military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (07/25/90)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Wednesday, 24 July, 1940 The French steamer Meknes, laden with Frenchmen being repatriated to Marseilles, is sunk by a German motor torpedo boat; 383 of her 1277 passengers are killed. The government of Rumania nationalizes the Astra-Romana Oil Company, owned by Shell Oil. Italian bombers strike at Haifa and Germany attacks several ships in the Channel and factories in southern England. Among the planes shot down by RAF fighters is an American-built Chance Vought 156 dive bomber, apparently captured in France. Lord Beaverbrook announces that Britain plans to buy 3,000 US-built planes monthly in addition to orders already contracted. Current capacity of United States manufacturers is only half of that figure. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@att.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "We face on of the great choices of history. It is not alone a choice of government, government by the people versus dictatorship, it is not alone a choice of freedom versus slavery, it is not alone a choice between moving forward and falling back. It is all of these rolled into one." - President Franklin D. Roosevelt.