World War II As It Happened
A MaritimeQuest Daily Event Special Presentation
Thursday July 25, 1940
Day 329

July 25, 1940: Front page of the Manchester Evening News, Manchester, England.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Daily Mail, Hull, England.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of the Nottingham Evening Post, Nottingham, England.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of the Press and Journal, Aberdeen, Scotland.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Examiner, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.
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Note the report in column 7: "Italians Claim to Have Sunk Australian Ship"
(The Italian claim was half true. There had not been an Australian destroyer sunk, but on July 16th the British submarine, HMS Phoenix, was sunk by the Italian torpedo boat Albatros off Sicily. All fifty-four men of the crew were lost with the boat.)


July 25, 1940: Front page of the Daily Telegraph, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Telegraph, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Lethbridge Herald, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
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Note the report in columns 4-5: "Liner Lancastria Sunk Evacuating Troops; 2,823 Missing"
(The sinking of the Lancastria, on June 17, 1940, was one of the greatest disasters at sea of all time. It is estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 people were lost with the ship.)
 
Also note the report in column 7: "British Warships Save 1,000 After Vessel Is Blasted"
(The French ship Meknes, had over 1,300 people on board when it was attacked by two German Schnellboote, S-19 and S-27. It was a torpedo from Oberleutnant zur See Bernd Klug's S-27 which sank the ship. About 435 people were lost. Ironically, S-27 would become a victim of a German torpedo herself. On Sept. 5, 1942 a sister boat, S-72 (27 backwards) torpedoed and sank the boat in error.

Klug was also in command of the S-boats which attacked convoy CW-8, which is mentioned in the Hamburg paper below.

Bernd Klug would figure in another tragic loss for the Allies, the attack on the ships of Exercise Tiger. On Apr. 28, 1944 a group of American LST's (Landing Ship Tanks) were in Lyme Bay rehearsing for the upcoming D-Day landings and were attacked by a group of S-Boats. Klug was the officer in command of the group. Two LST's, USS LST-507 and USS LST-531 were sunk, USS LST-289 was damaged. Almost 750 U.S. troops were killed.

Klug served in the Reichsmarine, the Kriegsmarine and finally as an Admiral in the Bundesmarine. He died on June 15, 1975.)


July 25, 1940: Front page of The Winnipeg Tribune, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of Haarlem's Dagblad, Haarlem, Netherlands.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of the Biddeford Daily Journal, Biddeford, Maine.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Evening Gazette, Xenia, Ohio.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Port Arthur News, Port Arthur, Texas.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Cedar Rapids Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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July 25, 1940: Front page of The Bakersfield Californian, Bakersfield, California.
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Note the headline: "U.S. Embargoes Oil And Iron"
(This action by the U.S. was one of the reasons that Japan decided to attack the U.S. on Dec. 7th, 1941.)


July 25, 1940: Front page of the Hamburger Neueste Zeitung, Altona, Hamburg, Germany.
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1. Drakonische Maßnahmen im freien England.
(Draconian measures in free England.)
2. Flugblätter und Bomben.
(Leaflets and bombs.)


July 25, 1940: Front page of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the NSDAP.
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1. Britischer Geleitzug völlig vernichtet.
(British convoy completely destroyed.)
[This report is about the attack on convoy CW-8, which lost 8 ships out of 25 over a period of two days. Five the first day were sunk by German Ju-87 "Stuka" dive bombers and three were sunk on the 26th by the 1st S-Boot Flotilla, under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Bernd Klug.]



   
Page published July 25, 2021