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• Soviet troops penetrated the Finnish defensive Mannerheim Line, crossing the Munasuo swamp into the Merkki sector. ww2dbase [The Winter War | CPC]
• Two wooden British ships HMS Salve and HMS Servitor successfully swept for magnetic mines on the sea bed, dragging a long charged electrical cable which detonated the mines in their wake. ww2dbase [CPC]
• In response to the six German merchant ships that had sailed out of Vigo, Spain in the previous night, search forces under Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches, Admiral Dunbar Nasmith, were formed. This group consisted of ships of the Home Fleet (battlecruiser Renown, aircraft carrier Ark Royal, cruiser Galatea and destroyers), of the Western Command, the Northern Patrol and of the French Admiral-West. ww2dbase [Start of the Battle of the Atlantic | HM]
• Submarine USS Spearfish departed New London, Connecticut bound for the Pacific. ww2dbase [Spearfish | DS]

• German submarine U-48 (Kapitänleutnant Herbert Schultze) stopped 6,843-ton Dutch Nederlandsche-Amerika Line steamer Burgerdijk southwest of the Isles of Scilly. The ship was transporting maize and wheat from the United States to Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The German crew inspected the cargo, and the German commanding officer Schultze declared that the cargo was aimed for the United Kingdom and the ship would be sunk. The The ships crew abandoned ship in lifeboats and were rescued by Dutch steamer Edam 12 hours later. Burgerdijk was sunk by a single torpedo at 1845 hours. ww2dbase [CPC, HM]
• The 1,259-ton Norwegian merchant steamer Silja had been requisitioned by the Norwegian authorities in the autumn of 1939 and had left from Trapani in Sicily, Italy on 26 Jan 1940 with a cargo of salt for Bergen, Norway via Gibraltar where she departed on 5 Feb 1940. At 2059 hours, German submarine U-37 (Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartmann) reported firing a single torpedo at an unescorted steamer about 75 miles west of Cape Clear, Ireland. The vessel broke in two after being hit aft. The stern part sank immediately, and the fore part followed a few minutes later. There were no survivors of the 15-man crew. ww2dbase [Start of the Battle of the Atlantic | CPC, HM]

• USS Helena departed Santos, Brazil. ww2dbase [Helena (St. Louis-class) | Santos | CPC]

• Hiroshi Nemoto was named the chief of staff of the Japanese South China Area Army. ww2dbase [Hiroshi Nemoto | CPC]

• Jews from Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) and Stralsund in Pommern, Germany were deported to ghettos in Lublin, Poland. ww2dbase [Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Pommern | CPC]

• HMS Hermes completed a period of refitting in Britain. ww2dbase [Hermes | CPC]

• In Washington DC, United States, President Franklin Roosevelt confronted a booing demonstration of 4,446 members of the American Youth Congress who had marched up Constitutional Avenue with banners condemning the prospect of the US being drawn into an imperialistic war. Angrily he told the demonstrators that American sympathy is overwhelmingly in support of Finnish efforts to stave off invasion, and warned them not to pass resolutions on subjects of which they have no complete knowledge. ww2dbase [Franklin Roosevelt | Washington | AC]

10 Feb 1940 Interactive Map