July 28th, 1941 (MONDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM:
Destroyer HMS Wensleydale laid down.
Minesweeping trawler HMS FOULA is laid down.
Corevette HMS TAMARISK is launched.
GERMANY: U-625 and U-626 are laid down.
FINLAND
: Finnish Foreign Minister Witting informs the British Ambassador SirSubmarine Vesikko sinks 4100-ton ship Vyborg east from Suursaari.
U.S.S.R.:
German forces start to liquidate Soviet troops trapped near the town of Smolensk.FRENCH INDOCHINA: Saigon:
The crisis in the Far East worsened today when 30,000 Japanese troops entered French Indochina. The build-up includes elements of the Japanese navy, which have sailed into Camranh Bay, and aircraft which are flying into Saigon. Japanese troops have also begun disembarking in Cambodia where 8,000 men will be within striking range of Siam.
The Japanese thrust has come soon after a conference in Tokyo on 2 July decided on a southward advance rather than the attack on Russia which the Germans wanted.
Malaya is now seriously threatened from Indochina, which is providing the Japanese with a naval base within 750-miles of Singapore and airfields within 300 miles of northern Malaya. The Japanese move has isolated the Philippines and menaces the oil-rich Dutch East Indies.
The Vichy regime has given the Japanese a free hand in Indochina on the pretext that it was threatened by British and Gaullist plots.
The US and Britain have reacted quickly. All Japanese assets in the United States have been frozen, with an embargo on the supply of oil, steel and other strategic materials to Japan. Britain and the Dutch East Indies followed suit and Japan, faced with economic strangulation, has either to yield to western demands or go to war.
JAPAN: The Japanese government freezes all U.S.
assets in Japan.
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Buctouche arrived St. John's and joined NEF.
U.S.A.: The aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CV-7) gets underway from Norfolk, Virginia, carrying the air echelon of the USAAF's 33d Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor). USS Wasp, escorted by the heavy cruiser USS Vincennes (CA-44) and two destroyers, is carrying 30 P-40Cs and three PT-17 trainers. She will join Task Force 16 enroute to Iceland where the USAAF aircraft will be flown off.
Destroyer USS Corry launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
Between 2127 and 2128, U-203 fired four torpedoes at Convoy OG-69 NW of Cape Finisterre and had to dive after the attack. U-203 interpreted the heard detonations and sinking noises and reported three ships sunk and a destroyer probably damaged. In fact, only the Norita and Lapland were hit and sunk. The master, 22 crewmembers and three gunners from the Lapland were picked up by HMS Rhododendron and landed at Gibraltar.
SS Wrotham sunk by U-561 at 43N, 17W.