storm damage southeast of Greenland.

March 14, 1941. The Blitz over Scotland, Italian submarines in the North Atlantic, Japanese offensive in China.

British troops took meals and were photographed on this day in St. Andrew's House, which is now the seat of the Scottish Parliament.

Serving during what is now regarded as Britain's dark days of the war, these men would have nonetheless have had a hard time imagining a United Kingdom with more than one parliament and being in the current state of being at least somewhat disunited, let alone that kingdom not having an Empire.

In Leeds, the city would sustain the worst night of the Leeds Blitz. Clydeside was destroyed on the second night of raids against it.  You can read more about that here:

Clydeside bombed again

In  China, the Japanese would launch as assault at Shanggao which would result in a decisive Chinese victory.

The SS Western Chief, formerly a U.S. naval cargo vessel but now a civilian cargo ship, was sunk by an Italian submarine in the North Atlantic.

We tend to not even think of the Italians having submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic, but in fact their submarine fleet was the largest in the world at the start of World War Two and their commitment to the Atlantic early in the war equaled that of the Germans.

A  Marcello class submarine in German service in the Inland Sea, Japan, in August, 1944. This submarine had been Comandante Cappelini in Italian service prior to their surrender to the Allies and would go on to Japanese service as the  IJN I-503 after Germany's surrender to the Allies.

The submarine in question was the Emo, a Marcello class submarine that was sunk in the Mediterranean in 1942.  

The story of Italian submarines during the war is not only largely forgotten, but complicated as well.  About half their fleet was destroyed in action as the war went on, and a surprising number of their boats were converted to transport craft to run to the Far East.

On the topic of submarines, German film maker Wolfgang Petersen, who filmed the submarine masterpiece Das Boot, was born on this day in 1941.

And speaking of the Japanese, President Roosevelt met with the Japanese Ambassador late in the day, on this day in 1941.

Countdown on the Great War. October 14, 1918. Saying no to the Boche, Sinkings in the Atlantic, Americans resume the offensive in the Meuse Argonne and the British in Flanders.

Camp Funston, Kansas, which some believe if the locus of the origin of the Spanish Flu.

1.  The Battle of Courtrai commences in which the Groupe d'Armees des Flanders, made up of twelve Belgian, ten British and six French divisions under the command of King Albert I of Belgian attacked German forces in the hopes of continuing the Allied advance as far as possible before the oncoming winter made further advances impossible.  It was still anticiapted at the time that the war would drag into 1919.

British forces found, to their expectation, that the Germans offered much reduced resistance and they had achived all of their objectives, reaching the Scheldt, by the 22nd.

The Germans were basically collapsing while still offering resistance.  The nearness to a complete German disaster was not apparent, but it was coming.

2. The U.S. resumes the offensive in the Meuse Argonne with assaults near Montfaucon.

Senencourt (Muese) France. "Kamerad," a figure by the soldiers in the yard of the American Red Cross Canteen at Senencourt. The Red Cross girls are, from left to right: Miss Louise Adams of 10 Arlington Place, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Miss Alice Birdall, of 310 Third Ave. Reselle Ave., N.J.; and Miss Gertrude Nichols, #849 West Galen Street, Butte, Montana; Capt. Beverly Rautoul of #17 Winter Street, Salem, Mass., and Private Geo. St. Clair Preston, both of the American Red Cross Evacuation Hospital #8, are on the extreme left

3.  The air wing of the United States Marine Corps engaged in its first all Marine air action by bombing Pitthem, Belgium.  Marines Ralph Talbot and gunner Robert Guy Robinson won the Medal of Honor for heroism associated with holding off German air attacks on their Airco bomber when they became separated and had to return to attempt to return to their base alone.

Airco DH4, which was used in the tactical role.

4.  The provisional government for Czechoslovakia formed.


5.  The U-139 attacked the Portoguese steamer Sao Miguel and its escort the Portuguese Navy trawler NRP Augusto de Castilho on the Action of 14 October 1918.  The trawler was lightly armed and while it fought for several hours, it was actually outgunned by the submarine and surrendered to it, and was thereafter scuttled by the German submariners.  The engagement is regarded as the only high seas naval battle of the Great War to take place in the North Atlantic.

On the same day, German submarines sank the Bayard, a French fishing vessel, the Stifinder, a Norwegian barque, which was scuttled due an engagement with the U-152 and the British passenger ship Dundalk, with the loss of 21 lives.  The German minsweeper SMS M22 was sunk by mines.

6.