[Doug64]

August 26, Monday

French outposts swing to de Gaulle

French Equatorial Africa is the latest French colony to support General de Gaulle’s Free French Governor Eboue of Chad, France’s first Black governor in Africa, says today that he refuses to accept capitulation. The other Equatorial territories will make similar statements in the coming days. Elsewhere in French Africa, recent weeks have seen the replacement of pro-Allied officials with Vichy supporters, although the Ivory Coast rallied to de Gaulle on July 26th. The New Hebrides in the Pacific was the first colony to back de Gaulle on July 22nd.

Air raid kills three in neutral Wexford

Ireland’s neutrality, assiduously preserved by the premier, Eamon de Valera, has not won immunity from German air raids. Luftwaffe bombs hit four places in County Wexford today, 130 miles (208 km) from the board. Two of the three young women killed while working at a creamery are sisters. The third, a blast victim, is found sitting at a dining table, knife and fork in hand. The motive for the attack isn’t clear, for Ireland, like neutral Spain and Turkey, is an intelligence gold mine for the Germans. Dublin’s representative in Berlin protests.

[Doug64]

August 30, Friday

Capitals bombed by rival air forces

Berlin and London both came under attack from the air today. This war of the capitals started when more than one Heinkel 111 flew too far up the Thames and bombed London by mistake on the night of August 24th.

Churchill immediately ordered the bombing of Berlin, and the next night, 81 British bombers attacked the German capital—much to the dismay of the Berliners and the fury of Hitler, who had promised that Berlin would never feel the weight of British bombs.

Hitler, who had dreamed of a triumphal procession through an undamaged London like the one through Paris, was incensed. He will doubtless be pondering further reprisals on the British capital, which will please his new Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering, who is of the view that London is the only target that British air power will have to defend at all costs; in doing so, he believes, the RAF will almost certainly be destroyed.

So far, most attacks on London have been over the southern suburban fringes because that is where the prime targets are—airfields such as Beggin Hill and Kenley.

The Luftwaffe also comes by night, dropping high explosive and incendiary bombs on these outskirts. These night raids haven’t caused much damage; likewise, RAF damage to Berlin has also been fairly insignificant.

One of the RAF bomber pilots reports, “When we arrived we found the target well on fire. We could see it when we were 25 minutes flying time away. We put our stick of bombs down just to the left of this big fire. Then four more fires started. Altogether we were cruising around over Berlin for about half an hour.”

It seems certain that the bombing of both London and Berlin will intensify. It remains to be seen which of the capitals will best be able to sustain its morale; this depends on the people’s will as well as the pilots’ skill.

[Doug64]

August 31, Saturday

Invaders are ready to sail for England

Brushing aside the misgivings of his generals and admirals, Hitler has ordered Operation Sealion, the invasion of England, to proceed. Goering has promised to destroy the fighter defenses in the south of England in four days and the rest of the RAF in two or three weeks. So the Fuhrer says that he will decide on the invasion date in the next fortnight.

The transfer of shipping to the Channel ports is beginning, and plans for a feint attack against Britain's east coast have been made. However, Hitler still has not resolved a bitter dispute between the army and the navy over the deployment of the invasion force.

The army has planned a landing on a 200-mile (320-km) front from Ramsgate to Lyme Regis, throwing 1,722 barges, 1,161 motorboats, 470 tugs, and 155 transports into action. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder says it is impossible for his navy to protect such a vast and widely dispersed force. He has told Hitler that the navy would risk having all its ships sunk by the British.

Raeder, who Hitler made a grand admiral on April 1, 1939, says the army should concentrate on a narrow front between Folkestone and Eastbourne. “Complete suicide,” General Halder, the Chief of Staff, responds furiously. The British would hit them with overwhelming force. “I might just as well put the troops through a sausage machine.”

During a strategy meeting at Hitler’s Obersalzberg retreat, Hitler asks Raeder to give his opinion. “All things considered,” Raeder says, “the best time for the operation would be May 1941.” This certainly isn’t the answer Hitler wants. By next year, the British will have even longer to prepare plans to counter an invasion, the British Army will have recovered from its Dunkirk defeat, and the German Kriegsmarine will still be unable to challenge the Royal Navy.

[Potemkin]

Operation Sealion was wargamed in 1974. The outcome was a catastrophic defeat for Germany.

Wiki link

[Doug64]

Operation Sealion was wargamed in 1974. The outcome was a catastrophic defeat for Germany.

Wiki link

Interesting wargame, I like how even the things that weren't known by the gamers at the time helped make it a more accurate simulation. And yeah, at this point Hitler was still listening at least somewhat to his commanders, and there was a good reason they insisted on air superiority. And why switching to targeting London was such a bad decision for the Germans.

[Potemkin]

Interesting wargame, I like how even the things that weren't known by the gamers at the time helped make it a more accurate simulation. And yeah, at this point Hitler was still listening at least somewhat to his commanders, and there was a good reason they insisted on air superiority. And why switching to targeting London was such a bad decision for the Germans.

A myth has arisen that Hitler was a terrible tactician who never listened to his generals. This was true, but only after it was clear that the War was lost. Hitler became increasingly irrational after Operation Citadel and the Battle of Kursk. But before then, he was perfectly sensible when taking military decisions. If anything, he was overly cautious. He even correctly saw that the plan presented to him for Operation Barbarossa was crazy. But the Heer insisted that this was how it had to be done.

[Doug64]

A myth has arisen that Hitler was a terrible tactician who never listened to his generals. This was true, but only after it was clear that the War was lost. Hitler became increasingly irrational after Operation Citadel and the Battle of Kursk. But before then, he was perfectly sensible when taking military decisions. If anything, he was overly cautious. He even correctly saw that the plan presented to him for Operation Barbarossa was crazy. But the Heer insisted that this was how it had to be done.

I've heard him described as a fine offensive amateur, and a good deal of his success came from choosing to listen to the right generals. But that didn't keep him from making mistakes that cost Germany the war (primarily by not listening to the right generals), and once Germany was forced onto the defensive the Allies were lucky (militarily) to have Hitler in command of their primary enemy because he stopped listening to his generals entirely.

[Potemkin]

I've heard him described as a fine offensive amateur, and a good deal of his success came from choosing to listen to the right generals. But that didn't keep him from making mistakes that cost Germany the war (primarily by not listening to the right generals), and once Germany was forced onto the defensive the Allies were lucky (militarily) to have Hitler in command of their primary enemy because he stopped listening to his generals entirely.

Indeed. Hitler seemed to lose all sense of judgement once it became clear that Germany was losing the War (basically, after the Battle of Kursk, when Germany lost the military initiative and never again regained it). The British even called off a mission to assassinate Hitler late on in the War, because by then they regarded Hitler as an Allied asset.

[Doug64]

September 1940

September 3, Tuesday

Well-dressed spies swiftly arrested

In Lydd, Kent, Mabel Cole, the wife of the publican of the Rising Sun, has every reason to be suspicious when a well-dressed young man knocks on the door at 9:00 am and asks for a glass of cider. He speaks with a foreign accent in a prohibited area and is plainly ignorant of English licensing laws. Mrs. Cole sends him across the road to Tilbey’s stores to buy cigarettes while she summons help.

The young man, a Dutchman, is one of four well-dressed spies—two of them German—who landed on the beach here today before being arrested.

[Potemkin]

September 1940

September 3, Tuesday

Well-dressed spies swiftly arrested

In Lydd, Kent, Mabel Cole, the wife of the publican of the Rising Sun, has every reason to be suspicious when a well-dressed young man knocks on the door at 9:00 am and asks for a glass of cider. He speaks with a foreign accent in a prohibited area and is plainly ignorant of English licensing laws. Mrs. Cole sends him across the road to Tilbey’s stores to buy cigarettes while she summons help.

The young man, a Dutchman, is one of four well-dressed spies—two of them German—who landed on the beach here today before being arrested.

[Doug64]

:lol:

Yeah, there was a certain Keystone Cops element in that pointless stunt.

[Doug64]

September 6, Friday

Carol toppled from Romanian throne

King Carol of Romania today surrenders to the dictator General Ion Antonescu and abdicates in favor of his son, Prince Michael.

The king, who will seek asylum in Switzerland, declares, “I have decided to abdicate in face of the misfortunes which have come to this country. I hope by this sacrifice to save my country.” This is the second time that Carol has given up his throne. He renounced his right of succession in 1925 for love of his mistress, Magda Lupescu, before returning to turn his son off the throne in 1930.

[Doug64]

September 7, Saturday

Goering brings RAF to breaking point

Britain’s Fighter Command has reached a crisis point as it faces increasingly ferocious attacks on its airfields and RDF stations and mounting losses in the air. Goering, desperate to finish off the RAF fighters, is using large numbers of fighters, which RDF cannot distinguish from bombers, to tempt them into battle.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding’s tactics are to refuse battle with the fighters and to concentrate on the bombers, and he is feeding in his planes in a miserly fashion in order to preserve his command. But while he has enough planes, he doesn’t have enough men. Newly-trained pilots with only twenty hours’ flying time in Spitfires are thrown into battle and too often shot down on their first sortie. Dowding has lost eleven of his 46 squadron commanders and 39 of his 97 flight commanders, and those who survive are physically exhausted.

But the RAF doesn’t yet know that Goering has chosen this very moment, when the fortunes of Fighter Command are at such a low ebb, to switch his main attack from British airfields to the cities. He doesn’t know that he is handing the RAF breathing space on a plate.

Bomber attack brings widespread devastation and 450 deaths

London’s dockland is on fire tonight after a massive daylight raid in which more than 300 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs rain on the capital, with the RAF seemingly unable to stop the death and destruction which falls from a stately procession of bombers onto the streets of East London. It is feared that up to 450 people have died, with about 1,600 injured.

Goering directs the attack from a cliff top in France, whence he watches 350 bombers escorted by 650 fighters stream across the Channel. Broadcasting from his HQ, he says he can see waves of planes heading for England.

It seems that this time, the RAF is wrong-footed despite Enigma warnings of an attack on London. There have been raids on Hawkinge airfield this morning and, thinking that the new wave of raiders is heading for airfields north of London, the 11 Group controller keeps his squadrons north of the capital, not realizing that London is the real target until it is too late. Eventually, 21 out of 23 airborne squadrons manage to get into action and shoot down 41 German planes for the loss of 25, but by now, the damage has been done.

The first bombs set fire to bonded warehouses. Blazing rum, paint, and sugar float on the Thames. Many people have to be evacuated by boat. “Send all the pumps you’ve got,” pleads one fire officer, “the whole bloody world’s on fire.” One of the problems facing the firefighters is that the level of the Thames has fallen during the dry summer, and they have difficulty getting their pumps to work. Later the sirens sound again, and in the night 247 German aircraft attack the capital, dropping 352 tons of high explosive and 440 canisters of incendiary bombs.

“Ack-ack” guns lift spirits in shelters

As the capital experiences its first big air raid today, Londoners begin to learn the sounds of battle. The sound that pleases them most is that of anti-aircraft guns, but only 97 guns are on site in the London area, compared to the 2,232 heavy guns and one-third of the 1,860 light guns sought when the war began. “Ack-ack” guns, as they are called, range from small caliber Lewis machine guns to big Royal Navy weapons mounted on railway trucks. They throw up a storm of hot metal, forcing the raiders higher, but one drawback is the shower of shell splinters raining down on the streets, where a helmet is essential during a raid. Yet civilians in shelters such as church crypts and coal cellars like the sound of the guns; it makes them feel less like passive targets.

British forces put on invasion alert

A few hours after the widespread bombing of London’s docks, with 2,000 Londoners dead or injured and the whole area engulfed by flames, all railway links are blocked, and the decision is taken at GHQ Home Forces to send out the codeword “Cromwell”: invasion imminent. Home Guard and regular troops are called out, church bells ring, and some bridges are blown.

Churchill has been warning the Chiefs of Staff that if an invasion is to be tried, it cannot be long delayed because the weather may break at any time. For the past few weeks, hundreds of self-propelled barges have been observed moving down from German and Dutch harbors to parts of northern France. They have come under heavy bombardment from the RAF and the Royal Navy. But the massive bombing attack on London docks, which British forces interpret as a prelude to an attempted German landing, doesn’t appear to have been followed up by any movement of the invasion fleet. One theory is that the German hope that their air raids on civilian targets will cause such panic and chaos that invasion will be unnecessary.

How the Germans plan to seize and subdue southern England

The German armed forces have drawn up detailed plans for invading the British Isles and consolidating their positions after the initial landings. Operation Sealion, as the Germans call it, entails the landing of a first wave of thirteen divisions at a number of points on the south coast, from Ramsgate in the east to Lyme Regis in the west. Airborne troops will also be used. The Germans would then move inland to establish themselves on a line eastward from Gloucester to south of Colchester. By then, they believe Britain will have surrendered and a military government will be set up. But the difficulty of mounting an invasion without air superiority worries the chiefs of staff.

[Doug64]

September 13, Friday

Six bombs fall on Buckingham Palace

Bombs have hit Buckingham Palace for the second time. A stick of six bombs fall on the Palace grounds today about eighty yards from where King George and the queen are sitting in a small room overlooking the quadrangle. The blast showers them with broken glass.

Two of the bombs fall on the quadrangle, two on the forecourt. One wrecks the royal chapel, and one explodes harmlessly in the garden. This incident has caused Mr. Churchill to fear for their safety, but the king and queen refuse to be driven from London.

Italy invades Egypt and takes Sollum

After months of prodding by a Mussolini hungry for victory, Marshal Graziani’s army is making a ponderous advance in North Africa and has finally crossed the barbwire fence that marks the Egyptian border with Libya. Bells are being rung in Rome to celebrate the capture of Sollum, a tiny settlement of mud huts.

Graziani has insisted on “digging in” at frequent points along the coastal road, continually harassed by British defenders.

[Doug64]

September 14, Saturday

British cities “blitzed”

Britain’s cities and their people are now on the front line of the war. German bombers, while claiming to attack military targets, are showering their deadly cargoes over homes and public buildings in an attempt to terrorize the British people into submission.

The Nazi rulers would rather that Britain surrendered, as the Dutch did after the bombing of Rotterdam, than risk their army in a crossing of the Channel. The RAF’s nightly bombing of their invasion fleet has convinced them of the dangers of this enterprise. The French coastline is so well lit up by burning barges that it has become known as the “Blackpool Front” to the RAF bomber pilots.

In return, the Germans are “blitzing” South Wales, Merseyside, and London. Following its first devastating daylight attack on the capital’s dockland, on September 7th, the Luftwaffe mounted a “rolling” night raid by 247 bombers, which kept Londoners in their shelters for nine hours.

A daylight raid on September 9th was beaten off with heavy losses, but the bombers were back that night, killing an estimated 370 people. And so it goes on. The feeling is that the battle is building up to a climax.

Germans set docks ablaze in London

The Luftwaffe break through London’s defenses today and again set fire to the docks. They are an easy target, a sprawling mass of warehouses packed with combustibles, found easily by the Germans who simply fly up the Thames.

The RAF’s response to the raid is weaker than usual, and the German pilots think that, at last, they detect signs of the promised collapse of Fighter Command. This feeling is reinforced by the tally sheet for the day’s fighting. The score is eight German losses to thirteen British.

How Londoners cope with the bombers

A week ago today, the Nazis turned the full force of the Luftwaffe against London. The Blitz had begun. To the people of London, waiting for months for the inevitable onslaught, the earliest raids had come almost as a relief.

An air raid warden, Celia Fremlin, says of the first nights: “When it began and you got the measure of what it was like, terrifying though it was, it wasn’t quite as bad as most of us envisaged.”

Others, however, can probably not imagine it being any worse. Sixteen-year-old Kitty Murphy, from North Woolwich, describes the night her house was bombed: “As I lay there looking through where the windows had been blown out, I heard the air raid warden shouting my mother’s name: ‘Nance, come on, you’ve copped it, girl, you’ve copped it girl, come out of there, you’ve got five incendiary bombs!’ ... all this time my mum’s shouting, come out, come out you silly ... Then she grabbed me ... let it burn, she said. And I just went to get away from her when the whole of the house caved in. She saved my life. I would have been in there, picking up the clock and the ornaments off the mantelpiece.”

France pays for army of occupation

The financial penalties Germany has imposed on France for the privilege of paying the costs of the army of occupation are far steeper than the reparations imposed on Germany after the Great War. Under the armistice signed at Compiegne in June, France must pay 20 million Reichsmark a day, or RM7.3 billion a year, almost three times what Germany had to pay under the Dawes plan of 1924—one billion a year, rising after four years to 2.5 billion.

[Doug64]

September 15, Sunday

RAF claims victory in air war’s “Battle of Britain”

RAF Fighter Command today wins a stinging victory over the Luftwaffe. This was going to be the day that the Germans wiped the RAF out of the sky and cleared the way for Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain, which Hitler plans to put into operation in two days. Instead, it is the Germans who scurry back to their bases, leaving southern England littered with the smoking wrecks of their aircraft. At the end of the day, the tally is 61 Germans lost to 29 British. Everything goes right for the RAF today. The pilots have enjoyed a comparatively easy week and are ready for the fray. RDF, unbothered by the newly-introduced jamming by the Germans, picks up the hostile formations over northern France. There are no feints.

The first enemy formation of about 100 bombers escorted by 400 fighters comes boring in over the coast, heading straight for London. Air Vice-Marshal Park is able to put up eleven squadrons to harry them all the way to London, where they are met by fighters of 12 Group.

The mere sight of so many fighters demoralize the Germans, who had once again been told that the RAF has only a few fighters left. Many of the bombers simply jettison their loads and head for home. They don’t leave in peace. Spitfires and Hurricanes slash at them all the way back.

Goering mounts a second attack in the afternoon. The result is the same. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, warned by an immediate Enigma message, is waiting for them. The day isn’t without its anxieties, however. Churchill, visiting Park’s headquarters at Uxbridge, west of London, asks at one stage, “What other reserves have we?” Park replies, “There are none.” But the RAF’s response to raids such as this and the one exactly a month ago, when the Germans lost 76 planes to the RAF’s 35, belie Goering’s boast that British air power is finished.

[Doug64]

September 16, Monday

Italian invaders advance to Sidi Barrani

Italian troops have managed to fight their way to the Egyptian coastal outpost of Sidi Barrani as Lieutenant-General Maitland Wilson, GOC Egypt, and his heavily outnumbered force of British and Indian troops are withdrawing to a prepared defense line at Mersa Matruh.

Although the next battle could be decisive—with an Italian victory, leaving Egypt open to Marshal Graziani’s army—the Italians are fortifying Sidi Barrani, with the Marshal ignoring furious orders from the Duce to attack, preferring to put up monuments to his “victorious advance.” While Mussolini fumes, Churchill, in beleaguered Britain, has taken the “awful and right” decision to dispatch over 150 tanks and other desperately needed weapons to General Wavell, Britain’s C-in-C Middle East.

Although small in number—with fewer than 30,000 men facing 250,000 Italians—the hard core of Wavell’s army is professional, tough, and confident. The question now is whether the British line can hold until the tanks are unloaded in Alexandria.

Roosevelt brings conscription to the US

The United States Senate today passes the Selective Service Bill under which all Americans between the ages of 21 and 35 will be liable to be drafted for military service.

The bill goes to the House of Representatives for debate, starting next week. The Senate amends the bill to limit the number of men under training at any time to 900,000.

Yesterday, Mr. Roosevelt also signed a bill giving him authority to call the 238,000 members of the National Guard, controlled by the individual states, and the Officers’ Reserve into the army for a year.

[Rich]

September 7, Saturday

Goering brings RAF to breaking point

Britain’s Fighter Command has reached a crisis point as it faces increasingly ferocious attacks on its airfields and RDF stations and mounting losses in the air. Goering, desperate to finish off the RAF fighters, is using large numbers of fighters, which RDF cannot distinguish from bombers, to tempt them into battle.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding’s tactics are to refuse battle with the fighters and to concentrate on the bombers, and he is feeding in his planes in a miserly fashion in order to preserve his command. But while he has enough planes, he doesn’t have enough men. Newly-trained pilots with only twenty hours’ flying time in Spitfires are thrown into battle and too often shot down on their first sortie. Dowding has lost eleven of his 46 squadron commanders and 39 of his 97 flight commanders, and those who survive are physically exhausted.

But the RAF doesn’t yet know that Goering has chosen this very moment, when the fortunes of Fighter Command are at such a low ebb, to switch his main attack from British airfields to the cities. He doesn’t know that he is handing the RAF breathing space on a plate.

This is the standard history and I don't doubt that Dowding was feeling massive pressure. But there was zero chance of Goering breaking fighter command. Yes if he'd continued with his previous tactics, fighter command might have been forced to pull back their fighters from the most forward air bases, but there was no chance of Goering achieving the level of air superiority necessary to launch an invasion. Of course there were two further problems. The Germans lacked the transport fleet for an amphibious assault and they lacked the surface fleet to defend it.

Sealion was a pipe dream. Never in the field of human conflict, have so many been so frightened, by such a none existent threat by so few.

[Doug64]

September 17, Tuesday

Hitler postpones invasion of Britain

The result of the RAF’s gallant and successful fight to deny the Luftwaffe air supremacy over the south of England and the Channel becomes clear today: Hitler puts off Operation Sealion, his plan to invade Britain, scheduled for today.

The news comes in an Enigma decoding of a message from the German General Staff to the officer responsible for loading the transport aircraft earmarked for the invasion. The message orders him to dismantle his air-loading equipment; without that equipment, there can be no invasion.

This is a triumph for the RAF in general and for Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding and Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park in particular.

How technology thwarted the Luftwaffe

Today’s decision by Hitler for an indefinite postponement of his invasion of Britain means that Goering’s Luftwaffe has failed in its bid to establish air supremacy over southern England. This is an essential precondition for a successful cross-Channel invasion. Two months ago, at the outset of what will become known as the Battle of Britain, just 600 RAF fighters faced 2,500 German aircraft. Given this overwhelming numerical superiority, why did the Luftwaffe fail?

While there is little to choose between the fighter pilots and aircraft on both sides, the British Home Chain RDF [radar] system has played a vital role in giving timely warning of impending Luftwaffe attacks. Communications have also played their part. The ability of the RDF stations and the Observer Corps posts, responsible for tracking the bombers once they cross the coast, to send messages to RAF Fighter Command’s sector HQs and from there to Dowding’s HQ at Bentley Priory has enabled the Spitfires and Hurricanes to take off and intercept the German aircraft. Credit must be given, too, to the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park for its ability to crack the Luftwaffe’s top-secret Enigma code and to the men and women of the RAF’s Y Service for their monitoring of the Luftwaffe’s radio frequencies.

Tactically, Goering’s worst error was his decision to switch from attacks on airfields and RDF stations to London itself. Ultimately, this proved decisive by allowing the RAF time to regroup.

[Rich]

Hitler postpones invasion of Britain

The result of the RAF’s gallant and successful fight to deny the Luftwaffe air supremacy over the south of England and the Channel becomes clear today: Hitler puts off Operation Sealion, his plan to invade Britain, scheduled for today.

Today’s decision by Hitler for an indefinite postponement of his invasion of Britain means that Goering’s Luftwaffe has failed in its bid to establish air supremacy over southern England.

Sealion was abandoned because of the ever increasing destruction of the German barges in the Channel ports by Bomber command throughout the first half of September. The Luftwaffe couldn't even maintain air superiority over its own ports let alone the landing beaches. The German generals were no doubt relieved that they didn't have to try and mount a cross channel invasion in river barges.

Two months ago, at the outset of what will become known as the Battle of Britain, just 600 RAF fighters faced 2,500 German aircraft. Given this overwhelming numerical superiority, why did the Luftwaffe fail?

The answer is simple this overwhelming superiority never existed. I'm not sure how you get to these figures. I find Richard Overy's analysis more compelling "If Fighter Command were 'the few', the German fighter pilots were fewer"