29 May 1940 | World War II Database

29 May 1940

Allies evacuated 33,558 men from the harbor at Dunkirk, France and 13,752 from the nearby beaches. German aircraft interfered, attacking ships in the sea as well as men waiting on the docks. Destroyer HMS Grenade was hit by three bombs, one of which went down her funnel, in Dunkirk harbor and sank, killing 19. Destroyer HMS Jaguar was badly damaged by a bomb, killing 13 and wounding 19. Minesweeper HMS Waverley, with 600 troops already aboard, was sunk by a bomb, killing 350. Elsewhere in France, German troops captured Lille, Ostend, and Ypres. Also on the same day, French auxiliary cruiser Ville d'Oran took on 200 tons of gold from the French reserve for shipment to Casablanca, French Morocco. ww2dbase [Invasion of France and the Low Countries | TH]
German torpedo boat S-30 sank British destroyer HMS Wakeful 13 miles north of Nieuwpoort, Belgium at 0040 hours, killing 97 crew and 640 solders rescued from Dunkirk, France. 25 crew and 1 soldier were rescued by minesweepers HMS Gossamer and HMS Lydd, destroyer HMS Grafton, and armed trawler HMS Comfort. Later in the day, German submarine U-62 torpedoed HMS Grafton, killing 4; destroyer HMS Ivanhoe scuttled HMS Grafton after rescuing the survivors. Nearby, HMS Comfort was mistaken for another German torpedo boat and was rammed by HMS Lydd, killing 4 crew and 2 soldiers. ww2dbase [TH]
German submarine U-37 sank French steamer Marie José and British oil tanker Telena off Cape Finisterre, Spain. 18 were killed and 18 survivors were later rescued by Spanish fishing boats. ww2dbase [CPC]
Werner Mölders was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the first fighter pilot to receive this award. ww2dbase [Werner Mölders | CPC]
No. 264 Squadron RAF based at Manston, England, United Kingdom claimed no less than thirty-eight enemy aircraft destroyed in a single day. The Luftwaffe fighter pilots having mistaken No. 264 Squadron's two-seat Defiant fighters for Hurricane fighters and had dived on the supposedly defenceless tails of the British fighters only to be greeted by a withering concentration of fire. By the end of the month No. 264 Squadron's Defiant fighters would have claimed some sixty-five kills, but the German pilots had learned from their mistakes and adopted new tactics to deal with the Defiant fighters. ww2dbase [P.82 Defiant | AC]
Friedrich Christiansen became the commanding officer of the German military in the Netherlands. ww2dbase [Friedrich Christiansen | CPC]

France

The 393-ton former Royal Mail Steam Packet Company paddle steamer Gracie Fields, serving in the capacity of a minesweeper since 1939, was hit by a bomb on her second trip to Dunkerque, France. Eight of her crew died in the attack. The ship remained afloat and an effort to tow her back to Britain would be mounted. ww2dbase [Invasion of France and the Low Countries | Dunkerque, Nord-Pas-de-Calais | HM]

Photo(s) dated 29 May 1940

British troops in a ship off of Dunkirk, France, late May 1940

German Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers in flight, 29 May 1940

US Senator Morris Sheppard, Major General George Lynch, and Senator A. B. Chandler comparing M1941 Johnson rifles and the M1 Garand rifles, Washington, DC, United States, 29 May 1940

Timeline Section Founder: Thomas Houlihan
Contributors: Alan Chanter, C. Peter Chen, Thomas Houlihan, Hugh Martyr, David Stubblebine
Special Thanks: Rory Curtis

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