RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group (Whitley). Bombing - industrial works at Wedau/Cologne.

102 Sqn. Six aircraft. All bombed. Opposition moderate.

The suspicion held for some time by the Air Ministry scientific intelligence expert Dr R V Jones and others that the Luftwaffe has a system of radio beams for guiding its bombers onto targets in England was finally confirmed last night.

An Avro Anson from the RAF’s Boscombe Down-based Blind Flying Development Unit located one such beam. Using a powerful US Hallicrafter receiver the crew identified a beam transmitted from Germany passing over the Rolls-Royce aeroplane engine factory at Derby. It was tracked down to a transmitter in Schleswig-Holstein. Urgent research is under way to counter the deadly system that the Germans call Knickebein [crooked leg].

Three German airmen who lost their lives when their bomber was brought down in an Essex town during Tuesday night’s raid were buried in the town’s cemetery yesterday. Full military honours were paid by officers and men of the R.A.F. and a firing party fired three volleys over the one large grave in which the three coffins covered with Nazi flags were interred. The Bishop of Chelmsford officiated. The Bishop’s wife was one of the mourners. There was a wreath from the R.A.F. and another from girl telephonists of the A.F.S. stationed in the town inscribed "When duty calls all must obey."

Manchester Guardian.

FRANCE: St-Jean-de-Luz: The remnant of the Polish army sails for England on the liner Batory.

Compeigne: Shortly after 6.30 this evening, General Wilhelm Keitel lost patience with the French. He told them to sign armistice terms within the next hour or they would be sent packing and the war would go on. In less than ten minutes the French capitulated.

In a voice choked with emotion General Charles Huntziger, the leader of the French delegation, said: "Forced by the fortunes of war to give up the struggle in which she was engaged on the side of her Allies, France sees very hard demands imposed on her under conditions which underline their severity." He expressed the hope that Germany "will be guided by a spirit which will permit the two neighbouring great peoples to live and work in peace."

Seated at a table in the railway carriage in which the Germans had been forced to sign the surrender at the end of the First World War, Huntziger signed the armistice terms. They are less harsh than had been expected. The Germans will occupy 60% of metropolitan France, but a French government will be responsible for the unoccupied zone and will be permitted to raise a small force for the preservation of order. However, all warships are to be recalled to France and laid up under German or Italian supervision.

France has found it difficult to swallow other German demands. All anti-Nazi German refugees are to be handed over to the German authorities; any French nationals caught fighting for Britain are to be shot at once; all French prisoners of war will remain in German camps. The armistice takes effect as soon as France has signed a similar agreement with Italy tomorrow.

The armistice teams met for the first time yesterday afternoon, with a triumphant Hitler, Göring  and von Ribbentrop">Ribbentrop present. A preamble to the terms, read by Keitel, consisted of a tirade against the 1918 armistice terms imposed on Germany "although the enemy had not defeated the German army, navy or air force in any decisive action." This ceremony in the coach at Compeigne would "blot out once and for all ... the greatest German humiliation of all time."

After listening to this polemic, the Fuhrer gave the Nazi salute and left the carriage. Outside, he read, with a grim expression, the inscription on the granite memorial to the 1918 Armistice and then ordered the stone to be blown up.

Since the beginning of the month Weygand and Petain have been resigned to defeat. When de Gaulle urged them to continue the war from North Africa, Weygand responded contemptuously: "Nonsense. In a week Britain will have her neck wrung like a chicken"

As the armistice was being signed, French troops were surrendering en masse. In Alsace-Loraine 500,000 have laid down their arms; in Brittany and the west 200,000; over 1,500,000 French soldiers are now in German hands. Panzers are roaming at will in central France; General Rommel, in a letter to his wife, cheerfully likens his advance to a holiday excursion. The charade of French military press conferences has been abandoned.

After the French had to sign their surrender document in the railroad wagon, Hitler ordered the wagon to be taken  to Berlin (Lustgarten) were it was displayed as a monument. Here it becomes a sort of mystery. Some mention, it was destroyed durng an RAF raid in 1943. Other say it was taken to Crawinkel/ Oberhof (Thueringen) at the end of the war. There it was blown up by the SS. When the debris was cleared after the war, they found the Franch emblem on the wagon. After the war the French government places a replica in Compiegne. (Michel van Best)

ITALY: Rome: The Italian High Command announced:

‘The Italian navy and air force have stepped up their activities in the Mediterranean. Powerful air attacks have been made on Marsa Matrub in North Africa. The enemy bombed the hospital and a military hospital in Tobruk. One English aeroplane was shot down. In East Africa a large number of operations have been undertaken against enemy bases in the Sudan and in Kenya. An English aeroplane was shot down during an enemy attack over Dire Dawa.’

MALTA: Flt. Lt. George Burges, in Faith, destroys the first Italian bomber over the island.

GULF of ADEN: Saga of the Galileo. The boat was finding it very difficult to stay surfaced long enough to adequately ventilate the crew compartments, and the noxious gasses were reaching dangerous levels inside, affecting the crew with serious symptoms of gas poisoning (chiefly fainting spells, nosebleeds, and a grotesque and painful swelling of the ankles). Repeatedly it seemed that the sub broke surface only to have to dive again almost at once at the sight of mastheads over the horizon or an approaching aircraft. Finally, on the morning of June 23rd, the GALLILEO's skipper realized that his men were at the end of their endurance, and determined to try to run for home on the surface. But the familiar pattern re-asserted itself. All too soon, the Italian boat was spotted by a British plane. The GALLILEO's captain took her down again, not realizing that his vessel was still quite visible from the air in the clear water. Thus the Italian sub continued to be tracked, until surface elements summoned by radio arrived on the scene. The first British sub-chaser to show up was the MOONSTONE, a converted trawler. With a large percentage of the Italian crew now incapacitated by the effects of the malfunctioning air conditioning, the GALLILEO's skipper made a decision. He had correctly guessed, by the sound of the screws, that his single adversary was a fairly small craft. Since the circling British plane had now also departed (I'm assuming due to lack of fuel), and since the GALLILEO was one of those large ocean-going subs which mounted not one but two 100-mm deck guns, he decided to take his chances shooting it out on the surface. This was not a bad decision, since the Italian boat indeed had the advantage against the MOONSTONE, which had a single 4-inch (102-mm) gun forward. And the Italian skipper's faith in his men's efficiency was also apparently warranted. When the GALLILEO burst to the surface, surprisingly close to its pursuer, it was the Italian sub's forward gun which got off the first shot. However, they missed, despite the point-blank range, and the crew of the MOONSTONE did not give them another chance. Demonstrating their own proficiency at gun drill, the British trawler's gunscrew rapidly replied with two shots of their own. One of these scored a direct hit on the GALLILEO's conning tower, which in effect ended the fight, killing the Italian commander and also killing or wounding virtually everyone else on the bridge and in the control room. With many of the crew already disabled by the poisonous gas, and most of the healthy sailors manning the guns (or their ammunition chain) fore and aft, the boat was literally left adrift. The British subsequently boarded it, a fortuitous coup because they thereby recovered documents including one which detailed the adjacent patrol area of the Italian sub GALVANI. Armed with this precise information, the British proceeded to lay on a careful search for the GALVANI, which in due course was also found and sunk. (Mike Yaklich)

K class destroyer HMS in company with HMS KANDAHAR and HMS Kingston and sloops HMS Shoreham and HMS Indus find Italian submarine Torricelli and fight it out for 40 minutes on the surface. Khartoum suffers a hit from a 10 cm shell which splinters the air vessel of a torpedo, and as the resulting fire could not be contained, the ship is beached on Perim Island in the Red Sea at 12 38N 43 24E.  (Alex Gordon)(108)

     About 35 minutes into the fight one of the destroyers scored a direct hit on the sub's conning tower, disabling the steering and wounding the commander, Lt-Commander Pelosi.  Shortly thereafter Pelosi ordered the boat to be scuttled. 

     This was a quite remarkable surface action, from the Italian point of view.  The Toricelli had been damaged in a previous encounter off Djibouti, and was unable to submerge.  It therefore had no choice (other than surrender) but to fight it out, despite the fact that, faced with three destroyers and two gunboats, it disposed a single 100mm deck gun and four 13.2mm machineguns to face 18 x 4.7-inch and four 4-inch guns on the five British warships. 

     Yet the Toricelli had begun the fight, firing the first shot, and its second shot hit the gunboat Shoreham, forcing it from the fight.  The Italian sub also emptied all its torpedo tubes during the action, but without effect, except to force evasive maneuvers and thus prolong the fight. 

     The British, who fired off 700 rounds of 4- and 4.7-inch to achieve their one hit, were impressed enough to fete Pelosi and his officers at a formal dinner. The survivors of the Italian sub were picked up and taken to Aden. One British officer toasted, "though we were five to one, we were able neither to sink you, nor capture you, nor force you to surrender". The British commanding admiral made a point of meeting the Italian sub skipper. (Mike Yaklich)

JAPAN: A new Japanese cabinet is formed by Prince Konoye Fumiaro, with General Tojo Hideki as Minister  of War and Matsuoka Yosuke as Minster of Foreign Affairs.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: At 0158, the Randsfjord, dispersed from Convoy HX-49, was hit by one torpedo from U-30 about 70 miles SSE of Queenstown. The torpedo struck on the port side in the foreship and caused the ship to sink capsizing after three minutes. The master and three crewmembers were lost. Two men were crushed and injured between the starboard lifeboat and the side of the ship when they lost their grip while lowering themselves down to the boat. Some men jumped overboard and were later picked up by the boat. The U-boat surfaced and the Germans questioned the survivors, handed them a bottle of Brandy before leaving the area at full speed after two destroyers were spotted. The survivors set sail for land, but were picked up after 36 hours by the British steam merchant Port Hobart and landed in Glasgow on 25 June, where three men were admitted to hospital.

The Eli Knudsen had been in Convoy HX-49, which was dispersed approx. 100 miles SW of Cape Clear after U-47 had torpedoed the San Fernando in the middle of the convoy at 2007 on 21 Jun, 1940. At 0336 hours the next day, U-32 torpedoed the Eli Knudsen (one of the slowest ships in the convoy). All crewmembers abandoned ship in lifeboats and were picked up a few hours later by HMS Sandwich and taken to Liverpool. The tanker remained afloat and an attempt was made the next day to tow her to port, but she sank on 24 June in tow of the British tanker Corinda at 50.36N/07.51W.

At 0217, the Neion was hit in the engine room by one stern torpedo from U-38 and sank by the stern after five minutes. The cargo of naphtha drums was recovered in 1948.