military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (08/23/90)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Friday, 23 August, 1940 Merchant ships in the Firth of Moray are attacked by German He 115 floatplanes; three are torpedoed. Other Luftwaffe raids strike at London and scattered targets, including the dropping of incendiary bombs on farmland. London charges that civilians have been machinegunned by low- flying bombers. The RAF retaliates by bombing German shore batteries on the Channel coast, along with airfields on the Continent. Greece lays antisubmarine nets in the entrances of major harbors. Civilian aircraft are instructed to follow special routes, as well. Rumania, scheduled to conduct a meeting tomorrow with Hungary to discuss the disputed territory of Transylvania, cancels all army leaves and calls up its reserve officer corps. A proposal reaches President Roosevelt to offset Britain's war debt by 99-year leases on 18 British bases for use by the US armed forces. The $5.6 billion debt would be roughly halved under the proposed terms. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@att.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "In an age of dictatorships, ideologies, and "crusades," an age in which the emotions of the masses are whipped up by unbridled propaganda, the word "reason" is, I fear, never spelt with a capital "R." And so, to both peoples' detriment and Europe's misfortune, it turned out that neither Britain nor Germany could see any practical alternative but to fight it out." - Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, in _Lost Victories_