military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (06/01/91)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Thursday, 29 May, 1941 Britain loses two more destroyers near Crete when the Imperial and Hereward are sunk by German bombers. The cruiser HMS Perth is also hit and damaged. Fighting continues in northern Crete, but the evacuation areas to the south are not attacked. The United States agrees to begin training RAF pilots to fly the new planes being exported to Britain. Eight thousand fliers are to be taught. A French fighter downs a British plane attacking a Vichy airfield in Syria, and France states that as the presence of German aircraft in Syria is a condition of the Franco-German Armistice, Britain has no right to attack the French possession. "It is unmistakably apparent to all of us that unless the advance of Hitlerism is forcibly checked now, the western hemisphere will be within range of Nazi weapons of destruction." - Franklin D. Roosevelt