Eighty years ago, the Royal Navy shows its capacity for self-immolation, Chamberlain offers a proto-EU as a war-aim and the Soviets attack Finland
The Royal Navy fought one of the
sanguinary and futile actions which are the stuff of legend, albeit legend that
glorifies pointless self-immolation. The Armed Merchant Cruiser HMS Rawalpindi
was an oldish P&O liner capable of 15 knots, which had been requisitioned by the navy and kitted out
with elderly 6 inch guns and manned by equally elderly naval reservists. She had
the bad fortune to encounter the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, heavily
armoured modern battleships capable of 31 knots and armed with 11 inch guns,
even their secondary armament of 5.9 inch guns was superior to Rawalpindi’s.
The Germans called on the British ship to surrender but her captain, 60 year old Edward
Kennedy, chose to fight in the full knowledge that his ship was doomed. He did
not seem to have considered scuttling her and letting the crew take to the
boats. Rawalpindi scored one hit on Scharnhorst which caused minor damage. Kennedy and over 200 of his crew were killed when she was sunk; only fifty or
so survived. Captain Kennedy was awarded a posthumous mention in despatches; he was not, as is sometimes supposed, awarded the Victoria Cross. The confusion might arise because Captain Edward Fegen of another Armed Merchant Cruiser HMS Jervis Bay did receive a Victoria Cross posthumously when his ship was sunk in a similarly unequal fight a year later with the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer; Jervis Bay was escorting a convoy and her sacrifice bought time for most of its ships to escape. Kennedy's son, Ludovic, became a famous advocate and broadcaster.
Neville Chamberlain broadcast to
the nation for the first time since the outbreak of war. He described his
health as unimpaired, lest anyone were concerned that he had suffered an attack
of gout severe enough to be reported in the newspapers. He claimed, accurately,
that British naval losses including the Rawalpindi’s did not dent
British naval dominance but this did serve to remind listeners that the
Kriegsmarine had been significantly more successful so far. He offered a vision
of a New Europe in which nations would settle their differences by negotiations
and active international trade would cement peace. He frankly applied the term
utopian to his vision and accepted that it would takes years to achieve.
The Soviet Union broke off
diplomatic relations with Finland, denounced the non-aggression pact between
the countries and almost immediately declared war. The reason given was an
entirely imaginary Finnish “threat to Leningrad.” Quite why the Soviets felt
the need to observe the practices of diplomacy in undertaking such a
transparently predatory attempt at expansion is unclear. Units of the Red Army attacked
– possibly before Molotov had actually delivered his declaration of war – and air
raids were launched on the civilian population of Helsinki. The Winter War had
begun.
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