February 26th, 1940 (MONDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The War Office announces that northern Scotland is to become out of bounds for unauthorised people from 11 March.Minesweeping trawler HMS Olive launched.
FRANCE: Paris: Anti-aircraft guns drive Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes away from the city.
FINLAND: The army evacuate Koivisto fort, and prepare for a prolonged siege at Viipuri.
Today takes place the first and only Finnish armored operation of the Winter War. While the Red Army continues to advance towards Viipuri on the southern part of the Karelian Isthmus, the Jäger Battalion 3 and 4th Panzer Company (13 Vickers 6 tonners) are subordinated to the 23rd Division (Col. Woldemar Oinonen) to make a counterattack against the Soviet forces at the village of Honkaniemi, 10 km south-east of Viipuri.
After desperately hasty preparations, the Jäger Battalion 3 and 4th Panzer Company are to attack at 6.15 am, supported by a field artillery battalion. But the Panzer Company is able to get only 6 of its 13 tanks going, and Finnish artillery preparation partly hits the Jäger Battalion's positions. Finally the Panzer Company's six tanks are the only Finnish force to attack, but one of them is stuck in a ditch. The remaining five meet in the Honkaniemi village the Soviet 112th Tank Battalion of the 35th Tank Brigade, and are all destroyed without hurting the enemy. Finnish losses are 1 KIA, 3 WIA and 5 MIA.
U.S.S.R.: Soviet submarine M-32 launched.
GIBRALTAR: U.S. passenger liner SS Washington is
detained at Gibraltar by British authorities.
ITALY:
Rome: Sumner Welles
meets Mussolini and his son-in-law Count Galeazzo Ciano, the foreign
minister.
U.S.A.: The US Army, increasingly aware of the possibility of becoming involved in the European war, creates the Air defence Command headed by Brigadier General James E. Chaney and based at Mitchell Field, Hempstead, Long Island, New York. The new command is primarily a planning agency, charged with development of a system of unified air defence for cities, vital industrial areas, continental bases, and armies in the field, Although limited in size to a staff of only ten officers, the command undertakes to study the special capabilities of pursuit aviation, antiaircraft artillery, radio equipment, barrage balloons, and passive defence measures and to formulate the most effective combination of the several means of defence. (Michael Ballard and Jack McKillop)