30 May 1941
  • Erich Raeder recommended Adolf Hitler an attack on the Suez Canal in Egypt. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
  • Before dawn, a force of British cruiser and destroyers embarked 6,029 troops and departed Sphakia, Crete, Greece for Egypt. En route, they were attacked by Axis aircraft; a bomb hit on cruiser HMS Perth killed 13, but RAF fighter escorts prevented Axis aircraft from dealing the kind of damage they did on the previous day against a different evacuation convoy. Destroyer HMS Kelvin, sailing north from Egypt, was damaged by a bomb en route, killing 1. On land, German aircraft strafed evacuation beaches at and near Sphakia. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
  • British and Indian forces reached the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, causing Rashid Ali's government to collapse. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
  • German submarine U-106 sank British ship Silveryew near Cape Verde Islands at 0036 hours, killing 1. ww2dbase [CPC]
  • German submarine U-38 sank British ship Empire Protector off Sierra Leone, British West Africa at 1407 hours, killing 5. ww2dbase [CPC]
Japan
  • Soviet spy Richard Sorge, a reporter in the German Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, informed Moscow that the Germans planned to invade in late June. Joseph Stalin, as he had done in so many other reports by his agents, still refused to believe this important intelligence. ww2dbase [Main Article | AC]

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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Random Photograph

Overhead view of the progress of the salvage work on the sunken battleship USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 21 Mar 1943, a year and a half after the attack. Note flag flying from staff amidships.




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"With Germany arming at breakneck speed, England lost in a pacifist dream, France corrupt and torn by dissension, America remote and indifferent... do you not tremble for your children?"

Winston Churchill, 1935