military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (02/21/90)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Wednesday, 21 February, 1940 Heavy blizzards halt Soviet operations in the Karelian Isthmus, granting a respite to the defending Finns. General Timoshenko uses the break in action to reorganize his troops. Auschwitz (in occupied Poland) is judged suitable for use as a "quarantine center" by The German Inspector of Concentration Camps, and construction work begins there. The American Red Cross has been barred from all areas of Poland except Warsaw. Germany delegates demand that Rumania renounce her ban on export of aviation gasoline to Germany and deliver the full quota initially agreed upon. Emergency measures are implemented in Britain to preserve coal during this severe winter, including marked reductions in passenger rail service. The cavity magnetron is successfully tested at Birmingham University. This device makes possible short-wave radar, and gives Britain a tremendous lead in this important technology. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@cbnews.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "The charging monsters shattered brick waslls, surged across streams 4 feet deep, and showed off their machine guns and cannons with gratifying precision. But a simple row of 9-foot pine logs, their butts buried 6 feet in the earth, stopped them cold - to the intense satisfaction of the engineers who had figured out thie impromptu tank trap." - Newsweek, describing US Army tank maneuvers