August 27th, 1941 (WEDNESDAY)
ÉIRE: An RN Fairey Fulmer makes a forced landing on Tramore Strand in County Donegal. The crew and aircraft are returned to Northern Ireland.
UNITED KINGDOM: William Dunn, while flying with 71 Squadron downs his 4th and 5th enemy aircraft to become the first American Ace of the war. (Skip Guidry)
Submarine HMS Traveler launched.
Destroyer HMS Aldenham launched.
Corvettes HMS Soroy and Eglantine commissioned.
Destroyer HMS Rotherham commissioned.
FRANCE: Versailles: Pierre Laval, the vice-premier of Vichy's council of state until last December, has been almost killed in an assassination attempt. The shooting took place today while Laval was seeing off the first members of the Legion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolshevisme on their way to the Russian front. Marcel Deat, the editor of the fascist L'Ouvre, was also wounded. Paul Colette, aged 21, has been arrested.
Laval was close to death when a German officer told him: "your assassin has been arrested; we are about to shoot him." Always a politician, he replied: "Don't do that. You do not know the French reaction as I do." He had a bullet just half a centimetre from his heart when he said this and his teeth were discoloured by blood.
Few are upset by the shooting. Laval - who rose from peasant prime minister, and favours strong collaboration with Germany - is not popular in France as Marshal Petain is. "An audouillette is like a government," Laval once said of black pudding, "you need some dung in it, but not too much."
This is not the first act of violence by the French Resistance. Last week a German officer cadet called Moser was shot in the Paris metro. Six Communists have been executed in reprisal.
U.S.S.R.: LATVIA: The German attack on Tallinn reaches its climax as the Soviet X Coors starts to evacuate by sea the units that have been holding the city. (Jeff Chrisman)
IRAN: The Prime Minister resigns.
JAPAN: The Japanese government sends a protest to the US government concerning the shipment of goods from the US to Vladivostok, USSR via Japanese waters.
Prince Fumimaro Konoye, prime minister of Japan, invites U.S. President Roosevelt to meet with him "to discuss from a broad standpoint all important problems between Japan and America covering the entire Pacific area, and to explore the possibility of saving the situation."
U.S.A.: In baseball,
Charlie Root becomes the first Chicago Cubs' pitcher to win 200 games; he
finishes the 1941 season, his last in the major leagues, with 201 wins. Root is
best known for giving up Babe Ruth's "called" home run in the third
game of the 1932 World Series. In today's game, the Cubs beat the Boston Braves
6-4 at Braves Field in Boston.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-570 surfaces immediately below a RAF Coastal Command Hudson bomber in the Atlantic. After her capture, with her Enigma cipher gear intact, she is taken to Iceland. She will later obtain a commission in the RN as HMS Graph.
The German submarine U-570 is captured by the British in the Atlantic. U-570 had left Trondheim, Norway, 23 August 1941 to operate in the North Atlantic on her first operational patrol. At 1100 hours, the captain raised the periscope and saw nothing and thus surfaced his almost stationary boat. Directly above the submarine, in its periscope "blind spot," was an RAF Hudson, aircraft "S" of No. 269 Squadron based at Kaldadarnes, Iceland. The pilot noticed the dream target and placed several well placed depth charges all around U-570 severely damaging her so severely that she could not submerge. Shortly after the initial attack, the submarine crew began waving a white flag from the conning tower indicating surrender. The Hudson pilot contacted his superiors and was told to fly watch while they figured out how they could get vessels to the area. The Hudson was relieved by a Catalina flying boat in the evening and finally after 12 hours the H.M. Trawler Northern Chief showed up but the weather was too bad to capture her at that time so she waited for reinforcements that arrived during the night in the form of the H.M. Trawlers Kingston Agate, Windermere and Wastwater and the destroyer HMS Burwell. The last ship to the scene was the Canadian destroyer HMCS Niagara [ex USS Thatcher (DD-162)]. The German had ample time to destroy all secret documents and internal fittings before the British boarded her. U-570 was towed to Iceland and beached there while being hastily repaired before she was towed to Britain where she was to be commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Graph on 29 September 1941. As HMS Graph she even later fired a torpedo towards U-333 but missed. She later ran aground on the Island of Islay of Scotland in 1944 and was wrecked. HMS Graph was broken up in 1961.
U-202 sank SS Ladylove.
U-557 sank SS Embassage, SS Tremoda and SS Saugor in Convoy OS-4.