February 17th, 1940 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM:
The government plans to evacuate 400,000 children from the
larger cities to rural areas.
GERMANY: Manstein and Hitler
review plans for the armoured attack through the Ardennes.
NORWAY: Strong British, Norwegian and German protest notes are exchanged over the Altmark incident where the British removed British prisoners from the ship in neutral Norwegian waters.
SWEDEN: Stockholm: The Swedish government rejects Finnish requests for assistance.
FINLAND: The USSR has completed its conquest of the Mannerheim Line, with Timoshenko's 54 Red Army
divisions facing 15 depleted Finnish divisions.
[At the start of the war the Finnish Army had nine
divisions. During the war, one more division (the 9th) was formed out of
independent units, and two more (the 21st and 23rd) from replenishment troops,
bringing the total at the end of the war to 12. ]
Marshal Mannerheim has ordered his troops to abandon the first line of the Mannerheim Line
and fall back to a second line of defences up to 10 miles away. The Finns have performed
bravely, fighting off attack after attack for 16 days under a storm of cannon fire and
bombs.
Yet now, tied to their defences, their is little they can do except hope to survive.
Casualties are severe. Some regiments have lost two-thirds of their strength. Untrained
recruits and veterans of the National Civil Guard have been thrown into the line where men
have literally disappeared, blown away by the force of the bombardment.
General Timoshenko has concentrated his attack on the Summa area where the forest opens
out into fields and there is room for his tanks to manoeuvre. The Russian soldiers, now
well-led and well-trained, are showing themselves to be hardy and brave - and there are
may more of them than of the Finns. A spokesman for the Finnish General Staff said last
night that there were enormous heaps of Russian dead in front of the Finnish positions. He
added: "Yet in spite of these losses we always feel that there are tens of thousands
of Russians to be sent in. We need men and material, especially planes. So far the Finnish
army has been able to hold its own, but we need the civilized nations to aid us to the
utmost."
GIBRALTAR: The U.S. freighter SS Exhibitor is detained by British authorities.
U.S.A.: President Franklin D.
Roosevelt sends Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles on a "fact-finding" tour
of Europe and appoints Myron C. Taylor as his "personal representative" to the
Vatican.
United States Lines sells the liner SS President Harding and seven cargo
ships to a Belgian concern in an attempt to circumvent the ban on U.S. sea borne
trade with Europe, imposed by the Neutrality Act.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: At 0205, the unescorted SS Kvernaas (Master Ivar Sørensen) was hit by one torpedo from U-10 and sank within five minutes four miles NW of Schouwen Bank, Netherlands. The crew abandoned ship in two lifeboats and was picked up after 4 hours by the Dutch Oranjepolden. The vessel was en-route to London, but turned back and landed the men at the pilot station in Hoek van Holland the next day. The maritime hearings were held in Rotterdam (it was thought that the ship struck a mine) and a couple of weeks later the crew travelled to Amsterdam. From there they were flown to Sweden, then travelled on to Norway by train.
At 1553, SS Pyrrhus in Convoy OG-18 was hit by one torpedo from U-37 NW of Cape Finisterre and broke in two. The afterpart sank immediately and the forepart two days later. Eight crewmembers were lost. She was the ship of the vice-commodore Rear-Admiral R.A. Hamilton RN. The master, the vice-commodore, five naval staff members and 70 crewmembers were picked up by the British SS Uskside and Sinnington Court and landed at Gibraltar.
SS Wilja sunk by
U-48 at 49.00N, 06.33W.