Diary April 20, 1917

04-1917, Diary WWI, War Diary, Year 1917 / 1 minute of reading

Wooden crosses for French soldiers — Wooden crosses for French victims of the Nivelle offensive.

World War One Diary for Friday, April 20, 1917:

Western Front

Aisne: SECOND BATTLE OF THE AISNE ENDS. Battle of the Hills ends. After 5 days Nivelle‘s main achievement is Sixth Army’s (Mangin) capture of 4-mile deep salient on Western flank. This Pyrrhic victory gives Germans a straighter line to defend. Captures include 16,300 PoWs, 140 guns and 300 MGs. The ludicrously sanguine Nivelle now forced to cease breakthrough attempts, having sacrificed 134,000 men (by April 25) now proposes to revert to local attacks.
Lloyd George at Paris conference.

Sea War

Channel: British Antarctic explorer Captain Evans (later Lord Mountevans) with Dover Patrol destroyers Broke (57 casualties) and Swift (5 casualties) defeat 6 German 2nd Flotilla destroyers (night April 20-21) in complete darkness off Belgian coast. Evans sinks G42 by ramming and there is hand-tohand fighting on Broke‘s decks. G85 also sunk, 140 of 180 Germans rescued.

Politics

Turkey: Government severs relations with US (Young Turks badly split over this).

About The Author

Kretaner

My name is Norman 'Kretaner' and since my childhood I am interested in history and strategy games. Later, I have learned programming and the development of computer games, and finally with the Internet, also web design. I'm in the fortunate position to combine all my interests with my work and to live on a place of my choice, on Crete. All information, figures, specifications and statistics used here had been compiled from a variety of sources and the large, over decades collected, library of the author about military history, WW2 and weapons.

Western Front

Sea War

Politics

About The Author

Kretaner

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