military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (04/26/91)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Friday, 25 April, 1941 President Roosevelt announces that the Neutrality Patrols will be greatly expanded, and orders that US warships are to radio the positions of German warships within their patrol areas to the British. The President also criticizes Charles Lindbergh as a defeatist and an appeaser. Hitler issues a directive ordering an airborne invasion of Crete, code-named Operation Merkur. In the US, rumors abound of a German fleet of dummy submarines, to be used by the thousands to create diversions in the Atlantic. It is also alleged that the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are not really at Brest, and that the targets bombed there are also dummies. Lord Gort is appointed military governor of Gibraltar. German forces in Egypt resume their advance, forcing the British back to Mersa Matruh. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@att.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "I believe that the administration should not follow public opinion but should lead it, and I believe that, when a decision is made as to what we should do, the people will be behind it." - Wendell Willkie it