According to the Daily Express, the ‘ever-increasing power behind Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal’s master-plan for crippling Hitler’s war industries’ is beginning to yield results (1). The giant Krupp factory (nearly always rendered as ‘Krupps’ in the British press) at Essen had three ‘sections […] put out of commission’, which must be considered especially impressive […]
Some inconsistencies in the Daily Mirror‘s message today. Liverpool was bombed heavily last night in ‘One of the most severe raids in the air blitz’ (1): Fire bombs damaged a boys’ college and caused casualties; a secondary school was hit by an oil bomb and incendiaries; numbers of houses were destroyed; gas and water mains
News of Coventry’s tragedy — Hilde Marchant, writing on the front page of the Daily Express, above, says the city was ‘Guernicaed’ all Thursday night — has reached the morning press (though it was announced by the government yesterday and would have been reported on the BBC and in the evening papers). Initial reports are
The Daily Mail today leads with changes at the top of the RAF. The Chief of the Air Staff, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Cyril Newall, has been kicked upstairs to the Governor-Generalship of New Zealand. His replacement, Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, has come from commanding Bomber Command; and his replacement there
The Luftwaffe launched mass daylight raids against London and Bristol yesterday, ‘the most widespread of the war’ according to the Daily Mail (1), and with the largest losses since 15 September, too. German losses are reported to be 130 aircraft and about 300 aircrew, while the British lost 34 fighters and 19 pilots. Many people
The Daily Mail has some good news to splash on its front page today. (The Times dourly leads with the story of yet another record air raid on Berlin.) Another 46 survivors have been rescued from the lost liner SS City of Benares, which was reported as sunk last Monday. They drifted in the Atlantic
For the last two nights Bomber Command has been hitting hard at both the invasion ports — ‘their heaviest blows yet’ — as well as Hamburg and Berlin, says the front page of the Daily Mail: The Anhalter railway terminus was severely damaged following the previous day’s attack on the Potsdam stations. These stations are
Today I’ll take a break from the press and look at The Listener. This was a weekly publication of the BBC, a higher-brow companion to the Radio Times. Both carried listings of the week’s radio programmes, but whereas these are the main focus of the Radio Times, The Listener confines them to half a page
As with the Daily Mail yesterday, The Times doesn’t give the bombing of London the biggest headlines (4). Those are reserved for the RAF’s bombing of enemy shipping in the Channel ports, which the Germans are concentrating in readiness for the invasion, and this is the lead story along with Bomber Command’s raid on Hamburg.
The Manchester Guardian sums up the weekend’s raids above (5). Eighty-five enemy aircraft were shot down on Saturday, and another twenty-five yesterday. British losses on those days were thirty-seven and fifteen, respectively. The headlines make for reassuring reading: ‘Raiders baffled in attacks on aerodromes’, ‘Raiders scattered on way to London’, ‘Nazis lose 700 airmen in
