World War II Database

• Home
• » Events
• » WW2 Timeline
• » 6 Apr 1941

• British armed merchant cruiser HMS Comorin, carrying military personnel for British West Africa, caught fire 450 miles west of Ireland; 20 were killed, 405 survived. ww2dbase [CPC]
• German submarine U-94 sank Norwegian tanker Lincoln Ellsworth 100 miles southwest of Ireland at 1700 hours with 2 torpedoes and 121 rounds from the deck gun. The entire crew survived in 2 lifeboats. ww2dbase [CPC]

• British 11th African Division captured the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa unopposed; the Italian garrison originally based in Addis Ababa had withdrawn north to Gondar and Amba Alagi. ww2dbase [Invasion of Italian East Africa | Addis Ababa | CPC]

• RAF Beaufort aircraft torpedoed German battlecruiser Gneisenau at Brest, France. During this attack, Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell of No. 22 Squadron RAF Coastal Command, who scored the hit with an Mk XII torpedo, was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed with the loss of the entire crew. Campbell would be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his gallantry. ww2dbase [Gneisenau | Brest, Bretagne | CPC, AC]

• British and Australian troops hurriedly evacuated Barce and Derna, Libya, falling back toward Tobruk to avoid being cut off by the advancing German troops. On the same day, Axis troops captured Msus, Libya, a major fuel and supply dump; the fuel was destroyed by the Allies before German capture. German troops besieged Mechili by 1700 hours. After dark, British generals General Neame and O'Connor began evacuating themselves to Tmimi west of Tobruk. ww2dbase [Siege of Tobruk | Richard O'Connor | CPC]

• A transport of 1,021 prisoners from Pawiak Prison in Warsaw, Poland arrived at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Famous actors Bronislaw Dardzinski, Tadeusz Hertman Kanski, Stefan Jaracz, Zbigniew Nowakowski, and Leon Schiller were among them, arrested for the murder of actor Igo Sym who collaborated with German propaganda efforts. ww2dbase [Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Auschwitz Concentration Camp | Oswiecim | CPC]

• Before dawn, German, Hungarian, and Italian forces invaded Yugoslavia from Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. German Luftwaffe swiftly destroyed Yugoslavian Air Force on the ground and devastated Belgrade with aerial bombing between 0700 and 0830 hours, killing 4,000 civilians; on the ground, German forces spearheaded by armor reached the Skopje and Veles areas in southern Yugoslavia. On the same day, German, Hungarian, and Italian forces invaded Greece from Bulgaria. Unlike the success in Yugoslavia, the invasion was slowed by Greek and British troops at the Metaxas Line. After sundown, a Luftwaffe raid on Piraeus, Greece got an unexpected boost when the ammunition ship Clan Fraser was hit, with the resulting blast doing more damage to the port facilities than the aerial bombs dropped by the Germans; the explosion also caused the sinking of 11 other freighters. ww2dbase [Balkans Campaign | TH]

6 Apr 1941 Interactive Map