March 13th, 1941 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Glasgow and Clydeside suffer their first major Luftwaffe raid tonight; 236 aircraft drop 272 tons of high explosive and 59,400 incendiaries. In the shipbuilding town of Clydebank only seven houses were left undamaged, and three-quarters of its population were made homeless. The raid leaves 1,100 dead and 1,000 injured. 13 bombers are claimed.Merseyside is also raided and in Cardiff the Royal Infirmary is hit.
RAF Bomber Command: Raids on Hamburg.
NETHERLANDS: Dutch radio societies are disbanded on orders of the German occupation forces.
GERMANY: Berlin: Germany repeats its demand that Yugoslavia join the Axis.
Hitler issues a directive for the invasion of the Soviet Union. He appoints Alfred Rosenberg minister of the eastern occupied territories; he gives administrative control of future eastern conquests to Himmler; Göring is to exploit the Soviet economy to serve Germany.
ALBANIA: Tiranë: With the Duce himself present the Italian High Command ordered his soldiers to attack at all costs. The costs were high, despite the courage of Mussolini's blackshirts who fought furiously to regain vital heights in the Temepeleni region.
They attacked the heights in close-packed waves, but tonight their offensive stopped leaving thousands dead on the mountainside.
A Greek statement insisted that no ground had been taken. The Italians dropped leaflets among their own men, stressing the presence of the Duce to maintain flagging morale.
(Mike Yaklich adds): Bari Division replaces the Puglie in renewed heavy assaults on Monastery Hill. Despite a sophisticated artillery fire plan featuring a rolling barrage, the first attack suffers severe losses without reaching its objective. After dark the Bari tries again with a night attack that reaches the summit briefly but is quickly driven back.
LIBYA: General Erwin Rommel,
commander of the Afrika Korps, moves his headquarters forward to Sirte and
orders the occupation of Mirada, about 60 miles (97 kilometres) south of Aghelia.
CHINA: Ichang: Chinese Nationalist forces have successfully repulsed Japan's latest offensive in western Hupeh after a week of heavy fighting in which the Japanese are thought to have suffered at least 4,000 casualties.
The Nationalist counter-attack, which has driven the Japanese back to their old positions at Ichang, has been a mix of guerrilla attacks and conventional flanking movements by the River defence Force, which has managed to penetrate behind enemy lines.
NEWFOUNDLAND: HMS Burin (ex-MMS 141) and Cottel (ex-MMS 142) ordered Steers Shipbuilding St John's.
U.S.A.: It is reported that at present there are 32 strikes going-on in the defence industries. This does not include the number in the allied industries. Chairman of the House naval affairs committee, Carl Vinson, estimated that 1940 strikes wasted enough labour to manufacture 325 bombers. Vinson is urging the government to bring in a measure to curb strikes in plants producing defence materials. He reported that the loss during 1940 and to the middle of last February totalled 7,817,360 man-hours.
The government freezes Hungarian assets in the U.S.
Destroyer USS Ericsson commissioned.