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
Berlin has had its longest and heaviest raid of the war so far (the lengthening nights would be making it easier for the RAF to get there and back under cover of darkness). The Air Ministry reported the raid as follows (as reported by the Manchester Guardian on page 5): Throughout last night [Monday] strong
Things are on the move again, at least in French West Africa. De Gaulle’s Free French, assisted by the Royal Navy, are attempting to wrest control of Dakar from their Vichy brethren. A naval battle was raging there yesterday afternoon, though presumably it is over now. According to the Ministry of Information, this action was
There is tragic news today. Not that there has been any shortage of that lately, but this is on a different scale, at least qualitatively. A British passenger liner has been sunk by a U-boat in the Atlantic, with heavy loss of life. The ship — its name has not yet been published — was
On the inside cover of this week’s Illustrated London News — the outside cover has advertisements on it — is a photograph taken by Cecil Beaton at the Great Ormond Street Hospital. The subject is Eileen Dunne, an air-raid victim aged 3. The caption reads: BOMBERS’ PREY. GOERING’S ATTACKS ON LONDON ACHIEVE LITTLE BUT THE
Lots of good stuff in the Spectator this week, so let’s get into it. The ‘News of the week’ section starts out on page 281 with a paragraph on the speech Churchill gave last Tuesday. Noting that ‘some 1,600 civilians have been killed [in London] and some 6,500 injured in the first half of September’,
The Prime Minister gave a speech on the war situation to the House of Commons yesterday, which I’ll come back to. The Manchester Guardian has a lot on the air war, of course (5). A big wave of enemy raiders, consisting of ‘more than 200 Messerschmitt and Heinkel fighters’ was broken up over Kent yesterday
I’ve noted that for the past two days two major London papers — The Times and the Daily Mail — have not led with the bombing of the city. I don’t have today’s Mail to hand, but it’s the same for The Times today (‘Fresh R.A.F. blow at Berlin’, etc). But here is a provincial
Today’s New Statesman and Nation has little to say about a German invasion or aerial strategy, unlike the Spectator yesterday, aside from a brief paragraph in the editorial comments (221) noting that German bombers now have an equal number of fighters as escorts: The primary object of these attacks has been to engage and destroy
