May 7th, 1941 (WEDNESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Liverpool and Hull are bombed. For the seventh successive night Liverpool and Merseyside are ablaze. The raids began on 1 May under cloudless moonlit skies and since then the fires, especially in the docks, have never gone out. In the city the Custom House, Corn Exchange, Museum and Central Station were destroyed. Lewis's department store was gutted and a wing of Walton jail was demolished killing 22 prisoners. A Mersey Ferry, the Royal Daffodil, was sunk and a school shelter was hit, killing 160. Sixty patients and staff of a hospital died in a direct hit. One of the worst fires occurred at the Bryant and May match factory.Troops have been brought in to help clear the streets of wreckage. Cars have been banned from entering the centre, and so many telephone cables and exchanges are out of action that people have been unable to get through.
There have been 1,450 killed in this "May Week".
Westminster: In a speech to the House of Commons Churchill says: "Some have compared Hitler’s conquests with those of Napoleon. It may be that Spain and Russia will shortly furnish new chapters to that theme. It must be remembered, however, that Napoleon’s armies carried with them the fierce, liberating and equalitarian winds of the French Revolution, whereas Hitler’s empire has nothing behind it but racial self-assertion, espionage, pillage, corruption and the Prussian boot." (Peter Kilduff)
Corvette HMS Mignonette commissioned.
GERMANY: U-260, U-662 laid down.
U-352 launched.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: Units of the Mediterranean fleet shell Benghazi during the night.
Operation Tiger, an attempt to get a British convoy to North Africa, begins.
Minesweeper
HMS Stoke is bombed and sinks in Tobruk harbour during an air attack. (Alex
Gordon)(108)
CHINA: Japanese troops assault Shansi in an attempt to occupy the Chungtiao mountains.
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Summerside launched.
U.S.A.: Destroyer USS Woolsey commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: A cruiser force tries to capture the weather trawler München off Iceland. It yields an Enigma cipher machine and codebook when captured by the British destroyer HMS Somali.
On U-93, three crewmembers were wounded in an accident with the machine gun.
Between 2310 and 2312, U-94 fired four torpedoes at Convoy OB-318 about 200 miles SW of Reykjavik and reported four ships sunk, but U-94 interpreted depth charges dropped by destroyer HMS Bulldog and sloop HMS Rochester immediately after the torpedoes had detonated on Ixion and Eastern Star as hits on other ships. The both escorts dropped together 67 depth charges on the U-boat, damaging it slightly. The master and 18 crewmembers from the Ixion were picked up by corvette HMS Marigold and landed at Greenock. 68 crewmembers and nine gunners were picked up by the British merchantman Nailsea Moor and landed at Sydney. The Eastern Star was hit by one torpedo and sank some hours later in 61°25N/24°18W. All crewmembers abandoned ship in the lifeboats and were picked up by armed trawler HMS Daneman shortly thereafter.