March 8th, 1940 (FRIDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: RAF Fighter Command: German aircraft attack the north coast of Scotland. One enemy aircraft is destroyed, no damage is done.SS Counsellor, flagship of the convoy commodore in Convoy HX-22, struck a mine laid on 6 January by U-30 six miles 280° from Liverpool Bar Lightship and sank the next day. The master, the commodore (Rear Admiral H.G.C. Franklin RN), seven naval staff members and 69 crewmembers were picked up by HMS Walpole and landed at Liverpool.
HMS Tarpon is commissioned.
FINLAND: Russia rejects Finland's request for an immediate armistice.
Despite persisting Soviet propaganda to contrary, Viipuri never fell to the Red Army during the Winter War. When the firing ended on 13 March 1940, Soviet forces had reached city's eastern suburbs, and the fighting was still fierce. The failure to capture Viipuri was so galling that the official Soviet histories insisted ever since that the Soviet forces managed to capture Viipuri at the very last moment by assault. And remember, all this killing was totally unnecessary because the city has already been given to the Soviets in the treaty that was signed the day before.
Viipuri wasn't to be captured by the Red Army until 20 June 1944, more than four years later.
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/mar40/08mar40.htm
One person claims, perhaps mistakenly, that the 34th Rifle Corps was engaged in the battle: "As far as I remember it [Viipuri] was only partly captured by the Soviet 34th Rifle Corps. Finns occupied Northern and Northern-western its part, if I'm correct." http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/fo...p/t-28042.html
But here are the only other related mentions of the corps:
http://www.battle-of-kursk.com/Perso...soviet&lang=en
http://www.generals.dk/general/Maksi...iet_Union.html
U.S.S.R.: The Finnish and Soviet delegations meet for the first time at Moscow. The Soviet delegation is composed of Molotov, the Leningrad party boss Andrey Zhdanov and kombrig A. M. Vasilevsky. The Soviet demands have increased, and the Finnish delegation receives the word that the British and French expect the Finns to ask for help on 12 March at the latest.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Canadian destroyer HMCS Assiniboine stops German freighter SS Hanover in Mona Passage, off the coast of the Dominican Republic, at which point the merchantman's crew sets fire to the ship and abandons her. A boarding party from British light cruiser HMS Dunedin, however, saves Hanover from destruction. Conflicting representations by British and German diplomats as to Hanover's exact position prompt the Dominican government to drop the question of violation of territorial waters. Hanover will ultimately be converted into the escort carrier HMS Audacity. The effort expended to capture Hanover, however, allows German freighters SS Mimi Horn and SS Seattle to escape the Caribbean and make a break for Germany. SS Mimi Horn is scuttled to avoid capture in the Denmark Strait on 28 March; SS Seattle is lost during the early phases of the invasion of Norway on 8-9 April.