13 May 1941 | World War II Database

13 May 1941

Battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen conducted refueling exercises. ww2dbase [Bismarck | CPC]
Battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen conducted refueling exercises. ww2dbase [Prinz Eugen | CPC]
British troops began gathering for the Operation Brevity offensive in the Libyan-Egyptian border region. Axis aircraft discovered and bombed one tank concentration. ww2dbase [Operation Brevity | CPC]
German submarines U-98 and U-111 attacked Allied convoy SC-30 off Greenland in the morning, sinking British ship Somersby (entire crew of 43 survived and rescued by Greek ship Marika Protopapa) and armed merchant cruiser HMS Salopian (3 were killed, 287 survived). Also in the morning, U-105 sank British ship Benvrackie at 0748 hours 700 miles off Sierra Leone, British West Africa; 28 were killed, 55 survived. ww2dbase [CPC]
British gunboat HMS Gnat shelled the German airfield at Gazala, Libya 30 miles west of Tobruk after sundown in an attempt to disrupt the German aerial campaign against the besieged Tobruk. ww2dbase [Siege of Tobruk | CPC]
A shipment of Vichy French weapons arrived in Mosul, Iraq from French Mandate of Syria, containing 15,500 rifles, 6 million rounds of ammunition, 200 machine guns, 4 75-mm field guns, and 10,000 shells. Meanwhile, a British mobile column from Palestine reached Rubah, Iraq, finding it already abandoned by Iraqi forces. ww2dbase [Campaigns in the Middle East | CPC]
The Red Army commenced the movement of substantial forces to the western frontier, but out of the thirty-three divisions deployed only four or five were fully equipped by the outbreak of war. ww2dbase [Operation Barbarossa | AC]
In Germany, a new Decree on wartime military jurisdiction was published, which removed crimes against civilians from the sphere of courts martial and suspended any obligation to punish offences against "hostile civilian persons" committed by soldiers. ww2dbase [AC]

Timeline Section Founder: Thomas Houlihan
Contributors: Alan Chanter, C. Peter Chen, Thomas Houlihan, Hugh Martyr, David Stubblebine
Special Thanks: Rory Curtis

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