Operation Collar. After yesterday’s engagement 20 miles South of Sardinia at Spartivento, Royal Navy’s Force H turns back to return to Gibraltar and hands over convoy ME4 to Mediterranean fleet to continue East. At 2.30 PM, freighters SS Clan Forbes & SS Clan Fraser arrive at Malta escorted by destroyers HMS Decoy & HMS Hotspur. Destroyers HMS Defender & HMS Hereward and cruisers HMS Manchester & HMS Southampton escort SS New Zealand Star on towards Alexandria, Egypt.
Liverpool is heavily bombed overnight. A parachute mine destroys Edge Hill Training College, Durning Road, which collapses on a large underground shelter holding 300 people. Boiling water from the central heating system pours into the basement and the air is poisoned by fractured gas mains. 166 men, women and children are killed and many more injured.
Minesweeping trawler HMT Manx Prince sinks on a mine in the mouth of the Humber Estuary. The crew is rescued by minesweeping trawler HMT Cortina.
Italian destroyers Pigafetta, Da Recco, Pessagno & Riboty shell Greek positions on the island of Corfu, covered by torpedo boats Bassini & Prestinari.
At 10.25 AM 300 miles Northwest of Ireland, U-95 stops Norwegian SS Ringhorn with the deck gun after missing with 2 torpedoes. Ringhorn (carrying 1300 tons of coal) does not sink and the crew reboards and takes her back to Belfast, arriving on December 1. In the same area, U-103 sinks Greek SS Mount Athos at 8.42 AM (19 lives lost) and British SS St. Elwyn at 8.24 PM (24 killed, 16 crew picked up by British merchant Leeds City). U-104 disappears a few miles off the North Coast of Ireland, presumably sunk on a minefield (all 49 hands lost). http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/681.html
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