military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (07/08/90)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Saturday, 6 July, 1940 A Swordfish strike launched from HMS Ark Royal torpedoes and cripples the French battlecruiser Dunkerque at Mers-el-Kebir. The Dunkerque and her sister ship Strasbourg were built specifically to defeat the German pocket battleships, and would make formidable merchant raiders. Five USN destroyers reach the port of Martinique in the French West Indies, where the French carrier Bearn lies moored with 150 newly-purchased US-built warplanes aboard. Hitler returns from an 8-week tour of the front, and proposes a German- British peace treaty, based on the division of the world by the two powers. His arrival is greeted by cheering crowds and a carpet of flowers. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@att.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "Caesar in his glory was never more turbulently received and Adolf Hitler, one-time corporal in the Kaiser's army, was indeed accorded a Caesar's welcome." - Percival Knauth, writing for the New York Times