Air War: Germans bomb Shetland Islands. No casualties, only one rabbit killed.
Air raid warning in Paris, anti-aircraft guns engage German reconnaissance aircraft.

Sea War: Royal Navy destroyer Blanche mined and sunk off Thames Estuary. She is the first British destroyer to be lost.

Neutrals, Holland: P.M. de Geer justifies recent defence measures and declares that the immediate danger is over.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1939

Western Front: (MAIN EVENT) 'Plan D' (the 'Dyle Plan' ) adopted by French and British High Commands after secret, inconclusive discussions with the Belgians. A German invasion of Belgium to be countered by an immediate Anglo-French advance to the 'Meuse-Antwerp Line', South and East of Brussels.

Dyle Plan: The Allies had an illfounded faith in their Maginot Line - still incomplete - which stretched only to the Belgian border. The threat of a German attack through Belgium, comparable to the Schlieffen Plan of 1914, was to be met through the Dyle Plan. This strategy called for blocking any advance between the Ardennes and Calais by a swift deployment of troops into Belgium from the vicinity of Sedan.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1939

Diplomacy: German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop rejects Dutch-Belgian peace appeal from November 7.

Occupied Czechoslovakia: Large-scale demonstrations at funeral of Jan Opletal, a medical student mortally wounded in Prague at the Independence day from October 28.

China, Sino-Japanese War: Japanese capture last Chinese port of Pakhoi. Since July 1937 Japanese have taken now all of China's seaports.

Picture: Japanese infantry are pictured in action in south China. The machine gun is the 6.5mm Type 96, which incorporated features of the Czechoslovak ZB.

Sea War: Pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee sinks British tanker Africa Shell South of Madagascar.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1939

Sea War: British, French and Australian warships search for German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in Indian Ocean and East Indies.

Picture: the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in ice drifts in the Baltic Sea. To escape from British patrols, the ship had left the Baltic for the South Atlantic before the outbreak of WW2.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1939

Sea War Atlantic: Pocket battleship Deutschland (Germany) arrives at Gdynia (Baltic) after her Atlantic raiding cruise (2 ships sunk).
Renamed Lutzow by Hitler in February 1940 to save face if she is sunk.

Air War: German reconnaissance aircraft flies over North West England.
Germans drop propaganda booklets over Central and South East France.
RAF photographs Wilhelmshaven naval base.

Picture: the most numerous long-range reconnaissance aircraft of the Luftwaffe at the beginning of WW2 was the Dornier Do 17.

Diplomacy: Third meeting of Allied Supreme War Council in London. 'Plan D' adopted ('Dyle Plan', see November 14). British and French economies to be closely integrated.

Occupied Czechoslovakia: SS occupy all universities (night 16-17), nine student leaders are executed and 1,200 sent to concentration camp. Universities closed until 1945.
Czech National Committee formed by ex-President Benes in Paris.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1939

Sea War Atlantic: four merchant ships sunk by magnetic mines off British East Coast. 86 passangers killed on Dutch liner Simon Bolivar.

Home Front Britain: IRA cause 4 small bomb explosions in London business premises.

Occupied Czechoslovakia: Martial law proclaimed in Prague.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1939

Occupied Poland: Germans erect barricades round Jewish quarter of Warsaw.