The first "Essential Work Orders" will apply to the engineering, aircraft, building and shipbuilding industries, the railways, the docks and the mines. The 221,000 workers in the five royal dockyards and in 52 private yards are now put under the control of the admiralty, which will decide priorities.

Shipyards have been plagued by stoppages at a time when nearly a million tons of shipping have been sunk in the current quarter. This week John Brown's on Clydeside is on strike.

Submarine HMS Splendid laid down.

GERMANY: U-412 laid down.

GREECE: The first troops of the British expeditionary force land at Piraeus and Volos. The first of the 58,000 British and Australian troops to occupy the Olympus-Vermion line in Greece arrive from Egypt. 
 

EGYPT: Cairo: Smuts gives his permission for South African troops to be used anywhere in Africa.

AMERICAN SAMOA: The transport USS William P. Biddle (AP-15), escorted by light cruiser USS Concord (CL-10), arrives at Pago Pago on Tutuila Island, and disembarks the 7th defence Battalion, the first unit of the Fleet Marine Force deployed to the Southern Hemisphere in World War II. 

CUBA: In U.S. major league baseball, the Brooklyn Dodgers play the Cleveland Indians in Havana. The Dodgers’ shortstop Pee Wee Reese and left fielder Joe Medwick use a batting helmet designed by two Johns Hopkins Hospital doctors in Baltimore, Maryland. The two Dodgers, victims of being hit by a pitcher last year, pronounce the helmets satisfactory. 

ATLANTIC OCEAN: German submarine U-47 commanded by Korvettenkapitän Günther Prien is last heard of in the North Atlantic about 300 miles (483 kilometres) south-southeast of Reykjavik, Iceland, near the Rockall Banks. All hands, 45 men, are lost. There is still no certain confirmation of how U-47 was lost. For years it was believed that the British destroyer HMS Wolverine sank U-47 on 8 March, 1941 after depth charges attacks, but the Wolverine actually attacked submarine U-A. Possible reasons for the loss of U-47 include mines, by its own torpedoes or by an attack by British corvettes HMS Camellia and Arbutus. On 14 October 1939, Prien had taken U-47 into the heavily defended British North Fleet main harbour at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands and sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak; Prien was awarded the Knights Cross for this action. 

In a second attack on Liverpool-out convoy OB293 southeast of Iceland, U-70 is sunk by corvettes HMS Arbutus and HMS Camellia at 0725. 20 dead, 25 survivors. The conning tower of U-70 had been badly damaged, but the pressure hull remained intact and Matz decided to head away from the convoy for repairs. At 0815, Camellia sighted the U-boat on the surface, which dived shortly afterwards. Until 1030, this corvette and Arbutus carried out five attacks with depth charges, followed by another four attacks by Camellia. Altogether the corvettes dropped 48 depth charges in the nine attacks. The U-boat was forced to surface at 1244 after the last attack and had to be abandoned by the crew. The corvettes picked up 25 survivors. The survivors claimed that they had hit three ships in the first attack at 0445 hours and another in the second. But in fact three ships were damaged - Athelbeach, Delilian and Mijdrecht. At 0640, U-99 torpedoed the already damaged Athelbeach and the crew abandoned ship. At 0715, the U-boat began to shell the tanker and sank her with a coup de grâce 15 minutes later. The master and six crewmembers were lost. 37 crewmembers were picked up by corvette HMS Camellia and landed at Greenock. At 0725, the Mijdrecht in Convoy OB-293 was hit by one torpedo from U-70 and continued at slow speed. The tanker rammed the U-boat as it tried to deliver a coup de grâce and reported the position to the escorts. The ship arrived in Rothesay Bay on 19 March, was temporary repaired at Govan and later went to Middlesbrough for permanent repairs.

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sight the battleship Malaya that together with other cruisers escorts convoy SL-67 of 58 ships. Lütjens reports the position of the convoy to the U-boats that sink the Hindpool, Lahore, Harmodius, and Nardana, with a total tonnage of 28,500 tons. In the next eight days U-105 and U-106 sink seven more ships and score a torpedo hit in Malaya that heads to New York via Trinidad for repairs. (Navy News)