DATES THAT SHAPED THE WAR: AUGUST 1940
Seventy years on we chart some of the keymoments and events of the SecondWorldWar.
Thursday, 1st The Duke and Duchess of Windsor sailed from Lisbon on the US liner Excalibur after the collapse of a German plot to seize the royal couple and pressurize theminto leading peacemoves against the Duke's brother, King George, and Winston Churchill. Code-named Operation Willi, the Germans were hoping to induce the Duke to work with Hitler for either a peace settlement with Britain or for the Duke’s restoration to the throne after the German conquest of Britain. The couple, who were living in France, fled to Spain when the Germans invaded and went to Portugal.
Friday, 2nd
Lord Beaverbrook joined the war cabinet. The PrimeMinister had brought Beaverbrook into the government in May, and he proved to be one of its outstanding successes. Since he becameMinister of Aircraft Production – a new post – he had boosted output of fighters. In February there was a shortfall: 141 planes produced against a planned 171. InMay, however, this had been turned around with 261 planes planned and 325 built.
• The Vichy Government sentences General de Gaulle, who is in London, to death for treason in his absence.
Monday, 5th
The Japanese arrested seven members of the Salvation Army on the grounds that they were conducting acts of espionage. In response Britain arrested leading Japanese businessmen in Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and London, including the UK manager of Mitsubishi.
Tuesday, 6th
The first contingent of airmen from Southern Rhodesia arrived in Britain to join the increasingly international air force that was building in Britain. The men joined not only British and Polish pilots but also airmen from Canada, Australia and New Zealand – as well as volunteers from Ireland and the USA. Throughout the Empire, towns, islands, colonies and even tribes were donating money for individual aircraft to help the mother country.
Thursday, 15th Referring to statistics given out by the RAF on German combat losses, the German press used headlines such as “England Flees into Numbers Craze” and “Delirium Still Mounting”. The newspaper Berliner Borsen- Zeitung stated that this was a clear indication that Britain’s situation was desperate. “Fear alone”, claimed the newspaper, “could drive themto rave in this way about the supposed numbers of German and British losses”.
Friday, 16th
Fighter Command’s only Victoria Cross of the war was awarded to Flight LieutenantE.J.B.Nicolson for his actions on this day. The announcement in The London Gazette stated: “When about to abandon his aircraft owing to flames in the cockpit he sighted an enemy fighter. This he attacked and shot down, although as a result of staying in his burning aircraft he sustained serious burns to his hands, face, neck and legs”.During his descent by parachute,Nicolson was fired on bymembers of the Home Guard.
Saturday, 17th Pilot Officer William Mead Lindsey “Billy” Fiske III became the first American to die while serving in the RAF during the Second World War. He had crash-landed the previous day after an engagement with German aircraft overWest Sussex. Having sustained horrific burns, he died barely twenty-four hours later.
• In response to Fighter Command’s demand for replacement pilots, Operational Training Unit courses for fighter pilots are shortened. During the Battle of Britain, pupils were passed out with as little as ten to twenty hours on Spitfires or Hurricanes.
•For the first time in thewarGerman aircraft bombed the suburbs of London, but not the actual city itself.According toReuters: “The firstGerman report that London’s port district had been ‘very badly damaged’ provoked somemirth; while the later German reports that their ’planes ‘danced’ over London, that gigantic fires were raging on both sides of the Thames, and that a curtain of smoke lay across the whole of London, gave Londonersmuch amusement.”
TUESDAY, 20 AUGUST 1940 Winston Churchill delivered his famous speech in
which he said: “Never in the field of human conflict was somuch owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day.” He is pictured here nine days later, on 29 August 1940, during a visit to Dover and Ramsgate to inspect air raid damage and meet local ARP staff. The original caption states that there was an almost continuous air raid warning during the visit and that whilst in “Hell’s Corner”, as this part of Kent had been labelled, Churchill witnessed an aerial battle in which two aircraft were shot down into the Channel in front of him. The caption adds that he “remained unperturbed” by the dangers, his only concession to safety being to swap his hat for a steel helmet. (Mirrorpix)
Friday, 9th
The German “New British Broadcasting Station” (NBBS) – a propaganda radio station – announced that German parachutists would descend on Britain wearing some of the 100,000 British uniforms captured in France or otherwise dressed as miners.
Tuesday, 13th An experimental British radar, using the cavity magnetron which was developed only sixmonths earlier, tracked aman on a bicycle for the first time – though his radar cross-section was enhanced as he was carrying a tin of biscuits.
AUGUST 2010
Sunday, 18th Both the RAF and the Luftwaffe suffered the highest number of aircraft destroyed or damaged in the air and on the ground of any day during the whole of the Battle of Britain.
Saturday, 24th German bombs fall on central London for the first time when ten aircraft of Kampfgeschwader 1 dropped their cargoes on the city due to a navigational error.
Sunday, 25th In retaliation for the Luftwaffe’s attack on London, eighty-one Vickers Wellingtons, ArmstrongWhitworthWhitleys and Handley Page Hampdens were desptached to attack Berlin for the first time. Six of the Hampdens failed to return.
Tuesday, 27th In another outburst, the German “New British Broadcasting Station” urged the British public to “horsewhip Churchill” and his “underlings” and to burn their property.
Saturday, 30th Speaking of Operation Sealion, Generaladmiral Raeder stated that the German army should concentrate its invasion on a narrow front between Folkestone and Eastbourne. General Halder, the Chief of the Army General Staff, responded furiously calling the idea “complete suicide”. Believing that the British would, as a result, be able to launch a concentrated and decisive counterattack, he added that under such a plan he “might just as well put the troops through a sausage machine”.
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SATURDAY, 24 AUGUST 1940 Britain’s drive for scrap and salvage, announced on 10 July 1940, continues apace. Here a cannon, reputedly a Russian relic from the CrimeanWar, is pictured being removed from Greyfriars Green Park in Coventry in preparation for beingmelted down for the war effort. (Mirrorpix)
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