In October 1940, Mussolini decided to surprise Hitler by embarking on his own military adventures; predominantly rural Greece was surely a pushover for the relatively modern Italy. It was Mussolini who was surprised by the strength and purpose of the Greek resistance. In the deep snows of the high mountains of northern Greece, the poorly equipped but fervently patriotic Greek Army trounced the Italians and pushed them back into Albania. But everything changed when Hitler intervened.

John Carr’s comprehensive account of the war, The Defence and Fall of Greece 1940-1941, tells the story from the Greek perspective. First published in 2013 and reprinted several times since, this history uses many Greek sources that had not previously been translated into English. He incorporates eyewitness accounts from front-line soldiers as well as the diaries and memoirs of generals and politicians.

The following excerpt takes up the story in the last few tragic days of the war, when the Greek government had to face up to the reality that the Greek armed forces, even supported by the British, were impotent to resist the overwhelming strength of the Wehrmacht, and that the Nazis were about to envelop their country.

There were many personal tragedies, not least the unfortunate Alexandros Koryzis, who had felt obliged to accept the role of Prime Minister only when the King asked him, upon the untimely death of his predecessor at the end of January:

Koryzis was deathly tired. He confessed to King George that, as the Germans had now invaded and would in all likelihood occupy Athens, he had failed as prime minister; all he wanted to do was to resign. The king admonished him stiffly that this was no time for a prime minister to lose his nerve and leave the country without a government; indeed, he should consider himself a front-line soldier and keep fighting to the end. But Koryzis was adamant. He was neither a politician nor a soldier, but an ex-banker. He wanted out. Others could carry on the struggle in his place. But neither would the king budge. He ordered the hapless prime minister to stay in his post. At that, Koryzis stooped to kiss the king’s hand and said he had to go home ‘for some business’ .

Eyewitnesses saw Koryzis emerge ashen-faced, and without a word, pick up his hat and coat and exit the hotel almost at a run. Prince Peter encountered him at the front door. I managed to get a glimpse [the prince wrote], through the glass door, of his face, haggard with anguish. I thought of how weary he must be with all the responsibilities loaded on him at these critical moments. Koryzis got into his car and was driven home.

The king emerged and buttonholed his brother and heir, Crown Prince Paul, and told him that something in Koryzis’ attitude worried him and he wanted to make sure his prime minister was all right. Paul drove to Koryzis’ house, to be met by the prime minister’s distraught wife. Her husband had come home ‘very sad’ , she said, and had locked himself in the bathroom. At that moment a pistol shot sounded from inside. Prince Paul burst in to find Koryzis dead, with a bullet in his head, lying in a widening pool of blood. It was the afternoon of Good Friday, the saddest day in the Greek Orthodox calendar.

Koryzis’ suicide climaxed the intense depression that seized the entire country. Morale in the RHN [Royal Hellenic Navy] was now crumbling, along with that in the army. With the King George knocked out, Rear Admiral Mezeviris transferred his flag to the Queen Olga, but he hardly had time to settle in when a mutiny on the destroyer Aetos occupied his attention. Lieutenant Commander Ioannis Toumbas, who has masterminded the scuttling of the shore batteries at Thessaloniki, was sent to the Aetos to restore order after the captain and two senior officers had walked off. Addressing the surly crew from the bow, Toumbas said he didn’t want to have to arrest anyone at this critical stage, so ‘any member of the crew who doesn’t realize his duty should leave this ship now. Those who stay will continue the fight out of the country’ . All but three of the Aetos’ petty officers and half the ratings promptly left the ship.

Some of the mutineers had sabotaged some of the anti-aircraft guns (though not irreparably). Among them was the ship’s purser, who was stopped at the gangplank and found to be carrying a case full of the ship’s money; the man was court-martialled and shot. The ugliness also spread to the crews of the Spetsai, but it was nipped in the bud with harsh measures.

Such negativity, fortunately, was the exception rather than the rule. When the air raid sirens sounded on Easter Day, 20 April, the Psara was at anchor off Megara. The crew had gathered on the deck for the Easter service and looked skywards anxiously, but nothing appeared. At 2.45 pm, just after lunchtime, Commander Konstas was ordered to join a convoy that had been put together to escort the Averof to safety at Alexandria. At 6.15 pm, about four hours before the destroyer was due to sail, fifteen Ju87s screamed down on it out of the sunset. As the Psara’s anti-aircraft guns blasted away at full strength, bombs fell on the Queen Olga and Panthir alongside.

Two bombs smacked into the foredeck of the Psara, almost severing the bow from the main structure, and knocking out the forward gun control. The Stukas strafed the decks, blasting any crewmembers there literally to bits. ‘Heads and body parts were all over’ , wrote Konstas, trying to describe the hell. The Psara’s bow began to sink, though Konstas had the satisfaction of seeing his remaining guns blast at least two Stukas out of the sky.

The Luftwaffe attacks ceased half an hour later. Konstas had the shattered ship towed to Megara, but it was too far gone for repair. The bow was under water and the engine room was flooding. Reluctantly he gave the order for the brave little Psara - the first RHN vessel to fire a naval shot in anger by shelling Italian positions in Epiros - to be abandoned. Documents and portable weapons were removed, as well as the ship’s emblem with the motto, ‘Freedom or Death’ . The Greek ensign was left flying on the mainmast.

Konstas described his own experience during his ship’s last moments,

as darkness was falling: I go down to my quarters, which are dark and full of water. I light a match to see my way. The door to my bedroom is jammed, so it can’t open. I pick up the photograph of my children, say an emotional farewell to my cabin and go back up on deck ... It is time to abandon our beloved ship. We draw away in boats. Now nothing is visible of the ship but the flag fluttering on the mast. It’s twenty past seven. The sea is about to cover the mast. We doff our hats and cry, ‘Long live the Psara? with tears in our eyes. At the same time we hear the boilers explode, the sea churns and the hulk of the Psara vanishes from our sight... We leave the place in deep sadness, yet proud, because the Psara up to the last moment performed her service to the Country.

When the Psara died, forty of her crew died with her. Fifty-seven others were wounded, two lost their wits in the horror, and two were missing. It was an Easter the survivors would never forget.

Two days after that, the destroyer Hydra was ordered to accompany the submarine Papanikolis to Alexandria, along with a Danish freighter carrying munitions. The skies seethed with Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft. Between Aigina and the mainland a large formation of dive-bombers approached from the north. Half of the formation - about three dozen planes - peeled off and dived on the Hydra. Mezeviris, on the bridge, ordered a high-speed zigzag course and readied the anti-aircraft guns. The Stukas’ attack was identical to that on the Psara - near-vertical dive bombing followed by a devastating strafing of the decks. One bullet caught the ship’s commanding officer, Commander Theodoros Pezopoulos, hatless as he was hastening up from his quarters, killing him instantly. Mezeviris saw him ‘slip and sit down on the deck, his back supported by the rail, with his eyes closed and a slight smile on his face, showing the calm of having done his duty till the last’ .

Bombs burst around the Hydra, immobilising the engines and putting out of action all but a few light machine guns below the bridge. The ship had not actually been hit, but many near misses had cracked the hull and water was pouring in. The decks were strewn with dead and wounded. When the destroyer was visibly fatally crippled, the Ju87s broke off the attack. Rear Admiral Mezeviris, himself bleeding from a flesh wound, stumbled over the foredeck awash with blood, ‘stepping over dismembered bodies’ and ordering whoever he met to abandon ship.

Only one lifeboat was left, and the most seriously wounded were placed in it. The rest of the survivors had to swim a few hundred yards to an islet called Lagosa (one of the advantages of Greek seas is that a ship is never far from some island or speck of rock in an emergency). A few minutes after the last man got off, the Hydra dipped its prow suddenly, its stern rearing up, and went down vertically, carrying Commander Pezopoulos and its dead with it.

An exhausted Mezeviris lay down on the rock of Lagosa for an hour or so. Wounded and soaked men were everywhere. One medic, himself lacking part of a leg, crawled up to the admiral. ‘How are you feeling, sir?’ the medic said, oblivious of his own life-threatening condition. The men ‘cried like children’ when they learned that Pezopoulos, a well-liked commander, was dead. As the entire scene had been visible from Piraeus, a host of rescue craft sped to Lagosa. The Papanikolis, which had waited in vain for its escort to show up, proceeded unprotected to Souda Bay in Crete. That same evening, Mezeviris ordered the Queen Olga, Lerax, and Panthir to leave for Crete ahead of schedule. They only just made it.

© John Carr 2013, ‘The Defence and Fall of Greece 1940-1941’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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The Commander in Chief , Middle East, Sir Archibald Wavel, was responsible for four significant campaigns. He had been successful in North Africa against the Italians, but now faced the Germans in Greece. In East Africa, there was a continuing struggle to defeat the Italians in their former colonies in Eritrea and Ethiopia (then commonly known as Abyssinia) and in Somalia. The Italian occupation of the African coastline leading to the entrance to the Red Sea meant that the Axis could threaten shipping bound for the Suez Canal, which was now becoming the only lifeline for supplying British forces in the Mediterranean.

The war being fought in Ethiopia was unconventional in many respects. The British commander Orde Wingate, later famous for another guerrilla force in Burma, led a group of British officers in charge of local ‘boys’, from different ethnic groups. These ‘Patriots’ were loyal to Haille Selassie the Emperor, regarded by some as a Messiah, who had been usurped by the Italian. But the different ethnic groups were not always loyal to one side, could be swayed by some of the renegade members of Ethiopian royalty, and were not always very disciplined.

This somewhat complicated story of some very colourful characters in the shifting fortunes of war is told by David Shirreff in Bare Feet and Bandoliers, the product of some wide ranging research from a many sources. The following excerpt takes up the tale at the beginning of April 1941:

[The local British commander of rebel forces] Johnson, ordered by Boustead to ‘get in front of the Italians and do what damage he could’, had taken up an ambush position with his small force on the ridge known as Jibuti or Dumbuka, 28 kilometres from Debra Markos, through which the road to the Abbai runs and waited for the Italian column. They were facing towards Debra Markos but had two sentries watching the road behind them.

At dawn on 3 April, [the Italian commander] Maraventano’s transport column left Usciater to return to Debra Markos, having delivered one of the CCNN battalions [Italian Blackshirt Militia]. The column consisted of 30 empty lorries and a Red Cross vehicle, escorted by two armoured cars, a platoon of Blackshirts and 50 of Ras Hailu’s banda [a notorious Ethiopian warlord and his irregular troops (or bandits)]. As they approached the Jibuti ridge from the south they were spotted by Johnson’s sentries. Johnson turned his men round, let the Italians get within range, and opened up with Brens and an anti-tank rifle. The leading armoured car attempted to return fire but could not elevate sufficiently, and the escort got out and returned fire from behind rocks. The two armoured cars were knocked out by the Boyes anti-tank rifle and 25 trucks were destroyed. The remaining five trucks were turned round and the survivors went off in them in the direction from which they had come.

Italian casualties were seven nationals killed and one missing, five banda killed and 12 wounded. Johnson’s force suffered no casualties. The result of this highly successful ambush was that Maraventano’s withdrawal plans were disrupted and he could not carry all the supplies he needed, though by using civilian transport, ‘I was able to load four days’ rations.’ Johnson was awarded an immediate DSO for this action.

After Maraventano had taken leave of Ras Hailu and his daughters and loyal chiefs and subchiefs (‘the older faithful ones wept’), his column started its 800-kilometre march to Dessie at 9.00 a.m. on 4 April having been assembling since dawn. Ras Hailu assured him again that his march would not be disrupted this side of the Abbai.

In addition to his seven colonial battalions and 1000 national troops, the column included, ‘4000 women and children, the families of ascari, 500 native civilians who had compromised themselves by acts done in our favour, and about 100 nationals from the towns of Engiabara, Burye, Dambacha and Debra Markos. As most carried their own belongings, you will have a faint idea of how this crowd encumbered the march of the column.’ They also had the 200 Ethiopian baggage camels captured at the Charaka river. Despite these encumbrances they covered the ground with remarkable speed.

While Maraventano departed unmolested from Debra Markos, Gideon Force [the British led guerrila force] was poised to move in. In the town Ras Hailu, the old Lord of Gojjam, performed a double act, displaying a most remarkable authority. He saw Maraventano off the premises, made sure that neither Belai Zelleka nor anyone else molested him on his way to the Abbai, put his men in to take over the forts and prevented looting in the town, and awaited Boustead and the Emperor.

Boustead sent Hayes in at midday on 4 April with two platoons of No 1 patrol company. As Hayes approached the fort, ‘I was met by a large crowd and Ras Hailu. They started kissing my feet and Ras Hailu took me in to a small inn and plied me with tej [a honey wine, like mead].’ Boustead and Nott followed with Gideon Force, placed guards on all stores and allotted areas to the gathering patriot chiefs in the surrounding forts.

Among the chiefs was Nagash [a Patriot leader, but regarded by the British as having poor authority over his men] with his men designated as governor of Debra Markos by Haile Selassie, who arrived on 5 April. With this authority he demanded that Boustead should remove his troops from the fort. Having had no help from Nagash in the fighting Boustead and his officers dealt with him and his men fairly sharply. Boustead refused to remove his troops, and when Nagash’s men started looting the hospital, ‘Jock Maxwell shot one dead at 300 yards and scared off the others, making them drop their loot as they ran.’

Nott and Kabada went back to Dambacha in one of Ras Hailu’s trucks to report to Wingate and the Emperor. Although flying the Ethiopian flag, they were sniped at by Patriots. Nott stopped and ‘warned the various posts not to fire’ .

Nott returned in the truck with Wingate, and other arrivals at Debra Markos on 5 April were Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Benson OBE, Royal Ulster Rifles, to take command of the 2nd Ethiopian Battalion, and Sandford and Kabada to see Ras Hailu, assess the political situation, and prepare for the Emperor’s entry on 6 April.

When Sandford and Kabada, who, despite what Kabada wrote afterwards, were working together effectively and amicably, met Ras Hailu, the ras, who had a sense of humour, greeted Kabada with the words, ‘You will pursue me to my grave!’ Kabada, as court chamberlain, had been his gaoler under Haile Selassie. Sandford told him that the Emperor was pleased with his action in surrendering the town and maintaining law and order, and Hailu replied, as Sandford reported to the kaid in a letter of 8 April, with ‘a long story explanatory of his attitude over the last few years, and in particular detailing his manoeuvres over the last few weeks for hoodwinking the Italians so as to be able to come over when the time was ripe.’ He also said that the Emperor should defer his entry into Debra Markos for fear of aerial attack. Sandford saw through this last remark as a ploy by the ras to consolidate his position with Nagash’s fitauraris before the Emperor arrived.

On 6 April 1941, the same day Cunningham’s forces entered Addis Ababa, Emperor Haile Selassie entered Debra Markos in a car driven by le Blanc in a convoy of six cars, which le Blanc had led up the Matakal escarpment on 2 April, the first vehicles to travel on the road he had been constructing. The date 6 April remains a significant one in Ethiopian history, the ‘Day of Liberation under the Mengistu regime (1974-91), the day on which British troops entered Addis Ababa and the day the Ethiopian flag first flew over a provincial capital.

But it had a more ominous significance at the time; it marked the recapture of Benghazi by Rommel and Axis troops, signalling the beginning of the reversal of Allied fortunes in North Africa.

Haile Selassie arrived at the fort at midday and was greeted by Wingate and a parade of the two battalions of Gideon Force commanded by Boustead. After Haile Selassie had taken the salute, Ras Hailu was to make his submission, but, awkward to the last, he kept the Emperor and the parade waiting for half an hour.

Then, as Tutton records, ‘he drove up in a motor car and got out. He bowed stiffly, a formal obeissance to the Emperor, and muttered something, and then stood upright.’ Nott was also watching the scene; ‘Haile Selassie then read an address in which he praised the Fr. Bn and 2nd Eth. Bn. He then sat on the Palace steps — which we had hastily cleaned as his dwelling — and held a reception of notables.’

We can speculate how many of those notables who said goodbye to Maraventano with tears in their eyes on 3 April came to greet the Emperor on 6 April. In the evening, on hearing that Cunningham’s troops were in Addis Ababa, the Emperor invited all officers to a ‘champagne [captured] reception’.

So ended an eventful day. Next day Nott extracted petrol from Ras Hailu, who was still holding the petrol supplies - ‘He gave me a good reception and some inferior cognac before breakfast’ - and Haile Selassie held a review of patriot forces, eliciting a comment from Maxwell, which was unflattering but fair as far as the Debra Markos campaign was concerned: ‘HM received patriots who danced before him, reciting their prowess, mostly lies except for Azaj Kabada and his boys’.

© David Shirreff 1995, 2009, ‘Bare Feet and Bandoliers: Wingate, Sandford, the Patriots and the Liberation of Ethiopia. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd. NB Not all of the above images are from this volume.

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Not many people are familiar with the name Charles H. Lightoller, although most will have seen him portrayed on screen at some time. Lightoller was the Second Officer on the Titanic and the most senior officer to survive the sinking. This alone would make him noteworthy - he has been portrayed in at least eighteen different films, television series and documentaries, and even on stage. But in a career spanning over half a century at sea, including heroic roles in two World wars, Lightoller deserves to be better known.

Just published is Unsinkable Lights - Charles H. Lightoller’s Epic Tale of Hope and Survival, which seeks to do him justice. This is more than the story of one man. It is a picture of a different age, a maritime age still visible to us but rapidly slipping from view astern. Author Dustin D. Hyland has thoroughly researched the background to a succession of dramatic events. It is fascinating account, well told. The following excerpt is the tale of just one day in that life, when Lightoller took one of his sons and a Boy Seascout across the Channel, on his motor yacht Sundowner:

‘Hard to starboard!’ the elder Lightoller bellowed. Unlike Titanic, where steering commands were given in the opposite of the intended direction, the Merchant Shipping Act of 1932 dictated that the steering orders matched the planned movement of the vessel. Roger spun the helm, and the agile motor yacht altered course to starboard. The group observed a German sea mine only a few feet from the boat’s port side.

The Sundowner was barely clear of the mine when Lightoller spotted three Luftwaffe aircraft overhead. The Gleniffer diesel could only propel the former pinnace to 10 knots. To the pilots above, she appeared to be easy picking. Lightoller watched as the trio of fighter aircraft grew larger. Suddenly, the air exploded with gunfire.

Racing nearby, the 300-foot HMS Worcester – on her sixth trip to Dunkirk since the start of Operation Dynamo – opened her 4.7-inch anti-aircraft guns, and the three Luftwaffe aircraft fled toward the French coastline. The destroyer sustained damage from an aerial attack a few days earlier. It grounded in shoal water on her return trip from Dunkirk on 30 May. The damage had slowed her top speed, but she was still moving much faster – around 18 knots – than the Sundowner, quickly leaving the motor yacht in its wake.

Around 2.25 pm, Lightoller spied a nearby craft in distress. The motor cruiser Westerly, owned by Robert Arthur Bonham Christie, was on her return voyage to Ramsgate. Her crew of five – two rescued soldiers and three navy ratings – frantically tried to get the Sundowner’s attention. Bonham Christie was an affluent yachtsman and the only son of Mary Bonham Christie – dubbed the ‘Demon of Brownsea’ for her tyrannical and reclusive ownership of Brownsea Island. When Admiralty officials couldn’t locate Bonham Christie, they commandeered the vessel.

One of the boat’s engines had stopped working on the cross Channel voyage, and now flames leaped 10 feet into the air. Smoke soared from the 25-foot motor cruiser, and the elder Lightoller directed Roger to steer in the stricken boat’s direction. Lightoller discovered that the Westerly had over 200 gallons of fuel on board as the five members scrambled aboard the Sundowner. Now, with eight people on board, the motor yacht had scarcely left the Westerly when a massive fireball exploded into the air.

‘I went alongside and took them on board’, Lightoller recalled, ‘thereby giving them the additional pleasure of once again facing the “hell” they just left’. The Sundowner was safely away, but the explosion attracted another threat. The Junkers Ju 87, or Stuka, was a twin-seat dive bomber developed by Germany in the 1930s. Partially inspired by the American Curtiss Falcon, the gull-winged aircraft could fly at over 250 miles per hour and carried various bombs below its wings and fuselage. But it was in diving toward its target that the plane separated itself from other bombers. As the bomber dove toward its target, ram air sirens mounted near the aircraft’s wheels began to scream in what became known as ‘Jericho trumpets’.

Now Lightoller could hear the dreaded shriek of the trumpets as a pair of Stukas dove toward the Sundowner. The nose of the first bomber rose as it released its deadly payload. ‘Hard-a-port!’ Lightoller ordered.Roger spun the helm, and the bomb fell harmlessly to the starboard side of the motor yacht. A wave surged over the Sundowner’s main deck as the bomb detonated.

‘Hard-a-starboard!’ Lightoller, standing in the vessel’s bow, bellowed. Once again, Roger turned the wheel, and the bomb fell safely toward the craft’s port side. ‘The bomb landed this time only a very short distance away on the port quarter’, Ashcroft remembered. ‘Water came aboard from the bomb. We rolled heavily. Got out of it.’

Luckily, two bombs proved to be the most that the Luftwaffe was willing to waste on a small motor yacht, and the Stuka pilots flew away disheartened. Lightoller quickly exchanged his white hat for a black beret, realising that his peaked cap might make him a target for Luftwaffe pilots.

But the Sundowner was not out of danger yet. As the vessel approached Dunkirk harbour, a new airborne menace emerged. Sharing the skies with the Stukas were the infamous Messerschmitt Bf 109s. Like the Stukas, the single-seater 109s cut their teeth during the Spanish Civil War. They used that experience to their advantage over Dunkirk and the Channel. Powered by an 1,800 horsepower Daimler-Benz V-12 engine, the fighters could reach speeds of nearly 400 miles per hour and carried an assortment of guns, bombs, and rockets. Now, a single 109 had the Sundowner in its crosshairs.

Luckily for the motor yacht and its eight occupants, Lightoller knew the Messerschmitts’ fatal tic. His late son Brian learned in flight school and once shared with his father that the 109s were required to lift their noses slightly just before firing their 20mm cannons. It was a trait that the former mariner-turned-chicken farmer hoped to exploit. The single 109 bore down on the Sundowner, and Lightoller waited. As the nose began to rise, he made his move. ‘Hard-a-starboard!’ The motor yacht heeled to starboard, and towers of seawater sprayed on its port side as the rounds missed their mark.The fighter swung around for another try at the 28-year-old vessel. The process repeated itself with the Sundowner making a last-second turn to port. ‘The bullets came flying down the starboard side’, Ashcroft remembered. ‘That was the start of the fighter planes. After that, they accompanied us pretty well to the harbour entrance’.

Like the Stuka pilots before him, two failed assaults proved enough, and the 109 moved along to easier targets. The elder Lightoller knew his beloved craft well, and he noticed that the agile boat was becoming lethargic as she evaded enemy aircraft. He left his perch at the bow and went below decks to investigate. While the bombs dropped by the Stukas had not directly found the Sundowner, their concussive blast had opened a few of the diagonal seams along her teak hull. Lightoller descended to the engine room, located amidships, beneath the pilot house. Water poured through the seams and started collecting in the vessel’s bowels. To counter the seawater incursion, the elder Lightoller turned on the bilge pump, hoping it would be enough to keep the seawater in check.

For Roger, standing at the motor yacht’s helm, plotting a course for Dunkirk harbour was not difficult. Ahead of the Sundowner, massive pillars of smoke rose from the oil tanks that the Luftwaffe had bombarded. When the vessel arrived near Dunkirk around 3.00 pm, officials no longer used the beaches to load ‘Tommies’ onto ships. Instead, the two breakwaters, the West Mole and East Mole, were tasked with evacuating troops. The carcasses of ships were strewn all over the harbour, and Roger cautiously picked his way through the debris and approached the West Mole.

‘Time and time again, boats were blown to smithereens. The place was strewn with wreckage’, Lightoller later wrote. As the Sundowner approached the moles, a large transport ship passed by and came under attack from the air. Stukas swarmed the vessel and dropped their payloads. Despite damage, the transporter continued to surge ahead.

Thousands of troops crowded the beaches and the narrow moles, anxiously awaiting rescue. It was low tide when the motor yacht reached Dunkirk, and Lightoller looked up at the towering West Mole. The West Mole was unusable due to nearby oil refinery fires, and it would be far too challenging to embark from there, so he instructed Roger to move to the East Mole instead. At the 1,600-foot-long East Mole, the Sundowner pulled near the quarter of the HMS Worcester, the same warship that had used her anti-aircraft guns to chase the Luftwaffe away from the motor yacht just hours before. The plan was for the troops on the overloaded Worcester to transfer aboard the Sundowner.

As Lightoller readied for the arrival of the ‘Tommies’, Worcester’s anti-aircraft guns opened another bombardment on the Luftwaffe. Once the guns had fallen silent again, Lightoller approached the warship’s skipper, Commander John Hamilton Allison. Allison had commanded the Worcester since March 1940. The commander and the Worcester rescued 509 troops from the beaches during her first voyage to the French port. Despite a destructive air raid in Dunkirk the following day, the destroyer rescued another 800 soldiers on her subsequent journey, barely escaping before another Luftwaffe attack. The warship returned around the same number of troops to Dover during her following three rescue missions.

Now, with time running out before the Nazis closed in, nearly 1,000 soldiers crowded her decks and interior spaces. ‘How many can you take?’ the destroyer’s commanding officer asked Lightoller. The Sundowner had once held twenty-one people during her Baltic voyage. Still, with the beaches and piers full of soldiers waiting to return to British soil, Lightoller reckoned he could fit a few more onboard. ‘Oh, about a hundred’, Lightoller replied. Allison was stunned. ‘Are you sure?’ the commander asked sceptically. Lightoller nodded. ‘Go ahead, take all you can’.

Lightoller ordered Gerald Ashcroft to stand on the roof of Sundowner’s wheelhouse and create a battle dressing station. Meanwhile, Roger would oversee the loading of troops below decks. Soon, the former White Star Line officer supervised the troop embarkation onto the Sundowner, and a naval rating counted the soldiers as they arrived. The first to embark was a 28-year-old Royal Navy Reserve officer, Sub-Lieutenant Charles Jerram. Jerram commanded the motorboat Skylark, but the Luftwaffe attacked the 40-foot vessel, and the Worcester rescued Skylark’s three-person crew on her way to Dunkirk. Once aboard the Sundowner, the starving sub-lieutenant raided the motor yacht’s pantry and found the only remaining food – a mouldy piece of apple pie. He promptly inhaled the dessert.

Filing behind Jerram were dozens of ‘Tommies’ – exhausted and anxious to get off the beaches of France. Soon, it became clear that the soldiers’ equipment would take up too much room and add precious additional weight to the vessel. Lightoller ordered the men to remove their gear and throw it into the harbour. Reluctantly, the equipment made its way into the drink. Roger requested the ‘Tommies’ lay on the deck and atop each other to maintain the vessel’s stability and maximise the number of troops the boat could carry.

Among the soldiers was Private Reginald King, a Malvern native who served with the British Expeditionary Forces. King embarked on the Worcester, but with the destroyer at capacity, the 21-year-old and some of his fellow soldiers were ordered at gunpoint to climb over the side to the waiting Sundowner. In his youth, King had hoped to join the Royal Navy. However, a voyage in a small boat made him seasick, so he enlisted in the Territorial Army instead. After Britain declared war, he was mobilised and soon found himself with the regular army in France. The 300-foot destroyer dwarfed the 58-foot motor yacht, and perhaps Private King had thoughts of his previous seasick voyage as he embarked the Sundowner. The private was among the first to arrive onboard and found himself crammed below decks near the bow on the vessel’s starboard side.

When the count reached fifty, Lightoller shouted to Roger to see how many more he could accommodate below decks. ‘Oh, plenty of room, yet’, came Roger’s enthusiastic reply. And so, the embarkation continued. At seventy-five, the elder Lightoller queried again. Roger confessed it was becoming crowded but mentioned that he had squirreled away three additional soldiers – two in the now empty bathtub and one on the toilet. Despite the dangerous situation and the constant barrage of Worcester’s anti-aircraft guns, the elder Lightoller hadn’t lost his sense of humour. ‘I hope the men in the bath haven’t got their boots on’, Lightoller joked. In fact, in addition to everyone’s helmets, weapons, and other equipment, their boots also found their way into the water.

At seventy-five soldiers, Roger ran out of room below decks, and the focus shifted to the main deck, with another forty-seven soldiers finding refuge. Including the 3 men who brought the Sundowner from Ramsgate that morning and the 5 rescued from the Westerly, the motor yacht now held 130 souls. ‘We once had 21 on board and I thought that was somewhat of an achievement’, Lightoller later wrote to his brother-in-law, Vermont. ‘Still I reckoned we might manage 50 or 75, but I never imagined in the wildest flight of imagination thought we could pack that number’.

Whether Lightoller thought of Titanic’s half-loaded lifeboats as the Sundowner overflowed with troops is unknown. Perhaps it was the faces of the young soldiers that reminded him of his son, Trevor, that prompted him to continue loading the motor yacht well beyond its intended load. With the vessel loaded to capacity, it was time to cross the Channel again. It was late afternoon when the Sundowner began her journey back to Ramsgate.

© Dustin D. Hyland 2026, ‘Unsinkable Lights - Charles H. Lightoller’s Epic Tale of Hope and Survival ’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd. N.B. The above images are not from this volume but are courtesy of Warner Bros. and Stavros1, Wikimedia.

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The small RAF fighter force on the island of Malta was already feeling the strain of the Luftwaffe’s arrival in the Mediterranean. Mike Spick is an acknowledged authority on the Luftwaffe, with over sixty publications to his name. Luftwaffe Bomber Aces: Men, Machines, Methods is an overview of the entire war, so Malta is just a small part of the story. But the title is fully justified, as Spick integrates many different personal accounts with insights into the planes they flew and the tactics adopted.

The following excerpt, illustrative of this approach, comes from the Prologue:

There were hundreds of guns firing at us, as if they’d been brought here from the entire Empire to guard the artery of world power. Flashes appeared from all over the island. It was a veritable wasp’s nest. Through the glass of the cockpit I could see the airfield at Luqa steep below me. We were not going to make it!

Then Helbig’s aircraft tilted down, and the entire Staff Flight went with him. The light blue underbellies of all the aircraft showed simultaneously. No waverers! A second later I lowered my dive brakes, put the nose down, and throttled right back. Out of the comer of my eye I watched my wing men. I looked ahead. I was right behind Helbig in the vic of the Staff Flight. The Staff Flight aircraft were racing down ahead of me but seemed to be poised, motionless, over the target area, their wings like narrow lines, as if on an aerial photograph. Press on!...

At last! Ahead and below me there was movement in the formation. Almost as if they were rocket-propelled, the staff aircraft, pulling out of their dive, swept out from the target, so that in a flash I could see the imperial crosses on the upper surfaces of their wings. Our turn now! I held my aim down to the smallest ring of light in my sight. The alarm klaxon blared out: that meant that I was 800 metres above the ground. I could see my target clearly ... I pressed the bomb release.

This was the first sortie by Hans-Joachim (Hajo) Herrmann against Malta in February 1941. A Junkers Ju 88 pilot, he had flown the He 111 against Poland and Norway with KG 4, then the Ju 88 against France and England. A holder of the Ritterkreuz, he was now Kommandeur III/KG 30, and was destined to go on to still greater things. Malta was at this time defended by anti-aircraft guns and a handful of RAF Hurricanes, and was not yet the hornet’s nest it later became. Leading the raid was Joachim Helbig, at this time Kommandeur I/LG 1 (Ju 88), who already held the Ritterkreuz with Eichenlaub, and who, a little more than one month earlier, had led attacks on the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious in the Mediterranean which had all but sunk her, putting her out of the war for eighteen months.

Malta was just beginning to win her reputation as ‘the unsinkable aircraft’, earning a reputation which would be justified by future events. The raid described was recorded as having destroyed eight Wellington bombers and severely damaged another seven, thus helping to secure the supply lines to North Africa, where the Deutsches Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel, combined with the Italian Army, battled with the British Empire for control of Egypt and the Suez Canal. Had Rommel been successful in this undertaking, the Wehrmacht would have been free to advance to the oilfields of the Middle East. The loss of oil—the life blood of war—would have been critical to the Empire. Nor would German difficulties have been extreme: Iraq, in particular, was to a degree anti-British.

The primary air weapon was the bomb. When one considers it, this was an extremely primitive weapon. If released in straight and level flight, it accelerates downwards at the rate of 32ft/sec2 while retaining to a degree the forward speed of the releasing aircraft. Given that it is correctly sighted, and in still air conditions, a lapse of one-tenth of a second from an altitude which gives a falling time of 30 seconds and a forward speed of 180mph (290kph) will give an error of 792ft (241m). Given a crosswind of 30mph (48kph), the bomb will drift a considerable distance to the downwind side of the target. The counter to this is to establish the wind direction on the ground, then to bomb directly into it, or directly against it. This should in theory counterbalance crosswind error. It does not always do so because wind direction tends to vary at different altitudes. But even if the wind direction does not vary, and the attack is made directly into, or with, the prevailing wind, its strength is still an unknown quantity. Assuming a wind strength of 30mph (48kph) in either direction, even with precise aiming a significant longitudinal error is incurred. Level bombing was therefore an inexact science. It must also be appreciated that what could be achieved on the range from a moderate altitude bore little relationship to actual combat conditions. When the bomb aimer was being shot at, and in imminent danger of extinction, the’margin of level bombing error increased by a factor of three.

In the Second World War there was just one possible alternative. Dive bombing radically decreased the relative speed over the ground; in fact, if a 90- degree dive angle could be achieved, it became zero. At the same time, the release height of the bomb was greatly reduced and, with it, the time of flight.

Ironically, the Luftwaffe adopted this - ironically for two reasons. First, while it paid lip service to the idea of a strategic bomber force, dive bombers could be little other than tactical aircraft supporting the surface forces, whether army or navy. Secondly, stressing aircraft for dive attacks involved weight increases, which significantly reduced payload/range capacity. The Luftwaffe never succeeded in producing a true strategic bomber in the entire war—an omission that it came to regret.

The fact is that the dive bomber was extremely vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. Tipping over into a dive against a defended target made it a fairly easy, slow, no-deflection shot for ground fire. The supreme irony of this was that Germany led the field in Flakartillerie. Had Poland, France or Britain had the numerical and technical equivalent of the ’88, the dive bomber would have been shown for what it was—a slow and unhandy non-starter. But they did not! And so, in the early days of the Second World War, the Ju 87 Stuka and the Ju 88 built a legendary reputation, which was to a large degree founded on the weakness of their opponents.

On the Russian Front, matters were even worse. Many German Ju 87 pilots notched up more than 1,000 sorties. The historical record shows that they could not have done this in the West. This made for tremendously increased accuracy, allowing pinpoint attacks.

© Mike Spick 2001 & 2016, Luftwaffe Bomber Aces: Men, Machines, Methods. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Erwin Rommel arrived in Libya in February 1941, where British forces had won a stunning victory over the Italians, who outnumbered them five to one. Fresh British troops were arriving on the battlefield, soon to meet the Deutsche Afrika Korps.

With so many titles already published about the war in North Africa, what scope is there for another? David Michelhill-Green had written several photographic collections of Rommel and the desert war (available in the ‘Images of War’ series) when he turned to a narrative account. ‘Hitler’s War in Africa 1941-1942, The Road to Cairo’ makes extensive use of personal accounts from wide research to build an accomplished, fresh perspective in a single volume.

Rommel’s ‘Sideshow in Africa’ was a minor affair compared with the titanic struggle on the Eastern Front. But it became a central preoccupation of the Allies, for a long time it was the only land theatre in which they faced the Germans. The see-sawing battles became a testing ground for men and machines, for tactics, logistics and strategy - and for a succession of Generals. It will always be of fascination to military historians - this volume includes a series of explanatory maps and relevant photographs - but here is an engaging account that brings the human story to the fore.

The following excerpt describes the general conditions encountered by German troops when they arrived in Libya:

‘Not a war in a palm grove’

Africa held the promise of adventure, at least at first. Siegfried Westphal recalled how the ‘number of volunteers for this theatre was understandably large, as the magic of the Orient has always attracted youth.’ Leutnant Ralph Ringler (104th Panzer Grenadier Regiment) welcomed news of his assignment. ‘Like madmen we jumped and hugged each other... We became a separate caste in the barracks - “The Africans”...our young comrades envied us, the old ones were amused by our enthusiasm ...in Africa there awaited great adventure.’

Hans Schmitz’s first impressions were ‘yellow and sandy ...Palms and small trees...Solitary settlements, mud huts and mats, tents, caravan roads, dried-out riverbeds. Everything disappeared against the sandy horizon.’

A German officer in the 21st Panzer Division enthused:

‘Fantasy has had a free rein - Africa - that’s tropical nights, palm trees, sea breezes, native oases and tropical helmets. Also a little war, but how can we be anything but victorious?’

Even the privations of thirst, heat and cold were to be braved in this ‘wonderful of theatre of war’ , a captured letter championed: ‘One might almost envy you [in] all these hardships.’

The largely featureless Western Desert - a title bestowed by the British during the First World War to the desert region west of the Nile River - was an ancient battlefield where decaying ruins attested to earlier occupations by the Greeks, Romans, and Ottoman Turks. These latest combatants too discovered an arid expanse capped by natural geographical barriers at either end.

The narrow point in Libya was at El Agheila on the border of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania (Libya’s east and west provinces respectively); the eastern bottleneck, as we will see, lay six hundred miles to the east at El Alamein. The Germans were novices in this setting, the distances unprecedented. Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division in France, for example, had traversed 268 miles to reach the English Channel in 1940. He now faced a march of 1,415 miles to reach the Egyptian city of Alexandria.

In stark contrast to a rumoured corps d’elite, Hitler’s army in Africa was a hastily assembled formation devoid of experience, specialised acclimatisation or training. Measures before leaving Europe were little more than briefings by officers who had visited Africa and lectures on tropical medicine. Not surprisingly, the DAK faced myriad problems. While the pitiless desert heat may have been expected, the cold nights were an unexpected misery. ‘Night and morning [were] really lousy cold,’ Hauptman Wolfgang Everth complained. Even with three blankets one is frozen like a naked ski instructor. One’s feet aren’t warm until midday.’

German troops were hurriedly outfitted for their new posting. The basic tropical uniform was cut in a style reminiscent of the Kaiser’s colonial forces. ‘What we were “fitted” out with defies description,’ Major Hans von Luck (who served with Rommel in France in 1940) wrote after receiving his tropical uniform. ‘One could see that Germany had no longer any colonies since 1918, and so had no idea of what was suitable for the tropics. We need only to have asked our allies, the Italians, but no, the commissariat had designed the tropical equipment strictly in the Prussian mode.’ The stiff, tight-fitting uniform linen material provided little protection against the summer heat or insulation against the penetrating cold. Further accoutrements included a linen belt, high lace-up boots and a pith helmet, which, supposedly, ‘was essential wear in the tropics’ and shirts ‘impermeable to air’ .

As von Luck writes,

Wounded men from North Africa, waiting there for reposting, told us how they, like many others, had carried on a lively trade with the Italians in order to exchange at least some of their equipment for the more appropriate Italian uniforms.

British tropical uniforms made of pure wool were also found to be much more practical in the desert arena.

Shipped in haste, the first Geiman vehicles unloaded at Tripoli’s Spanish Quay still sported a dark grey European camouflage. Conceived to fight a war on the Continent, the Panzers suffered enormously in desert conditions. The average life of a tank engine, for example, was halved without appropriate air filters and operating in a low gear for extended periods over long distances. Frustration features in Leutnant Schorm’s diary (6 April), shortly after setting off early in the morning:

Every vehicle loses its way. When we reach the Via Balbia again - who will? - our Panzers, or at least their engines, will be ruined. According to instructions, the engines must be changed at 2,000 km. Their life is given by the firm at 2,500 km. They have already done 500 km in Germany. We have come 1,000 km along the Via Balbia. By the time we reach Derna, every Panzer will easily have passed the limit of 2,000 km. 600 km will have been carried out across the desert - in dust and heat, and that counts for more than treble [the normal strain].

Though trucks could traverse much of the terrain, broken springs and shock absorbers engendered frequent breakdowns. Leutnant Dr Kurt Wolff Tank (5th Panze Regiment) watched as repair groups came to life at dusk, industriously repairing engines and cleaning carburettors. Springs, track rollers and track links have to be seen to and fixed. Guns and machine guns have to be checked. You can hear the swearing of hard-working men, the clanging of hammers in the wet and cold night. As soon as the sun rises through the morning mist, the Regiment starts to roll forward.

With spare parts not readily available, Rommel’s formations would rely heavily upon captured enemy transport. ‘If you want vehicles, then go out into the desert and get them’ , he directed. ‘Our destroyed vehicles are being replaced by excellent British cars,’ Schraepler noticed, so much so that ‘some German units will not be recognised as German, and one might think that there are English here. Besides, our men can barely be identified, covered by dirt and dust.’

Diet was another problem for the German soldier. A DAK Feldwebel vented his frustration in an October 1941 diary entry:

‘Isn’t it perfect mockery what they offer us here for food? Here of all places where you need more to keep your health than elsewhere. It doesn’t matter a damn if we go to the dogs: what matters is that Germany saves foreign exchange and will win the war.’

Schraepler dismissed the Italian catering as ‘more than poor...dry mouldy bread, for dipping into edible oil, butter substitute, plus canned meat. That was our lunch.’

As Schmidt explained to General Paulus during his visit to Tobruk in May 1941: ‘fruit and vegetables are unknown to the soldier. They miss their potatoes especially. The usual rations consist of sardines in oil, bulky tinned-meat sausages (Bierwurst)’ and Italian tinned beef, stamped AM (for Administrazione Militare, Military Adminstration) - a staple derided as Alter Mann (Old Man) because of the letters embossed on the can. Worse still, the Italian rations, rich in pulses (leguminous plants) and conserved meat with a high fat content, often led to jaundice.

Disease debilitated both sides. An Australian soldier poeticised the scourge, writing of a

‘Land of filth, of flies and fleas; home to every known disease...

So we may when then battle’s won give Libya to the greedy Hun;

For never could worse existence be, than to live in Libyan misery.’

Rommel, for all his vitality, was stricken with jaundice and other chronic illnesses during his time in Africa. He was ‘a sick man’ , Schmidt wrote.

In the period from March to June 1941 alone, the DAK lost 12,203 men - 3,512 as battlefield casualties, the rest through sickness. Rommel’s adjutant recorded the extent of the problem as early as May 1941, noting ‘scores of soldiers are sick. This number is increasing every day.’

Another officer complained,

‘sometimes as many as sixty per cent of us suffer from dysentery-like diarrhoea at the same time. No one is spared. When you have it, you don’t know whether you want to live or die.’

© David Michelhill-Green 2020, ‘Hitler’s War In Africa 1941-1942’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd. An Amazon link is currently unavailable.

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On the 10th February, the British launched their first parachute raid of the war. Early Parachute training began by trial and error, and parachute operations followed on similar lines. There was much yet to be learnt about conducting ‘Special Forces’ raids in enemy territory, not least how members of such raiding parties could be exfiltrated with a reasonable chance of success.

A comprehensive account of the raid, incorporating many first-person accounts, was published in 2020: Operation Colossus: The First British Airborne Raid of World War II. This excerpt looks at the fate of the one man on the raid who had not trained as a Commando.

Fortunato Picchi had emigrated to Britain in 1921 and rose to become the Head Waiter at the Savoy Hotel, eventually getting British citizenship. With strong anti-fascist sympathies, he had volunteered for the Army in 1940 but had soon been recruited by the Special Operations Executive. At the age of 42, Picchi might have found Commando training rather a challenge, but he successfully passed the Parachute course at Ringway in late 1940.

He was then given the identity of a French soldier, Private Pierre Dupont, and joined ‘X Troop’ as one of three interpreters. He appears not to have received very much training from the Special Operations Executive. After the attack, the raiding party split up into three groups to make their escape, and the group Picchi was with was captured on the 12th December:

At Poggioreale prison on the first morning of interrogations, officers were questioned separately from the enlisted men, taken one at a time to face a Bonsignore man dressed in civilian clothes, seated behind a desk and flanked by two black-shirted men of the MSVN1 who, though denied jurisdiction over the prisoners, exercised their right to supervise the interviews.

The interrogations themselves followed a predictable and nearly identical pattern for each man. The interrogator introduced himself as the commandant of the prisoner of war camp they were likely to be sent to, and merely wanted to check details of the prisoners for the International Red Cross. Behind this transparent fiction were attempts to put the captives at ease, asking apparently innocuous details of personal backgrounds and next of kin, before interjecting more specific questions of a military nature. Predictably, none fell on fertile ground and the prisoners declined to answer questions, or, at best, gave misleading answers intended to amuse themselves at the interrogator’s expense.

Meanwhile enlisted men were also interrogated singly, probably handled differently by the Italians as they were frequently threatened with summary execution for having waged war on the civilian population, their only hope of salvation being full and frank confessions of their acts and any other information that was asked of them.

None of the British soldiers divulged anything of any use to the Italians, also averting potential disaster when asked if they had arrived in Italy in civilian clothes. If so, they could have justifiably been considered spies and shot, but fortunately no man struggled with the truth that they had all worn battledress and carried their accompanying pay books.

While the Britons seemingly shrugged off the interrogation attempts, [ ... ] there was immediate concern was for Picchi, who faced his own impending interrogation with growing anxiety. Picchi had confided to Deane-Drummond that he was intending to make a clean breast of everything when confronted by his interrogators. Picchi clung to his certain belief that what he had done by taking part in Operation Colossus was in the best interests of his country. He was a patriot, first and foremost, and harboured hopes that other ‘true Italians’ would see his actions for what they were: a blow aimed at Mussolini’s fascist empire, not the Italy that it currently dominated.

Naïve and idealistic such beliefs may have been, but they originated from honesty and an integrity that would be unable to maintain the ruse of his French identity for long under skillful questioning. Somewhat ironically, Picchi was the sole representative of the secretive Special Operations Executive present in Operation Colossus, and yet perhaps the least prepared to counter robust questioning.

Deane-Drummond urged him to stick to his cover story, and not deviate beyond name, rank and serial number, which, after all, was all that the interrogator was entitled to receive.

However, by the end of the first day of questioning, Picchi emerged from the interview room despondent, returning to his cell in a state of utter dejection, shivering and staring unseeing at the opposite wall.

His cover had crumbled rapidly as Major Giuseppe Dotti, head of the C.S. Section (counter-espionage) of the ‘Bonsignore’, later attested in a statement provided on 21 August 1944, after the Italian surrender:

On investigation by the military authorities of the area, the Carabinieri and the police, it was possible to arrest some of the parachutists themselves, among whom there was a certain Peter Dupont. Suspicions were aroused by his perfect Italian and Florentine accent, and on interrogation he confessed that he was an Italian citizen. He was, in fact, identified as Fortunato Picchi, born at Carmignano (Florence).

Picchi had indeed been identified, the Questura (police HQ) of Florence quickly finding his ageing mother, brothers and sisters who all were visited and questioned, and later collectively persecuted by the fascist authorities for the remainder of the war. Letters and photographs of Fortunato were confiscated as evidence, and even former work colleagues at the Grande Albergo Reale in Viareggio were interrogated and shown a mugshot of the dishevelled prisoner, confirming that it was indeed him.

A portrait photograph taken of the young Fortunato before his emigration to Britain was forwarded to the special prosecutor’s office and submitted as evidence, stamped and certified on 17 February as genuine by the Florence Questura. As night fell, Picchi eventually succumbed to sleep, though shivering and mumbling to himself as if troubled by dreams. Doug Jones remembers him waking, whereupon he attempted to calm the emotionally drained Picchi, the two men sharing the same threadbare blanket until dawn’s weak light filtered through the high window.

Meanwhile, at some point on the night of 14 February, Rome had finally issued a War Communiqué that officially released the news of ‘Operation Colossus’ internationally:

During the night of February 10th-11th (Monday night) the enemy dropped detachments of parachutists in Calabria and Lucania. They were armed with machine guns, hand grenades, and explosives. Their objects were to destroy our lines of communication and to damage the local hydro-electric power stations.

Owing to the vigilance and prompt intervention of our defence units all the parachutists were captured before they were able to cause serious damage. In an engagement which took place one gendarme and one civilian were killed. It has not yet been decided whether to treat these British parachutists as prisoners or spies.

For Picchi, there was no doubt. The next morning, guards came for him and he was escorted from the cell bound for incarceration and trial in Rome. None of his X Troop comrades ever saw him again.

...

[Fortunato Picchi was sent for trial at a special fascist tribunal.]

...

In Rome such sessions were held in the large Hall IV of the Palace of Justice and wore a guise of great solemnity. The President and judges were all clad in the uniform of the MSVN as Picchi was led into the room on Saturday 5 April, climbing from the basement via a stairway on which was written ‘Death to traitors! Black shirts will give you lead!’

The ‘trial’ was swift, little defence offered and two uniformed Carabinieri flanking Picchi were equipped with gags should the defendant try to sully the solemnity of the occasion by mouthing his own words in defence - or defiance. Condemned to death, Picchi was taken to Fort Bravetta where he spent his final night. There, before dawn, he was allowed to pen a final letter to his mother.

My dearest mother,

After so many years you receive a letter from me. I’m sorry, dear mother, for you and for everyone at home for this misfortune and the pain that will cause you. Now all that remains in the world both of pain or pleasure is over for me. I do not care much about death, I only regret my action because I, who always loved my country, must now be recognised as a traitor. Yet in conscience I do not think so.

Forgive me, dear mother, and remember me to all. I ask you above all for your forgiveness and your blessing, because I need it so much. Kiss all my brothers and sisters and to you, dear mother, a hug, hoping, with the grace of God, to be reunited with each other in heaven.

With many kisses, your son, Fortunato.

Long live Italy!! Sunday, April 6, 1941.

At 7 o’clock that morning, Fortunato was led to the embankment of the fort’s firing range and placed on a chair with his back to the assembled firing squad of state policemen, the method reserved for those found guilty of treason. Within minutes, he was dead.

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© Lawrence Paterson 2020, ‘ Operation Colossus: The First British Airborne Raid of World War II. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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The young Nancy Wake, born in New Zealand and brought up in Australia, had already led an exceptional life before the war broke out. Running away from home as a teenager, she eventually found herself in the southern French port of Marseille, where she married her industrialist husband, Henri Fiocca. They were well placed to live a quiet life and wait out the war years - but instead chose to throw themselves into resisting the French occupation. By her nature, a free spirit and described by many as ‘a force of nature’, Wake distinguished herself as a courier for the Resistance.

Wake used her femininity to outfox the Germans for many months, but eventually they realised they were dealing with an exceptional character. As a prominent woman in the Resistance, she was suddenly a target. The newly published The Gestapo’s Most Wanted - The White Mouse: The Life of SOE Agent Nancy Wake tells the story of how this was just the first part of her resistance career. She would escape to England only to be trained in the SOE and then parachute back into France:

Nancy had had no intention of leaving France in 1943, despite the increased risks to members of the Resistance. But by the autumn, her time in Marseille was forced to come to an end.

O’Leary arrived at the Fioccas’ apartment one evening, clutching a piece of paper in his hand. He asked Nancy, with uncharacteristic seriousness, to take a seat in the salon. Then he showed her what he had been holding. It was a ‘wanted’ poster, and it described a female Resistance agent who had been nicknamed La Souris Blanche: The White Mouse. Beneath the name was a bounty for five million francs being offered for her capture. It was clearly intended for distribution amongst both French and German officials. Nancy’s German was only rudimentary, so she had to wait for O’Leary to translate the rest of the information that it revealed.

‘We’ve been hearing rumours of this for a while,’ he said. ‘Both here and in Paris the Gestapo have become aware of a female agent. In short, they know that there is a woman working for us in the south, although they do not know exactly who she is.’

The missive reported other details that revealed a lack of real information that could help them identify the agent. She was described as being beautiful but blonde, for one thing. Yet at the heart of the matter, the Gestapo were, of course, correct about a key fact – they had begun to realize that, just as Nancy had told the others at the beginning of her involvement with the Resistance, women could get away with a whole lot more than men.

The Gestapo’s eyes had therefore started to turn in that direction, once they had begun to understand just how successful the Resistance had been in waging its secret war right under their noses. But too many individuals had been busy racing to unmask this particular agent and claim the generous bounty, so there had been little collaboration between the different branches of the Gestapo and the Vichy authorities until then, ensuring that only slow progress had been made towards her identification.

‘But make no mistake, this is you, Nancy,’ O’Leary continued, ‘even if they don’t have your name yet. The information might be conflicting from different sources, but they’ve known about a female agent for a while, and the latest reports that we’ve managed to get hold of make us think that they’re closing in on identifying you at last.’

‘The White Mouse,’ Nancy repeated slowly. ‘Not very flattering, is it, to be compared to such a small and troublesome creature?’ Despite Nancy’s derision of the nickname, however, it did infer her ability to resist capture, suggesting that she was as elusive as a mouse and able to deftly slip through the grasp of the Gestapo.

The colour probably emphasized her rarity, suggesting that she was a particularly clever or cunning creature. O’Leary smiled. ‘Perhaps it rather belies their fear of you, seeing as this poster tells us that you are, right now, at the top of the Gestapo’s ‘Most Wanted’ list in Vichy.’ Nancy gave a bitter laugh. ‘How lucky for me; it seems that I’m famous!’

Even at this moment, she did not show fear, although she knew instinctively that this was the end of her time working for the escape line. ‘So that’s it then, is it, Pat?’ she asked. ‘Should we perform just one more escape?’ ‘Yes,’ O’Leary replied. ‘Time for The White Mouse to leave Vichy as quickly as possible. But you must not draw attention to the fact that you are leaving. You must walk out of the door as if it is any other morning and as if you will be back very soon. You must not take a suitcase or your belongings.’

‘What about Henri?’ Nancy asked. ‘Can I at least take my husband as an accessory?’ The humour she typically used as a shield – or perhaps, more accurately, a weapon – during difficult moments was in full force that evening.

‘That’s up to him. You could legitimately both be leaving the house together for an outing or errand, rather than going alone. I’ll leave you to discuss it with him,’ O’Leary said. But the look on his face made it clear that Henri would be in great danger if he chose to stay. ‘You know the network, Nancy,’ he continued. ‘You know the routes. The safest thing you can do right now, the best thing for both yourself and the Resistance, is to head out of Marseille to the Pyrenees and into Spain as quickly as you can.’

They shook hands – a rather formal goodbye for two people who had worked together so intensely, always on the cusp of so much danger. Nancy wondered if it would be the last time that they would meet.

After O’Leary left, Nancy went to find her husband in his home office to explain the situation. Henri decided that he should stay in Marseille, at least for a short time. It would be easier, he thought, and safer, for Nancy to leave the country alone. He also felt a great deal of responsibility to the community in which he had lived his entire life: to the employees at the factory, to friends and neighbours that he still trusted. He told Nancy that he had too much to settle before he could leave.

‘I’ll follow you, Nannie,’ he promised her. ‘It won’t take me long, but there are too many affairs that I must take care of here. We will meet in London once it’s all finalised. Despite everything, I can’t abandon my town or my legacy without a backward glance.’ Then they embraced, pouring out their fear for one another’s safety into the kiss.

Nancy did the only thing that she could have in that situation, even though she hated to leave behind Henri and the apartment where she had been so happy. France may not have been her birth country, but it had become home, and much of that was down to her husband and the place she had found in the world alongside him in Marseille. ‘I was French, except by birth,’ Nancy would often say.

She picked out the largest handbag she owned from her collection and packed it with essentials. She didn’t dare risk taking a change of clothes or a suitcase; anything too large might draw unwanted attention towards her, just as O’Leary had warned. If she was searched for any reason, too many possessions would only fuel suspicions. She wouldn’t have needed a clean dress on the usual outings she made, and at all costs she had to stick to her usual routine and appearances. Nonetheless, she did take her make-up with her. It was a form of armour, and Nancy suspected that she would need every tool in her arsenal to escape, considering the Gestapo had put her at the top of their ‘Most Wanted’ list.

She also packed money and jewellery as discreetly as she could, tucking them inside the lining of her bag. She took some of the false identification papers that the Resistance had provided her with, but left behind everything that identified her as Madame Fiocca in the luxurious apartment she had so lovingly furnished four years before.

She pulled on her winter coat and adjusted her hat in the hall mirror, as she had done hundreds of times previously. Then there was nothing left to do but to take up her wicker shopping basket, as usual, tuck it into the crook of her arm and prepare to leave the house. This she suspected, would be the last time that she would ever step through her front door.

© Alice Sharman 2026, ‘The Gestapo’s Most Wanted - The White Mouse: The Life of SOE Agent Nancy Wake’, Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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In May 1940, when Hitler struck in the west, part of the Wehrmacht’s success lay in the shock and surprise of a new method of attack. Fallschirmjäger, landed by both parachute and glider, overcame supposedly impregnable targets in Belgium simply by landing on top of them to begin their assault. Britain had to catch up fast.

Jason Woods, a former member of the Parachute Regiment, tells the story of British paratroopers through their many deployments, from their very inception in 1940 to the present day in Paras in Action: Ready for Anything – The Parachute Regiment Through the Eyes of Those who Served. First published in 2022, this history has been very well received by those looking for firsthand accounts of various actions over the years. The whole account is informed by Wood’s experiences and those of his fellow Paras. A paperback edition will be released later this year.

The following excerpt looks at the very first months of the development of a Parachute force in 1940-41, when intrepid men risked everything just to get the enterprise started:

Chamberlain’s government had underestimated the importance of airborne troops and although the Air Ministry had already set up a parachute training centre, Major John Rock of the Royal Engineers had been put in charge with very little support or information regarding the plan for this new unit. The Germans had been preparing for war for six years and when the Fallschirmjäger (German paratroopers) emerged as a successful fighting force that used parachutes and gliders to drop into enemy territory to overcome opposing forces, the British people lived in fear of being invaded by this enemy from the sky.

When Churchill came into power, he immediately galvanised people into action. In his famous letter to Sir General Hastings Ismay, he called for a ‘corps of at least 5,000 parachute troops …’ and added, ‘Advantage must be taken of the summer to train these men …’ He wasn’t allowing much time for the development of this new force and the training centre leapt into action. Once established, the British paratroopers soon made up for lost time and proved themselves to be more than a match for their German counterparts as the war progressed.

The Central Landing School (later changed to ‘Establishment’) was sited at Ringway Airport, just outside Manchester, and with Churchill’s support, Major Rock could now be more proactive in training and building up the new unit of parachutists. Volunteers were called to form the first parachute force, named 2 Commando. They answered adverts put out across the forces network for involvement in hazardous work; there was no mention of the fact that they would be parachutists and barely any of them had experience with flying let alone parachutes. Training got started very quickly with a joint team of RAF and Army physical training instructors, who were literally thrown in at the deep end with no training equipment, no real experience and nothing to guide them. All they had were a few hundred parachutes and six old Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bombers. Nicknamed ‘Flying Coffins’, these planes were already obsolete due to their lack of speed and vulnerability to anti-aircraft guns.

Over the next two months, instructors worked around the clock improvising with makeshift parachute towers and old aircraft. They developed the training through a process of trial and error and quite a few injuries; sprained and broken ankles or dislocations were commonplace. Exercises were devised to strengthen the muscles required for jumping and landing, and they were taught some basic self-defence skills for close-quarter battle on the ground.

Working out where to jump from was a major issue. At first the rear turret was removed, and the plan for the volunteers in this new role was to stand up in the open turret and wait for their parachute to inflate from above and lift them off the plane in what was called the ‘Pull Off’ method. This only got as far as the testing phase with the PJIs (Parachute Jump Instructors) demonstrating its use. Unsurprisingly, it proved to be extremely dangerous, so they moved to cutting a hole in the floor of the aircraft. However, this had its own dangers, with men smashing their heads or faces against the edge as they exited the plane through the 3ft-deep ring of metal. The soldiers called it the ‘Whitley Kiss’ and it was the method of exit for a while before the new Dakotas came into service with side doors installed for jumping, which eventually became known as Para doors.

Training was intense as the new para recruits were put through their paces to increase their overall fitness and tactical awareness and learn how to jump from great heights and land with a parachute. It was an innovative method of insertion, but for the guys it was purely a form of transportation; the real work of a paratrooper started once they hit the ground. As they continued, adjustments and improvements were made through trial and error. They changed their initial clothing to be less bulky, with early versions of the Para Smock coming into use.

On the 136th descent the first fatality occurred, sadly killing Ralph Evans, who experienced a ‘roman candle’. This is a total malfunction of a chute, also known as a ‘streamer’, where the canopy has failed to open; it is just trailing behind the parachutist, and usually results in death. Unfortunately, it was relatively common during the Second World War for this to occur, and British paratroopers weren’t equipped with reserve chutes at this time. Thankfully this situation has been very rare since the addition of anti- inversion skirts to the modern canopies.

A new parachute, the X-type Statichute, was designed, which had the main advantage of opening well after the parachute had cleared the aircraft. Several men died or sustained serious injuries in the early experiments, although one man had a remarkable escape from what was described as a ‘hang-up’. The hook from the static line got caught in Frank Garlick’s parachute bag and he was left dangling from the plane, unable to get back into the aircraft or be released. The plane came slowly into land with its tail up and he was dragged along the ground on his parachute. Remarkably, he survived with only cuts and bruises and went on to serve in North Africa and Arnhem with great distinction.

It is a tribute to these pioneers that, despite the haphazard facilities and men being injured and killed in training, they stuck with it, determined to master the techniques, and get ready for some action. Former RAF Parachute Jump Instructor Rick Wadmore, who served for twenty years up to the early 2000s, gave his view, ‘It was literally flying by the seat of your pants stuff in the early days. However, once they realised what was the best way of getting the paratroopers out of the plane and onto the ground as fast as possible, then things settled down. The first parachutes were known as GQ X type, then they moved onto the PX chutes. They were only on to the PX Mark 4 by the mid-nineties when the LLP (Low-Level Parachute) was brought into service, which just goes to show the slow progression of this form of transport.’

There were many who refused to jump or just couldn’t meet the requirements but those that made it through demonstrated the characteristics of mixing humour with a ‘let’s just get on with it’ attitude. As one early paratrooper, Tony Hibbert, recalled in an interview with Paradata, ‘Everything was about laughter in those days.’ On one occasion he jumped out of a balloon at night wearing full mess kit and spurs because he needed to complete another jump for his qualification book and Para pay. ‘We had to have a sense of fun, to lighten up and not take life too seriously,’ he said.

After six months, 488 men had completed training at Ringway, and they were keen to be given a mission. The war was raging across Europe and North Africa and German bombers had been causing devastation to civilian populations in cities across the land. The guys were pumped up and ready to go but raids kept being cancelled and some began to ask to go back to their original regiments, purely so that they could be involved in the fight again.

By late 1940, things were starting to move fast. The Parachute Training Squadron (previously ‘school’) was officially named. Most of the modern- day paratroopers remember it as 1 PTS. For those at the time it was merely PTS, and only became 1 PTS when, later in the war, a second school opened for airborne forces in India. Then they looked for a powerful, unifying symbol to bond this new force together, so ‘Pegasus the Slayer of Enemies’ was designed by the artist Edward Seago, who at the time was completing his war service in the Royal Engineers.

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© Jason Woods 2022, ‘Paras in Action: Ready for Anything – The Parachute Regiment Through the Eyes of Those who Served’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

N.B. The above images are not taken from this volume.

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Tobruk Captured

22nd January 1941: Demoralised and poorly led Italian troops have no hesitation in surrendering after the Australian assault

So we went back, and some anti-tank shells nearly hit us; they could penetrate our armour. We went back about a mile. There was pandemonium; no one knew what they were doing. The officers were all hidden. We got to where my tent was, jumped out, leaving the tank engine running. We got in a ditch, which had been dug to take water pipes up to a distilling plant. It wasn’t finished. But the ditch was handy because bullets were flying about.

W. B. Kennedy Shaw was one of the pioneers of desert exploration before the war; one of his expeditions took him a thousand miles into uncharted wilderness on a small camel train. His navigational expertise was invaluable to the LRDG, established by his fellow explorer, Ralph Bagnold, in June 1940. Kennedy Shaw was to write up his experiences in 1943, simply entitled Long Range Desert Group: Behind Enemy Lines in North Africa, at the conclusion of the Desert campaign. In 1945, it was one of the first memoirs ever published about the behind-the-lines exploits that became the foundational experiences for the establishment of Special Forces.

January 1941 was still the early days for the LRDG; not all of the different patrols had yet been in action. The Italians at the airfield at Murzuk could not reasonably expect to be disturbed by a raiding party:

Lunch over, we set off to finish the last two miles of the journey which had begun in Cairo eighteen days and 1500 miles before. Clayton led in his 15-cwt., then Hewson with one troop of ‘T ‘ patrol, and then the rest - a quiet procession of cars, down the scarp on which we had halted, through some broken ground, over a low ridge and into the outskirts of the town, I wondered if the Italians had. had the foresight to put even one, machine-gun post on the Sebha road. Luckily they had not, and we had achieved the advice of their own Machiavelli :

“ Those enterprises are best which can be concealed up to the moment of their fulfilment.”

The road seemed to lead to the fort so Clayton followed it. At a well by the roadside a group of natives gave the Fascist salute and cried “ Bon giorno.” A little farther Clayton overtook Signor Colicchia, the postmaster, bicycling towards the fort, and hustled the terrified official on to his car as a guide. Ahead I could now see the fort, partly hidden by trees and with some after-lunch strollers around it. The surprise was complete.

Then things began to happen. Hewson swung off the road to the left and opened fire on the strollers ; the Guards turned to the right and started to engage the fort. I was with Bruce Ballantyne with the other half of T patrol who were to tackle the airfield. The hangar was now out of sight, so from a group of natives outside a hut I seized a Sudani for a guide and pushed him on to the truck. No doubt he thought he was going to be murdered and he was paler than I should have thought a black man could be. He was too scared to speak and soon fell off, but by now we could see the hangar and were racing to beat the landing ground guards to their machine-gun posts. Bruce with two trucks got there first and most of them surrendered without firing, but he killed the last man, still fumbling with his rifle, with a quick shot through the head.

Out of the corner of my eye during this confusion I had seen Clayton’s car crossing the aerodrome and wondered how he had got there. A few minutes later he joined us with his car full of bullet holes and d’Ornano’s body in the back. Round the corner of the hangar he had run into a machine-gun post which one of he bolder Italians had manned. Beside him, in the front- seat, Adams’s Vickers gun had jammed, and before Clayton could slam the gears into reverse d’Ornano on the back had been killed with a bullet through the throat and also an Italian Air Force sergeant whom Clayton, having handed over the postmaster, had roped in as another guide. No doubt the Italians thought we had shot him in cold blood, but this is the truth about his death.

We got the Bofors going on to the gun post and the hangar and before long the twenty odd Italians had had enough of it and one of them appeared on the roof waving a white flag. Three dead or dying Libyans and one wounded Italian were their casualties. In the middle of it all I remember seeing, shuffling with half-bent knees across the landing ground, that so familiar African sight, a string of old women carrying firewood bundles on their heads.

Meanwhile at the fort, where Hewson had been killed and Wilson and three other men wounded, the patrols were successfully containing the garrison and a lucky mortar bomb had set the tower ablaze and burnt the flag and flagstaff. In the middle of the attack a touring car drove up to the gate. In it was the Italian commander who had probably been out to lunch and also, as some said afterwards, a woman and child. One shell from the Guards Bofors put an end to them ; it was unfortunate about the woman and the child but people should arrange their lunch parties more carefully.

In the hangar were three Ghiblis (Colonial bombers) and finding a portable re-fuelling tank which was full I set the Libyan prisoners to pump petrol over the aircraft. I remember being surprised to find them fitted with Lewis guns ; such are the mysteries of the international armaments business. As we were finishing Clayton came back from the fort saying that the garrison continued to hold out and that as the main objective, the destruction of the aircraft and hangar, would be achieved he proposed to withdraw. From what we heard afterwards the fort was probably on the point of surrendering, for that evening the French ative troops said that they had heard cries of “ Nitla burra. Nitla burra ” (“ Let’s get out ”) from the Libyans. They may have been insisting on an offensive sortie, but it seems more likely that they had had enough.

Ballantyne had moved his trucks and prisoners away from the hangar and we laid a trail of petrol to the door. One match struck and before we were off the landing ground the hangar was ablaze and the bombs and ammunition exploding. As we moved out of the town a few minutes later I looked back to see the roof collapsing on to the aircraft within. Of the twenty odd Italian prisoners sitting downcast on the edge of the landing ground we kept four of the most intelligent-looking and, for lack of transport space and rations, let the rest go, to the disgust of the French who would happily have cut their throats.

We left the town by the same road. In the ditch lay the postmaster’s bicycle which I picked up and tied to the back of Beech’s truck, thinking it would be useful for riding to the office in Cairo, but though Beech carried it for three weeks it was finally lost to me, burnt with its former owner in the action at Gebel Sherif.

A cold sandstorm was blowing when we buried Hewson and d’Ornano by the roadside just outside the town, with the shivering Italian prisoners standing dejectedly by and wondering, I expect, if graves would soon be dug for them. Their countrymen in Murzuk showed no signs of pursuit and we camped that night at Diem, where the villagers turned out and received ’Abd el Galil with enthusiasm. In the base wireless room in the Citadel in Cairo the faintly-heard dots and dashes of our No. n set were giving Bagnold the news, good and bad. This range - it is a thousand miles from Murzuk to Cairo - taxed the abilities of the signalmen to the uttermost.

© WB Kennedy Shaw 1945 & 1989, ‘Long Range Desert Group: Behind Enemy Lines in North Africa. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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From Jack Holroyd’s six-volume series comes The Second World War Illustrated: The Second Year - Archive and Colour Photographs.

A very diverse collection of images from all sides of the conflict. These are organised by theatre and provide a good overview of events, mainly through the well-informed captions, but with some supporting text and diagrams. Many pictures will be familiar - as the main source material is official archives - but in each volume, quite a few interesting rarities turn up. An accessible, complete history of the war.

German Knickebein* navigation system

Attacking bombers flew a course indicated by the Approach beam the target city; three intercepting cross beams gave appropriate information and action to take:

First of the cross beams (A), code named Rhein, was transmitted from Cleve in Germany and alerted the aircraft crew that they were thirty miles from their target.

The second beam (B), code named Oder, transmitted from Julianadorp in the Netherlands, instructed the aircraft observer to press the button to start the bombing clock.

The distance to the target was now nine miles.

When the aircraft intercepted beam (C) Elbe, which originated from Bredstedt in northern Germany, the aircraft observer stopped the bombing clock; it was now just three miles to the target.

Shortly afterwards a timer made electrical contact and the bombs were released.

*Knickebein translates as crooked leg.

The Lasi pogrom was a series of actions by forces under Marshal Ion Antonescu in the Romanian city of Lasi against its Jewish community. It lasted from 29 June to 6 July 1941. According to Romanian authorities, over 13,266 people, or one third of the Jewish population, were massacred. One method of cruel killing by the Romanian authorities was by train: In the death train that left lasi for Călärasi, southern Romania, which carried perhaps as many as 5,000 Jews, only 1,011 reached their destination alive after eight days.

© Jack Holroyd 2020, ‘The Second World War Illustrated: The Second Year - Archive and Colour Photographs of WW2’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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This week’s excerpt comes, unusually, from the Pen & Sword ‘True Crime’ series. Neil R. Story has written extensively about crime over the years and has published many books on the subject. The Blackout Murders: Homicide in WW2 describes a wide variety of crimes committed during the war years. Some were direct consequences of the ‘blackout’ itself, when criminals took advantage of the unusual circumstances. Others were a consequence of the destruction and trauma caused by the bombing. A few were the work of notorious men like ‘Reg’ Christie, the serial killer who served as a Wartime Reserve Police Constable, through which he gained the trust of many women. His crimes were not discovered until years after the war.

The background to these crimes tells us much about how people lived at the time and how they were affected by the war. This is especially apparent from one sad case from late 1940:

The increasing intensity of air raids began to take its toll in the war years; the combination of air raids, false alarms, blackouts, lack of sleep, shortages and rationing strained some families to the limit. Occasionally, morals fell by the wayside and for others life became cheap. There were outbursts of frustration and violence. For some it was too much, and they simply snapped.

‘It was for the best’ (Hackney, London 1940)

At the very start of the shows that may well have inspired our interest in the darker pathways of humanity, be it ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’, Rod Serling and ‘The Twilight Zone’, Roald Dahl’s ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ or my own personal favourite, Edward Woodward’s introductions for the precious eleven episodes of ‘In Suspicious Circumstances’, the opening monologues would often ask the viewers to consider a poignant question such as what would you have done under die circumstances presented in the programme you were about to be shown.

In that same spirit I pose two questions to ponder when reading the stories in this chapter.

Consider if it were you and your home city that were being subjected to bombing by enemy aircraft, not just for one night but night after night, and you don’t have the benefit of hindsight to know when it will end. Nights when you would hear the warning sirens and make your way to your little corrugated iron Anderson shelter down the garden. There you would sit and wait until you heard the unmistakable drone of the engines of enemy bombers, the crump of distant bombs and then explosion after explosion as they get closer, and you are left in that horrible limbo of will you be next, or will it pass over and you get to live another day? Add into that mix the day-to-day issues of life and work, love and relationships, especially if something drastically upsets that difficult balance - could you weather it all with stoicism? How much could you take before you snapped? And perhaps darker still, do you dare contemplate what you could be capable of after you snapped?

Before the days of a National Health Service, when there was far less public awareness and adoption of healthy eating habits, and more people smoked than not, many people in their sixties and seventies looked and felt old and were quite happy to see these as the twilight years of their lives. Even though there were old age pensions, many still had to work to make ends meet and often ended their years living hand to mouth just managing to ‘get by’ .

One such couple were Ida Ethel Rodway (61), who worked as a boot and shoe machinist for A & H Meltzers at their Pretoria Shoe Works in Tottenham, north London, and her husband Joseph (71) who was a retired horse-drawn delivery driver. They had been married for nearly forty years and relatives would recall that they always seemed happy and not a cross word passed between them.

On 21 September 1940, the house where they were living in rented rooms at 11 Martello Street, Hackney, was bombed. Fortunately, the couple were already in the Anderson shelter in the garden when the bomb detonated and destroyed much of their home and possessions, although they still caught some of the force of the blast. Neither suffered any serious physical injuries but Joseph was taken to Hackney Hospital in a badly distressed state. He had to leave less than a week later when the hospital required his bed for other casualties. Mrs Rodway had not been hospitalised but, as a family friend would comment, it was believed she had been receiving treatment for neurasthenia, a kinder and less stigmatised word for a condition commonly known as shell shock.

Life had not been kind to Joseph. He had been one of the last generation of men to work as drivers of horse-drawn transport, but times had moved on - steam and petrol vehicles used instead - and Joseph had not been in regular employment for ten years. He had also been losing his sight for years and became totally blind in April 1939; consequently, he was entirely reliant on Ida. She had to take more and more time off work to look after him and lost her job as a result, so they were living on Joseph’s meagre pension and dole money.

Having lost their home and nearly all their possessions, the couple had been reduced to sleeping on a floor at the home of Ida’s sister, Florence Clapp, at 39 Kingshold Road, Hackney Wick.

Joseph’s mental health had also deteriorated and he was often confused and disorientated. Ida confided in her sister that she wished the bomb that destroyed their home had killed them both. Shortly after her sister left for work at about 7.40am on 1 October 1940 Ida Rodway snapped. What happened next was written up in a statement she gave to police shortly after 11.00am the same morning:

I thought to myself, ‘What shall I do? Here am I stranded with nowhere to go. Whatever shall I do?’ I know my sister would not keep me there forever. My husband was in bed on the floor. I had been up since about seven o’clock. I was dressed. I was going to take him in a cup of tea, but I never gave him the tea. I got hold of the chopper from under the dresser in the kitchen and the carving knife. I went into the bedroom and he was sitting up in bed. I hit him on the head with the chopper. The head of the chopper fell off. He said ‘What are you doing this for?’ I said ‘I am led to desperation.’ and took hold of the knife and finished him off. I was worried to death with no one to help me.

In fact Ida Rodway had not only cleaved her husband’s skull with a hatchet, she had also cut into his throat so vigorously she had nearly detached his head from his body. She then covered his head with two pillows, cleaned herself up and went to alert the authorities. She encountered their upstairs neighbour, Lily Beauchamp, on the street, to whom she said, quite calmly and in a matter-of-fact way: ‘I have murdered my husband. I want to find a policeman. Will you get one of the wardens?’

When questioned about why she had killed her husband Mrs Rodway took pains to point out they had not quarrelled, explaining that:

‘He was my husband. I was worried about him. He was blind. We were bombed out of our home and I had nowhere to go and nobody to help me. I was worried to death. I don’t know what made me do it.’

In much the same way that thousands of beloved pets had been destroyed in September 1939, when many feared severe food shortages and the air raid regulations did not permit dogs or cats to be taken into public air raid shelters, Mrs Rodway appeared, in later police interviews, absolutely convinced she had done the kindest thing for her husband under the circumstances and that it had ‘been for the best’ . She had even taken the knife and chopper to a local knife grinder shortly before the day of the murder.

Arraigned at the Central Criminal Court on 14 November, Ida Rodway was brought before Mr Justice Wrottesley. A psychological assessment had been carried out by the medical officer of Holloway Prison who said Mrs Rodway had told him she ‘intended to plead guilty, as that would get everything settled.’ She reiterated that she believed what she had done was right and that she was ‘entirely unconcerned about the result of the trial’.

The medical officer expressed his opinion that she was unfit to plead. Mr Justice Wrottesley ordered her to be ‘detained until His Majesty’s pleasure be known’. Ida Rodway was committed to Broadmoor, where she died on 25 April 1946.

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© Neil R. Story 2023, ‘The Blackout Murders: Homicide in 6th June 1944.’ Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Anyone familiar with the story of D-Day and the Overlord plan for the liberation of Europe in 1944 will be aware of some of the tensions that existed within the Allied leadership. Although Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander, the British Montgomery commanded both the British and American ground forces during the first battles in Normandy. But the tensions were much deeper than that. At the heart of the differences within the Allied camp were differing conceptions of the war aims.

These different perspectives, world views, and public perceptions of the contributions made by the men fighting dated back to at least the end of the First World War. There is a long ‘back story’ to untangle to put the decisions in Europe in 1944 in context. This fascinating story is told in Second Front: Anglo-American Rivalry and the Hidden Story of the Normandy Campaign, published earlier in 2025 by Canadian historian Marc Milner.

The following excerpt takes up the story at the end of 1940 as Churchill continued to lobby Roosevelt for material support, and American journalists contributed to a campaign to get US domestic support for Britain:

By the autumn of 1940 Murrow and other Americans were openly working with the BBC on propaganda films, perhaps the most important of which was the ten-minute short ‘London Can Take It’, narrated by Quentin Reynolds, correspondent for Collier’s magazine.

The film was released in Britain on 21 October and was an immediate hit. Warner Brothers in the US acquired it, and Reynolds used it during a speaking tour - without British titles or credits, just his name as narrator. An Oscar nomination followed the American release in December.

Churchill worried about civilian morale, but he also knew that the suffering, the little victories and the careful crafting of myths were all essential parts of the greater propaganda war. Even the Blitz itself was mythologised for public-relations purposes. In a globalised media market it was important that everyone, but especially Europeans under occupation and the dithering Americans, knew that Britain could take it.

In late 1940 Churchills gravest concern was the impact of the German naval blockade: Britons needed to eat, but they also needed the sinews of war to continue the fight. The southern and eastern coast, especially the great ports of London and Southampton, were effectively closed by the Luftwaffe. It took nearly a year to reorient cargo handling, rail lines and manpower to the west, away from the immediate threat of air attack.

In the process, imports declined. There was a general tendency to attribute these declines directly to enemy action at sea rather than disruption at home, but there was no denying in late 1940 that the German noose was tightening. The U-boat attacks were part of a comprehensive German assault on Britain’s lifeline. At the end of 1940 Britain really needed America’s navy.

* * *

The architect of the plan that ‘saved’ Britain and made Allied victory possible was Lord Lothian, who persuaded Churchill to lay bare Britain’s situation and seek salvation from the Americans. And it was Lothian, upon his return to Washington in early December 1940, who ‘sparked off a major press and political debate which obliged him [FDR] to act’ . Reynolds concludes that it was Lothian’s innate understanding of how the American political system worked - and the critical role of the press and media in the formulation of policy - that ‘brought the issue to the attention of the opinion leaders and key policy-making groups whose support would be essential’.

Roosevelt was already well aware that Britain was running out of US dollars and gold. But Roosevelt and others, not least Henry Morgenthau, the Treasury Secretary, believed that the British still controlled enormous wealth: perhaps as much as $18 billion in disposable assets. Had British sterling remained convertible the cash crunch would not have been serious. But the Americans wanted US dollars or gold.

Roosevelt was also well aware of Britain’s shipping situation. An internal British document, secured through the British Embassy in early December, confirmed what Americans suspected: losses to merchant shipping now outstripped Britain’s ability to replace them, by a wide margin. Churchill’s appeal to Roosevelt for help on 8 December 1940 runs to just 5,000 words. Eighty per cent of it is devoted to the U-boat peril, shipping losses and declining imports, and the prospect of the main German fleet - especially the new super-battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz - loose in the North Atlantic in early 1941. What Churchill really wanted was merchant ships and a decisive intervention in the North Atlantic by the US Navy to secure ‘freedom of the seas’.

‘Shipping, not men, is the limiting’ factor in British strategy, Churchill observed. But ships were not what the American press at the time - and subsequent historians — latched onto. When Lothian returned to the USA in early December he is alleged to have told reporters, ‘It’s your money we’re after.’ If so, John Wheeler-Bennett [ a British historian based in the US at the time] was surely right: ‘Never was indiscretion more calculated.’ This revelation spread across the American media like a prairie fire and forced Roosevelt’s hand. As Churchill explained, he wanted to attack Germany where ‘the use of seapower and airpower’ will allow its immense armies to be defeated in detail by smaller forces. ‘For these reasons,’ Churchill said, we are forming as fast as possible, as you are already aware, between fifty and sixty divisions.’

In view of the lingering threat of invasion, Churchill pointed out that most of these divisions would be kept at home. Nonetheless, ‘Even if the United States was our ally,’ Churchill asserted, we should not ask for a large American expeditionary army.’ What Churchill wanted - immediately - was help with the Battle of the Atlantic.

Churchill could not control the agenda, not least because Lord Lothian suddenly died. Having drafted a speech slated for Baltimore and given a final polish to Churchill’s letter to FDR, Lothian became drowsy and weak on Sunday, 8 December. His Christian Science beliefs forbade him from taking the simple treatments for uremic poisoning that would have saved his life. By Wednesday he was dead.

It is impossible to underestimate the impact of Lothian’s death on Anglo-American relations and on the fate of the British Empire. Americans of all socioeconomic groups felt some fondness for him. In Britain the news stunned those who knew the value of the man to Britain’s war effort. Only the death of Churchill himself, one commentator observed, would be graver.

Walter Lippmann observed in 1942 that Lothian’s death left ‘an almost complete intellectual vacuum’ in Anglo-American relations. Lothian was given a state funeral at the Washington National Cathedral, and buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Churchill eventually settled on Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, as Lothian’s replacement. The awkward nobleman epitomised everything that Americans thought was wrong with Britain, and he took months (perhaps years) to find his feet. However, Halifax was perceptive enough to know that Britain was losing the public relations war in the USA and within weeks of his arrival in Washington was petitioning for change.

Meanwhile, Roosevelt was furious with Lothian for stealing a march on him and forcing his hand. Like many senior American officials, Roosevelt believed that Britain was hoarding its wealth. Churchill’s abject appeal offered Roosevelt and Treasury Department Secretary Henry Morgenthau an opportunity to achieve two long-desired goals: recover the debt from the Great War and, in Darwin’s words, ‘blast the sterling empire open’ . Dan Todman is more blunt: Roosevelt wanted to ‘defeat Fascism and imperialism, and to replace British with American power - which was exactly what he was doing as he manoeuvred to implement Lend-Lease’ .

Britain’s position in the American public eye might have been improved in December 1940 had a concerted effort been made to trumpet the success of General Archibald Wavell’s offensive against the Italians in Egypt. This was one of the great victories of the war, in which a small force of Australian and Indian infantry supported by British armour captured virtually all of Italy’s African Army.

But Wavell’s victory failed to make a splash. The MOI declined to launch a PR offensive in support of Churchill’s appeal. Rather, they urged ‘delicate handling’ and planned to confine ‘our propaganda ... to general statements and not attempt to specify the nature or extent of our requirements’ . ‘Is it not a scandal,’ Emery Reves opined in a letter to Churchill on 20 December, ‘that today the 11th day of our magnificent offensive in Africa, not one picture has been published in The New York Times about our victories?’ The dearth of gripping British stories and photos left the front pages of American newspapers to the Germans.

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© Marc Milner 2025, ‘Second Front: Anglo-American Rivalry and the Hidden Story of the Normandy Campaign. Reproduced courtesy of Yale University Press.

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Captain Bernard Edwards spent 37 years at sea with the Merchant Navy, commanding ships that traded worldwide, before retiring to pursue his second career as a naval historian. He first went to sea at the age of seventeen in 1944 as a cadet with Clan Line Steamers - so he worked alongside men who had survived the most lethal years of the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’. And the U-boats were still fighting the war in 1944. So his work is informed by a deep understanding of the perils faced by the Merchant Navy.

This excerpt is unusually long to include a complete episode from The Quiet Heroes, British Merchant Seamen at War. This volume, just one of several that Edwards wrote about the war at sea, focuses on the early years of the Battle of the Atlantic. This particular battle was fought during what the U-Boat commanders called the Die glückliche Zeit - the ‘First Happy Time’. The door was wide open for the most resolute of the U-boat commanders to make a name for themselves - to win medals and to be treated like a film star when they returned to Germany. Both the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy were hopelessly stretched as tactics and strategy were being developed, and the signals intelligence, which was to transform the campaign eventually, was still very underdeveloped:

Even before HX 901 sailed from Halifax, the Admiralty had evidence to suggest that the route of the convoy had been leaked to the Germans by sources in Canada. It can, perhaps, be understood why this knowledge was withheld from the merchant ships, but there can be no conceivable excuse for not changing the route after sailing. This was not done, and the consequences were dire, for Admiral Donitz had some of his best men at sea.

While HX 90 was reeling under the storm of 24/26 November, a thousand miles to the east the alerted U-boats were setting up an ambush. Forming up in an extended north-south line in the path of the convoy were the top-scoring ace Otto Kretschmer in U-99, Gunther Prien, idol of the German public, in U-47, Herbert Kuppisch in U-94, Otto Salman in U-52, Gerd Schreiber in U-95, Hans-Peter Hinsch in U-140, Wolfgang Luth in U-43 and young Ernst Mengersen in U-l 01. Weather conditions for the projected ambush were almost perfect, with a force 4 to 6 wind giving waves high enough to make the trimmed-down boats difficult to see, while not seriously impeding their progress. Furthermore, visibility after dark was excellent, bright moonlight until about 2000, and brilliant Northern Lights throughout the night. Unknown to the U-boat commanders - or perhaps it was - they were to be handed yet another great advantage.

In accordance with current Admiralty practice, HX 90 was due to exchange escorts with the west-bound convoy OB 251 on the morning of 2 December in longitude 17 degrees west, or 250 miles west of Ireland. HMS Laconia was to return westwards with OB 251, while the destroyers Vanquisher and Viscount, the sloop Folkestone and the corvette Gentian would leave OB 251 and take over the shepherding of HX 90 to British waters. As the two convoys were routed to pass on parallel and opposite courses at about 90 miles apart, the changeover of escorts could not be simultaneous, but it was hoped the gap would be minimal. At best, this was an arrangement fraught with danger; in the event, it turned out to be a disaster for HX 90.

At 0700 on the morning of 1 December, with HX 90 maintaining steady progress to the east at 9.5 knots, the Belgian ship Ville D’Arion developed steering gear trouble and dropped out of the convoy. This was a common enough occurrence in any convoy, but on this occasion the straggling of the Belgian ship in daylight was to set in motion a tragic and bloody train of events.

Throughout the previous night Kapitanleutnant Ernst Mengersen, in U-101, had been scouting ahead of the wolf pack, but had made no sighting of the convoy, which was actually to the south of his search area. After dawn on the 1st Mengersen decided to try his luck to the south-east and in doing so completely missed HX 90. The convoy had already crossed ahead of him and was out of sight over the horizon by the time he reached its latitude. Unfortunately for HX 90 - and providentially for Mengersen - in the afternoon he came up with the Ville D’Arion, which was again under way and steaming after the convoy at full speed. Mengersen tucked his boat in behind the Belgian ship and sent a sighting report to the rest of the pack.

The Ville D’Arion, with U-101 in close attendance, rejoined HX 90 at 1700 on the 1st at the same time as the Laconia said her farewells and left to join Convoy OB 251. The weather was fine, with the wind blowing west-south-west force 6, and darkness was drawing in. HX 90 was now steaming on an east-north-easterly course at 9.5 knots, without escort and without any naval control, other than that exercised by the Commodore in the Botavon. The opportunity was too good to miss and Mengersen carefully manoeuvred U-101 into position on the starboard side of the convoy and waited for the moon to set. At 2015 he fired a fan of three torpedoes, hitting first the 8826-ton British tanker Appalachee and one minute later the 4958-ton Loch Ranza. The third torpedo missed.

The convoy was now less than 300 miles to the west of Ireland and heavy rain had begun to fall. The explosions of Mengersen’s torpedoes were heard on the bridge of the Botason and confused lights seen in the direction of the starboard wing of the convoy, some 3 miles off, but no SOS messages were picked up or distress rockets seen. The Commodore, who had not been on the bridge at the time of the explosions, wrongly concluded that the sounds heard were thunder and the lights were signals between ships which had come near to colliding in the rain. He took no action.

Out on the starboard wing of the convoy, the Appalachee was sinking, while the Loch Ranza, herself damaged, was picking up survivors from the tanker. Both ships fell back into the darkness as the convoy continued on its unsuspecting way. Mengersen, who may not have been aware that HX 90 was now completely unescorted, had withdrawn to a safe distance, but was still in contact with the convoy.

At 0100 on the 2nd, HX 90 altered course to approach the pre-arranged rendezvous with the escorts coming from OB 251. Thirty minutes later the Ville D’Arion again experienced a steering gear fault and once more prepared to drop astern. In doing so, she hoisted the customary ‘not under command’ signal of two red lights in a vertical line. However, these lights were not dimmed, as they should have been in wartime, and were in fact so bright that they could be seen by every ship in the convoy. If any of the U-boat wolf pack, called in by Mengersen, had any doubts about the position of the convoy, they were soon dispelled by the Ville D’Arion’s lights. At 0210 Gunther Prien, in U-47, put a torpedo into the Belgian ship and she sank quickly, taking with her the brilliant marker lights and, unfortunately, all her crew. But the damage had been done. The position of the unprotected HX 90 had been revealed to all and the wolf pack was moving in for the kill.

A massacre followed. The U-boats, unrestrained by the danger of retaliation, their helpless targets now illuminated by the Northern Lights, slipped in among the slow-moving columns of merchantmen and ranged up and down on the surface, torpedoing at will and using their deck guns when their tubes were empty. The convoy’s only defence lay in a series of emergency turns, by which it was hoped to spoil the enemy’s aim. Captain Issac, of the Commodore’s ship Botavon, was later to say: ‘I could not keep track of all the emergency turns as sometimes we had barely finished one when we had to go off again. We were like a helpless flock of sheep in a narrow lane with a dog on each side.’

In hindsight, it might have been wiser for the unescorted convoy to scatter at the first sign of a concerted attack, rather than stay bunched together sharing each other’s agony. Most certainly Captain Alexander Hughson, in the Lady Glanely, would have been well advised to break away on his own. He commanded a powerful motorship, only two years old, and under pressure she would have been capable of 15 knots, perhaps more. But the discipline of the convoy, instilled into the merchant captains by dogmatic naval theorists over two years of war, was too great. Hughson continued to hold position as leader of the port wing column, with his engine ticking over at little more than half speed.

Just after 0300 Ernst Mengersen, having reloaded his tubes, positioned U-101 abreast of the leading ships on the port side of the convoy. At 0320 the Lady Glanely moved into his sights and he fired. The torpedo hit the British ship squarely amidships. Eight minutes later Captain Hughson ordered his wireless operator to transmit the SSSS signal and then fired white distress rockets from the wing of the bridge. Mengersen, still on the surface, and able to aim and fire at his leisure, now torpedoed the 8376-ton tanker Conch, next ship astern of the Lady Glanely. Then he turned his sights on the 3862-ton steamer Dunsley, last ship in the column.

On the bridge of the Dunsley, her master, Captain J. Braithwaite, had heard the explosion ahead and seen the rockets arc up from the stricken Lady Glanely. He immediately altered course hard to starboard and, in doing so, avoided Mengersen’s third torpedo. Braithwaite then made a very brave and humane decision, one which was contrary to the convoy rules, but in true Nelsonian tradition. Ignoring the obvious presence of the U-boats, he steamed at full speed for the position of the Lady Glanely, hoping that he might be able to snatch some survivors from the water. At 0350 the lifeboats of the Lady Glanely, which had by then sunk, were sighted and Braithwaite rang for slow speed. Twenty minutes later, the Dunsley was approaching the boats with boarding nets over the side, ready to pick up survivors. Her efforts came to naught, for at this point U-47 intervened.

Braithwaite, occupied in manoeuvring his ship close to the Lady Glanely’ s lifeboats, was informed of the sighting of the U-boat. She was on the surface half a mile off the Dunsley’ s port beam and was clearly visible in the flare of the Northern Lights. Prien opened fire with his 88mm deck gun and Braithwaite, not a man to be intimidated, ordered his 4-inch gun’s crew to return the fire. The fight was predictably one-sided. Although the Dunsley’ s gunners claimed a hit on the U-boat, the ship was hit five times and caught fire. Reluctant though he was to leave the Lady Glanely’ s lifeboats, Braithewaite’s first duty was to his own crew. He aborted the rescue mission and, presenting his stern to U-47, he steamed away at full speed, zig-zagging to avoid the shells still bursting around him. With the attack on the convoy rising to a fierce crescendo, there could be no more help for the men of the Lady Glanely. When the destroyer Viscount and a Sunderland flying boat searched the area on the morning of the 3rd the lifeboats had disappeared. No one, it seems, will ever know what happened to those thirty-one merchant seamen on that terrible winter’s night in the North Atlantic.

The destruction of Convoy HX 90 continued. At 0515 the Liverpool-registered steamer Kavak was torpedoed and blew up. Seconds later the 1586-ton Tasso was also sunk, while the Goodleigh, sister ship to the Lady Glanely, was the victim of a savage attack by two U-boats. Gunther Prien, who had sealed the fate of the survivors of the Lady Glanely by opening fire on the Dunsley, fired the first torpedo at the Goodleigh. She was hit on her starboard side directly under her bridge, which was partly destroyed by the explosion. With his ship settling ominously, Captain Quaite, who was injured, gave the order to take to the boats. While this operation was in progress, Otto Kretschmer, in U-99, approached the crippled ship and added three more torpedoes, the last of which caused the Goodleigh’ s 4-inch magazine to explode. But the British ship had a full load of timber on board and despite her terrible wounds, she remained afloat for for several hours, allowing all her crew, with the exception of the chief officer, who was probably killed in the attack, to get away in the boats. Later in the morning they were picked up by the destroyer Viscount and landed at Liverpool on the 5th.

The Vice Commodore’s ship Victoria City, which had dropped out of the convoy on 26 November due to the bad weather, was never seen again and it is believed she was sunk by Hans-Peter Hinsch in U-140. Wreckage identified with her was washed up on the Irish coast on 8 December, but of her forty- three crew members there was no trace. HX 90’s escort force finally arrived as the sun was rising on the morning of the 2nd. The ragged remains of the convoy reformed and continued on its way eastwards. But the agony was not yet over for the remaining merchant ships, now labouring in a south-westerly gale. A far-ranging Focke-Wulf Condor sighted the convoy, and at 1000 came in to the attack, bombing and sinking the 4360-ton W. Hendrick, and wounding two men on board the Quebec City with machine-gun fire. That afternoon Otto Kretschmer and Herbert Kuppisch returned, and despite the efforts of the hard-pressed escorts, sank the 6022-ton Stirlingshire and the Norwegian ship Samanger of 4276 tons. Later, after dark, Kuppisch came back for what would be the final assault on the convoy, sinking the 6725-ton Glasgow ship ‘Wilhelmina.

When it was all over, the reckoning could be done. Convoy HX 90 had been under almost continuous attack for twenty-six hours, most of this time completely unprotected by the Royal Navy. A total of eleven ships of nearly 60,000 tons had been lost and three other ships damaged. For the U-boats, who apparently suffered no casualties, it was a cheap victory, and a victory of the first magnitude. For the merchant seamen who survived it had been a fearful nightmare they would have to live with for the rest of their lives. For the dead, there was nothing but a cold, unmarked grave.

© Bernhard Edwards 2003, ‘The Quiet Heroes, British Merchant Seamen at War’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Hitler believed that he had been ‘chosen’ by fate to pursue his various aggressive fantasies. There is some evidence to support this view when the many different groups and individuals who sought to counter him are considered. Norman Ridley’s very recently published Standing Up To Hitler: Resistance in Nazi Germany comprehensively reviews all of these schemes, from organised conspirators within the Wehrmacht (who had sympathisers running right up to the very top) to young students acting out of conscience. Time and again, ‘luck’ was to play a part in helping Hitler along.

The following excerpt examines events in November 1939, when two simultaneous plots against Hitler were being actively pursued. One was a conspiracy by Generals within the Wehrmacht High Command, the OKW. The other was the ‘lone wolf’ bomb plot of George Elser that came as close to succeeding as any attempt on Hitler’s life:

Poland fell within weeks and Germany found itself in a state of war with Britain and France, albeit at a distance and with little actual engagement, but the euphoria of a stunning military victory was tempered within the OKW by two factors.

The first was the evidence of SS terror that had been unleashed against the Polish intelligentsia and the Jews. Of course it was no surprise that Himmler had extended his terror campaign to Poland but it was the sheer scale of the atrocities that were committed during those first few weeks of occupation that shocked and horrified the Wehrmacht generals.

Then there was the simple fact that Germany was now at war with two nations that were significantly more powerful, both militarily and economically, than Poland and as early as October, Hitler was already making plans for ‘the final military defeat of the West’.

The three Army Group commanders in the west, Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, Gerd von Rundstedt and Fedor von Bock protested in the strongest terms saying that their forces were nowhere near ready to take on the Western armies. Fearing a catastrophe if Hitler went ahead with his plan, Halder kept two armoured divisions in reserve and ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Grosscurth to formulate a plan for a coup.

Lieutenant-General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel and Oster, with whom he had plotted in the 1938 conspiracy, met Beck who, in turn, kept closely in touch with Goerdeler and the diplomats Ernst Heinrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker and Ulrich von Hassel. At the Auswärtiges Amt Erich Kordt drew up a memorandum outlining the ‘threatening catastrophe’ that would follow at attack in the West. ‘Never was Germany closer to chaos’, he wrote, and ‘once the furore of war is let loose, it cannot be coaxed back by reason’.

Oster was again at the heart of planning. Beck and Goerdeler were kept informed. On 5 November 1939 Brauchitsch and Halder tried to dissuade Hitler from issuing an attack order timed for seven days hence but Hitler dismissed them furiously with an insult aimed at the ‘defeatist’ OKW. Brauchitsch was subdued by Hitler’s rant and seemed to lose heart for insurrection. Beck remained committed and Oster made arrangements to procure explosives for a bomb but fate stepped in three days later when another, quite separate bomb plot almost took Hitler’s life at the Bürgerbräukellar in Munich.

Johann Georg Elser had long been hostile to Nazism and plotted all alone to put an end to Hitler’s rule. An Einzelgänger or ‘lone wolf’ with no known friends, he had witnessed Hitler’s speech on the previous year’s anniversary of the 1923 coup attempt and was appalled by Nazi’s attack on human dignity and the mesmeric hold Hitler had over his audience. Along with many Germans he feared that war was coming closer with Hitler’s every reckless gamble and throw of the political dice and the increasing persecution of vulnerable minorities within Germany filled him with disgust. There grew within him a conviction that he must act somehow to give expression to his opposition to all that he saw around him. Right behind where Hitler made his annual speech was a load-bearing support for the balcony and heavy roof above. It did not take much imagination to see what would happen if that pillar was suddenly removed. It was not necessary to smash through Hitler’s formidable security cordon that accompanied him everywhere on his now infrequent public engagements.

Elser collected material to construct a time-bomb and moved to live in Munich permanently in August 1939. He started visiting the bierkeller every day for his evening meal and hid in a cloakroom when the place was locked up for the night. Each night he would work on excavating a hole in the main columns holding up the roof where he planned to place the bomb then in the morning he would sneak out again when the building was opened up. He installed the bomb on the night of 2/3 November and activated the timing mechanism to detonate three days later. Then he left Munich to go to Konstanz with a view to crossing the border into Switzerland.

On the evening of 8 November, there were some 1,500 people in the bierkeller to hear Hitler make his annual speech. The audience consisted mostly of many veterans of the original Putsch dressed in their old uniforms, fuelled by Bavarian ale and roused by martial music. Hitler was deep into planning for the invasion of France and had wanted to avoid the trip to Munich altogether but had been persuaded that it would be seen as disrespectful not only to the audience but to the Nazi movement as a whole if he did not go. He went but insisted on having his personal train ready for a swift overnight return to Berlin immediately afterwards.

Eager to get back to Berlin as soon as possible, Hitler started his speech half an hour early and finished at 21.07 hrs, a whole hour before it would have finished had it followed precedent. A mere thirteen minutes after he had stood down from the podium and left the room the bomb exploded bringing down the whole roof.

The pillar had been torn apart by the blast, and where Hitler had stood the entire ceiling had crashed onto the lectern and onto the surrounding rows of chairs and beer tables. The falling masonry, roof girders and wooden beams killed three people instantly and buried dozens, five of whom died after being admitted to hospital.

Elser was arrested on the Swiss border. He spent the war in various prisons and was eventually executed in the Dachau concentration camp at some time in April 1945.

The bomb inevitably banished any thought of attacking France, which was a relief for the generals but for the Oster conspirators it was a major setback. They were further disheartened and chastened on 23 November when Hitler addressed the General Staff and roundly condemned his critics over a period of several hours.

He called his audience an ‘antiquated upper class’, that had failed the German people in 1918 and was failing them again with its prophecies of catastrophe. All who stood against him would be destroyed, Hitler vowed. Only one member of the General Staff, Heinz Guderian, protested at the insults. Brauchitsch tendered his resignation which was contemptuously brushed aside.

By January 1940, Beck was again broaching the subject of a coup with Halder. More attempts were made to re-establish contact with British government officials who seemed a little more interested in what the German dissidents had to say but that was too little too late to encourage Halder who now stood firmly against any coup attempt believing that it would take a significant military defeat for Germany before the rank and file would support it.

Brauchitsch had been cowed and humiliated by Hitler’s criticism and was now in no mood to entertain any talk of insurrection. He even cloaked his loss of self-esteem by threatening to expose the plotters as traitors. When Fall Gelb was launched on 10 May 1940 and succeeded beyond all expectations, it dealt a body blow to the conspirators.

© Norman Ridley 2025, ‘Standing Up To Hitler: Resistance in Nazi Germany ’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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In November 1940, it became clear that the Luftwaffe had not been able to destroy the RAF, and that Hitler would not be able to launch an invasion of Britain until at least the Spring. But an equally dangerous threat was emerging. Hitler would force the British into submission with terrorangriff - terror attacks - nightly bombing raids on the civilian population. At the same time, he would starve the population by cutting off supplies from abroad.

What became known as the Battle of the Atlantic was gathering pace. It was already noticeable that food was becoming scarce. When there were enough U-boats on patrol to gather a Wolfpack, they inflicted unsustainable losses on the merchant ships bringing munitions and food to Britain. Long range Condor bombers added to the destruction. And now another method of attack emerged - fast and well armed ‘pocket battleships’ would surprise merchantmen in mid ocean and blast them out of the water.

The epic battle between the merchant ships and the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer on 5th November is masterfully told in Convoy Will Scatter - The Full Story of the Jervis Bay and Convoy HX84. It is a tale of heroism and sacrifice when men went to certain death to give others a chance of survival. The heroic acts extended beyond those of the convoy leader Jervis Bay that became so well known.

The following passage describes the opening exchange between the German commander Krancke on the Admiral Scheer and Captain Fegen on the Armed Merchant Cruiser Jervis Bay:

Krancke knew he was being challenged to identify his ship, but he had no idea what the answering challenge was. He had examined the British ship through his binoculars, and any doubts he had had about her identity were settled. Her guns were clearly visible, and they were manned. She was an armed merchant cruiser. In order to gain time, Krancke told his signallers to repeat the ‘M-A-G’ back to his British ship, requesting that she be the first to identify herself.

This was an old ruse, and it cut no ice with the experienced Captain Fegen. He now knew he was confronting an enemy warship, and a very powerful one at that. The challenge he now faced was to fight or run. And only he could make the decision. A fight would almost certainly end in the total destruction of his ship, and in the deaths of many of his crew. Like any ship’s captain, his first duty was to see to the safety of his men; on the other hand, thirty-seven merchant ships carrying cargoes vital for the survival of Britain were looking to him for protection. It took just seconds to make the choice.

Fegen hit the alarm bells, and rang for full emergency speed. It was clear to him that he was hopelessly outgunned and outranged; his puny 6-inch guns were only effective up to 6 miles, if that. If he was going to fight, he must close the range as fast as possible.

As the Jervis Bay, battle ensigns streaming in the wind, surged forward, the Admiral Scheer turned broadside on, bringing all six 11-inch guns to bear. The time was 1700, with the weak winter sun slipping below the horizon, and darkness already closing in.

The bridge of the Jervis Bay had, by now, identified the stranger by her silhouette as a German pocket battleship of the Graf Spee class, and when he saw the ripple of flashes run along her side, Fegen knew what would follow. Petty Officer James ‘Slinger’ Wood later put Fegen’s fears into words:

It was a clear day, and we could see Jerry plainly in the distance. He was steering a course that would have brought him directly across our bow. But almost immediately he altered course, broadside to us. I knew what was coming. He wanted to get all his guns into action...

John Barker, a young hostilities-only gunner, remembered:

On the day of the action I was to keep the Second Dog Watch. At about four o ‘clock I went down to do a bit ofdhobeying. A little later the alarm bells rang. I grabbed my duffle coat -1 had on my service boots, trousers and football jersey. At my action station I could see a dark smudge over the port side - the Admiral Scheer. The Battle Ensign went up on the mainmast and very soon the first salvo of 11- inch shells came over...

The six 6701b projectiles, nearly 4,0001bs of hot steel and high explosive, came roaring across the intervening sky like a swarm of avenging hornets. This first salvo fell to starboard of the Jems Bay, close enough to shower the merchant cruiser’s bridge with salt spray, but causing no damage on board. The Scheer’s guns thundered again, and this time her shells exploded 100 yards off the Jervis Bay’s port side. Again no damage, but she had been bracketed, and every man jack on board, from the lowly galley boy to Captain Fegen himself knew what must happen next. Young John Barker was under no false illusions:

To have two turrets with three guns in each firing shells at you was pretty horrific. We had four vintage 6-inch guns forrard and three aft; they were vintage ones. I think one was dated 1894. They were open without turrets. They were no match for the Admiral Scheer...

At 1706 Fegen sent a coded signal to the Admiralty giving his unidentified attacker’s bearing, course and position; at the same time he signalled the Cornish City, ordering Commodore Maltby to scatter the convoy under the cover of a smoke screen.

The receipt of the distress was recorded in the Admiralty’s War Diary:

At 2006 today (London Time) Jervis Bay escorting HX 84 in midNorth Atlantic signalled that an enemy battleship was in sight and reports that the convoy was being attacked were received. Battleships Renown, Barham, Australia and Hood ordered to rendezvous. Five Town-class destroyers on passage to the UK ordered to spread out to locate Scheer and three of which were nearest the position of the attack were to close HX 84 to rescue survivors and attack raider if possible.

Whitehall now pulled out all the stops, and late that night the battlecruisers Hood and Repulse, the anti-aircraft cruisers Phoebe, Naiad and Bonaventure, accompanied by the destroyers Eskimo, Mashona, Matabele, Electra, Somali and Punjabi sailed from Scapa Flow for the position given by the Jervis Bay.

It was a classic example of the stable door being closed with a bang after the event. At 1100 on the 6th, when the rescue force was passing through the Minches, the Admiralty ordered Repulse, Bonaventure and the destroyers Mashona, Matabele and Electra to head out into the Atlantic towards the last known position of the Admiral Scheer.

HMS Hood, the anti-aircraft cruisers Phoebe and Naiad, with the remaining destroyers were sent to cover the approaches to Brest and Lorient. Bonaventure and Mashona were first to reach the mid-Atlantic position of the attack, but not until 0400 on the 8th, by which time only a few pathetic pieces of debris littered the sea. The Admiral Scheer was by then 1,000 miles further south.

And now the airwaves were alive with cries of outrage, as the merchant ships broke radio silence to call for help. Whereas the Jervis Bay’s message to the Admiralty had been in code, the merchantmen were broadcasting in plain language. Their frantic calls were picked up by Mackay Radio, on New York’s Long Island, and within minutes all the world knew that an Allied convoy was facing destruction in mid Atlantic.

The Scheer’s third salvo covered the 12 miles separating the two warships in 20 seconds, just as long as it took the frightening roar of the six spinning projectiles to reach the ears of those aboard the Jervis Bay.

It was then that Fegen came to terms with the impossible task he had set himself and his crew. At best, his 6-inch guns had a range of 8 miles, and he could not hope to lay a finger on the pocket battleship. But Edward Fogarty Fegen, third generation Navy, knew only that fire must be met with fire. He gave the order for his guns to open fire, even though he knew the range was too great. It was far better to make some sort of show of force, however futile. Nothing raised morale more than the sound of your own guns. And, God knows, his men needed that right now.

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© Bernard Edwards 2013, ‘Convoy Will Scatter - The Full Story of the Jervis Bay and Convoy HX84’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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The ‘100 Objects’ series from Pen & Sword has become a popular approach to presenting recent history, examining diverse aspects of a central theme that uncover some fascinating but obscure elements of well-known stories. The famous Battle of Britain fighter station is covered in the recently published (2025) RAF Tangmere in 100 Objects. This volume has a slightly lesser impact than some of the others, as it is reproduced in black and white. Many of the ‘objects’ reproduced here are contemporary black and white photographs, so this is not much of a handicap.

For those interested in the wider history of the RAF, not just the Battle of Britain, this is a welcome addition. The story of Tangmere stretches from the First World War, when Tangmere was designated as a Training Depot Station for the United States Army Air Service (USAAS) to the jet age of the 1960s. The following excerpts look at three individuals closely connected to Tangmere:

A Tangmere Military Cross

Flight Lieutenant Courtney Willey MBE, MC

The Military Cross was instituted in 1914 ‘ to recognise the distinguished service in time of war of Officers of certain ranks in our Army’. It is, therefore, unusual for a member of the RAF to be a recipient. Just how unusual is revealed by the research of Michael Maton who notes that of the 10,000 or more MCs awarded in the Second World War, just sixty-nine (including one Bar) were to RAF personnel. The German assault on Tangmere on 16 August 1940, led to one of these awards - that to Flying Officer Dr Courtney Beresford Ingor Willey.

Born into a medical family in Hendon, Middlesex, in 1912, Willey was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He volunteered for service in the RAF in March 1940 and, having been granted a commission, was posted to RAF Tangmere, to take up the role of medical officer for 601 (County of London) Squadron, a few weeks later in May.

Willey was on duty when the station’s tannoy system announced the impending arrival of the Luftwaffe bombers. One of his first actions was to move ten of his patients from the sick quarters to a nearby air raid shelter. As the bombs rained down, the sick quarters took a direct hit. The citation for Willeys award of the MC reveals a little of his subsequent actions:

‘Flying Officer Willey was buried in the debris of a building which received a direct hit during an intensive air raid on an aerodrome. In spite of slight injuries and shock, this medical officer extricated himself and immediately rendered first aid to other injured personnel. He displayed a fine example of calm behaviour and efficiency.’

It is said that many of Willeys injuries were caused when the buildings chimney breast collapsed on him - interviewed in 20131 he declared that he had been saved by his tin helmet.

That he had narrowly escaped a worse fate was revealed by Air Vice-Marshal Sandy Johnstone, then a squadron leader in command of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron. I drove over to Tangmere in the evening,’ he wrote, ... Already stories are going around of how the fellows reacted during the aerial onslaught - some patently numbed by the force of it, whilst others seem to have become spurred to greater action by the terrifying enormity of the moment. And the heroes were often those whom one would least expect to stand out among their fellow men. Such a man has been our medical officer, Doc Willey, who apparently was doing great deeds throughout the blitz.’

During the months following the raid Willey served at a number of other Fighter Command stations before being posted, in April 1941, to the Far East. As the Japanese moved to capture Singapore, Willey was evacuated to Sumatra and Java. It was there that he was eventually captured, marking the start of more than three years’ incarceration as a prisoner of war, during which time he was one of the many forced to labour on the infamous Death Railway in Burma and Thailand.

Having survived, on his return to the UK Willey was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his work in the PoW camps. Post-war he was to become a consultant physician at West Cumberland Hospital and lived at Woodend, near Egremont. He passed away in December 2004 aged 90.

Like so many of the items in this book, Willey’s Military Cross is on display at Tangmere Military Aviation Museum.

Stained Glass Window, Boxgrove Church

Commemorating Pilot Officer William Meade Lindsley ‘Billy’ Fiske III

Despite the best efforts of the staff at Chichester, Pilot Officer Fiske did not survive [after crash landing during the raid on 16th August]. As Willey had feared , Fiske succumbed to his wounds the following day. He was 29 years old.

Pilot Officer William Meade Lindsley Fiske III was one of only two Americans who died in the Battle of Britain. Having won gold medals with the US Olympic bobsleigh teams in the 1928 and 1932 Olympics, Fiske was no ordinary American. He was also an exceptional driver and had taken part in the Le Mans 24-hour races.

Having learnt to fly pre-war, he took the decision to risk losing his American citizenship to enlist in the RAF. After completing his flying training, Fiske was posted to 601 (County of London) Squadron, otherwise known as ‘The Millionaires Squadron’.

On the morning of 16 August, twenty-nine Stukas of l/StG2 targeted RAF Tangmere. Already airborne, 601 Squadron was ordered to patrol base at 20,000 feet and soon saw the incoming Ju 87s which they dived on to engage.

It was during this dogfight that Fiske is believed to have been hit by return fire, forcing him, badly burned, to make the emergency landing back at Tangmere.

One member of 601 Squadron who had fond recollections of Fiske was Squadron Leader Hugh ‘Jack’ Riddle: ‘My memories of Billy as a pilot was that he was quite exceptional. His Flight Commander, Sir Archibald Hope, having assessed Billy’s flying ability on arrival with the squadron, said

“In all my flying experience I have never come across a pilot with such completely natural flying ability, and quick reactions. He made his aircraft become part of him.” Archie was definitely impressed!

‘Billy liked to talk with everyone around him, particularly the ground crews. He wanted to know them and all about their jobs, aircraft maintenance and where difficulties lay - always helpful. Very soon he managed to endear himself to the whole squadron - not just the officers, but the other ranks too.

There was club a few miles away from the airfield at Tangmere and this was made our unofficial Squadron Headquarters. It was somewhere pleasant, overlooking the waters of Chichester Harbour, where our wives and friends could meet and be with each other, and wait together until we could be free from Tangmere. Billy always seemed to get there before I did - maybe his motor car was faster than mine - I’m sure it was!

...

Billy was aware and caring, a very nice aspect of his character.’

Fiske was laid to rest a short distance from RAF Tangmere, in the grounds of the Priory Church of St Mary and St Blaise at Boxgrove, on 20 August 1940. His coffin was draped with both the Union Flag and the Stars and Stripes.

The 601 Squadron Old Comrades Association had originally considered commemorating Fiske with a memorial table, but in conjunction with the Priory, who wanted to enhance the aesthetics during a restoration of the Church, the suggestion of a stained-glass window was made and adopted. Designed by Mel Howse, it was unveiled on 17 September 2008.

Douglas Bader’s PoW Photograph.

The Tangmere Wing Loses its Famous Leader

An early casualty of the RAF’s increasingly offensive stance in 1941 wasalso one of the most famous pilots to be associated with RAF Tangmere - Douglas Bader.

On 9 August 1941, Bader led the Tangmere Wing which had been tasked with providing an escort for Circus 68, a bombing raid on Gosnay, near St Omer. Sergeant Geoff West was flying in place of Bader’s normal wingman, Sergeant Alan Smith. As two of the Wing’s three squadrons crossed the French coast, they soon became embroiled in combat with numerous Bf 109s. In the ensuing melee Bader was ‘downed’ , though exactly what happened cannot be said with complete certainty; some say he was shot down, others that it was the result of a mid-air collision, with a friendly aircraft or otherwise.

Regardless of the circumstances, the Tangmere Wing’s leader was forced to abandon his Spitfire. Back at Tangmere, the indomitable pilot was duly posted as missing. Then, on 14 August the German authorities notified the British, via the Red Cross, that Bader had in fact survived, albeit that he was now a prisoner of war. Group Captain Woodhall broadcast the welcome news over Tangmere’s tannoy system.

It transpired that in abandoning his aircraft, Bader had lost one of his false legs. The Germans took the unusual step of guaranteeing free passage for an RAF aircraft to deliver a replacement to Oberst Adolf Galland’s JG 26 airfield at Audembert. The British declined the offer, but, instead, dropped a spare leg by parachute from a Blenheim during a Circus operation to Longuenesse on 19 August.

Smith, who had just been commissioned, was one of the pilots who escorted the bombers that day: ‘I can still remember seeing the box dropping under the parachute; it was one hell of a day, low broken cloud and rain. We had six Blenheims, the weather was appalling, and the bombers could not drop their bombs on the target at Lille, but the leg was dropped over St Omer.’

Following his capture, Bader was initially taken to hospital in St Omer. His missing right leg was then found near the Spitfire’s crash site. Repaired, it was returned to him by his captors. Seizing the moment, Bader made his first attempt to escape using a rope made of bed sheets to climb down from a window. His liberty, though, was short lived.

Eventually, incarnated in the infamous Colditz Castle, Oflag IVC, it would be years before Bader would see Tangmere again.

Sir Alan Smith later recalled the effect that Bader’s loss had:

‘Morale was affected; we thought we would get our revenge as they had taken Bader away. A real loss to the Wing. He had such a strong personality and was a good leader. I can’t say that had I been flying that day things would have been different, but I often wonder if I had been there, if I could have made a difference at all. Maybe I would not have come back?’

© Mark Hillier and Martin Mace 2025, ‘RAF Tangmere in 100 Objects’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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There are many accounts of the Battle of Britain, each with its own approach to the narrative. In 2015, Norman Franks, an experienced aviation historian, sought out some of the last remaining survivors; in long first-person accounts, he tells the story of RAF fighter pilots throughout a long war. Everyone fighting in 1940 had to contend with some rudimentary, even experimental, technology. By the end of the war, it had been completely transformed, and a new aviation era was dawning. It was more due to luck than judgement that many of Dowding’s Eagles were lucky to survive those early days, much less the whole war.

This is part of the story of Myles Duke-Woolley DFC, describing his experiences flying a Blenheim night fighter in the days before radar:

When the war started all the lights went out so we’d be flying over a totally blacked out countryside, except when there was some sort of moon. All we had on the airfield then were the shaded glim-lamps, which couldn’t be seen until you were down to about 2,000 feet and pretty close (hopefully) to the airfield. That was why so many pilots were killed in the early part of the war. Fortunately, some of us had started thinking about these problems before the war began. My flight commander, “Spike” O’Brian [Flight Lieutenant J S O’Brien. Later Squadron Leader, DFC, killed in action leading 234 Squadron on 7 September 1940.] and I talked this over and had started to plan what we should do and how we might do it. We imagined we were somewhere over the Wash in a jet black sky and worked out course and distances to get us back to base.

‘We hadn’t, of course, the slightest idea how we were going to find a target. It wasn’t until well into 1940 that Spike said to me that we had some electronics expert and new instrumentation to see and he volunteered me to fly it around. It was fitted into a Blenheim and it so happened that the “expert” had been at Marlborough with me, and had been working on the first A.I. gear [Airborne Interception radar]. It was very heavy and I recall that no air gunner wanted to come with us!

‘We took off and climbed to 6-7,000 feet and he got ready to switch the “gubbins” on. He said, OK, and switched it on. There was the biggest blue flash I’d ever seen which seemed to zip past me and shoot out in front. I said, “Wow! If there had been an aircraft in front of us we’d have burned him up!” He said he was awfully sorry but the thing had blown up! The insulation had broken down completely, but it was a spectacular flash – just like a ray gun.

‘He reappeared about a month later with the Mark 2 version and we flew this about quite a lot, and we did in fact make an interception one night. It was very difficult as each time I turned, the enemy aircraft turned the other way and we lost it. Then we picked up another one and he said it was flying away from us, so I increased speed but still it was going away from us. Eventually I had to throttle back. Then it transpired that this early A.I. worked just as well backwards as forwards, so in fact, what we’d been doing, was not chasing a German, but running away from one. So the A.I. disappeared for the second time whilst they got it to work just forwards.’

Eventually Duke-Woolley shot down a night raider. This came on the night of 18/19 June 1940, six miles north-east of King’s Lynn, by which time he had become a flight commander. Just thirty seconds earlier on this same night, Flight Lieutenant A G ‘Sailor’ Malan DFC of 74 Squadron had shot down a Heinkel 111 flying a Spitfire, so Myles’ kill was the second night victory for the RAF, although he was in a Blenheim 1f.

In fact British defences claimed four raiders down this night, the luckless German unit being KG4 operating from Merville, France. Malan shot down the bomber piloted by Leutnant Erich Simon, the sole survivor of his four- man crew, and he himself had baled out wounded, as his aircraft crashed in Chelmsford, Essex. Myles’ victim crashed at Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk. The pilot had to ditch just off shore and the crew swam ashore. Among Oberleutnant Ulrich Jordan’s crew was the Gruppenkommandeur, Major Dietrich Fr. Von Massenbach. RAF fighters downed three more He111s this night – a rare success for Fighter Command.

Myles recalled the night for me:

‘ I have never been so frightened before in my life and was never so frightened again. I was on patrol off the East Coast, over the Wash, on a gin-clear night, and Control called up to say that some German aircraft had been raiding the Midlands and some of them were coming our way. I looked to the west and could see a number of searchlights criss-crossing about, and called back to say that it looked as if the searchlights had somebody and should I investigate? They said no, it’s being dealt with so I just watched. ‘Then, about 10-12 miles away I saw a very small yellowy light going down, then it went out, then I thought I saw a parachute, and realised that one of our aircraft had intercepted it and it had been shot down.

The yellowy thing had indeed been a Blenheim on fire. I called Control again and said I was going to engage. After a short silence I was told to engage in my own time. I then realised we’d never had any real briefing on how to actually shoot down an aircraft. The only instruction we had had was by some chap who’d shot something down in 1918, and that the thing to do was to rush up behind the bomber, close to 100 yards and with our outstanding armament, blow it apart!

‘So as I closed in I began to realise I should also soon be fired at myself, that I had no armour protection in front of me, my fuel tanks were not self-sealing, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I was going to live just long enough to get tangled with this German aircraft – in about four minutes. I had been married just over nine months (31 August 1939), and my wife had just given birth to our first child and I knew I was never going to see it. I was convinced of it, I just could not see any hope.

‘I was thinking furiously on how I might attack and get away with it and then a plan occurred to me, which I then imparted to my gunner. Fear was growing inside me and it came up to my throat and I realised I wasn’t able to talk. Then, an extraordinary thing, I began to hear my voice speak and it was absolutely calm. I told Control I was in touch with the bandit and would engage it shortly.

Then, this same calm voice spoke to my gunner: “Have you got your parachute on?” He said no, so this voice then said: “They’ve still got a searchlight on him, and what we are going to do is this. I’m going to keep to port until the light goes out, then I’m going to come up in line astern of him at 100 yards, and open fire with a 5-second burst. If that doesn’t work I’ll come up under his wing and I shall want you to put bursts up into him. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to go back and start again.” So that’s what we did.

‘I flew alongside the bomber, about 500 yards away, until the last light flicked out, came up behind it, put the sight on it and counted out five seconds as I pressed the gun button. I then broke off and looking where I’d just been could see all these red flashes, which I later realised was return fire from the German gunners. I then went in again but after another long burst the bomber was still flying along. I then flew underneath it and let my gunner have a go but we still didn’t appear to be doing any damage.

All the time something kept nagging in my brain that I was doing something wrong. Then I suddenly realised that our guns were harmonised at 250 yards. This meant that at 100 yards, the range I’d been told to fire from, I was hardly hitting him at all, so I deduced I had to fly at least four feet higher for it to be more or less right. ‘I slid in again, aimed high up on the German’s tail-fin, fired and broke to port, but this time the return fire was less. I then pulled in again, fired once more with a 7-second burst and as we broke, we were hit. There was a smell of cordite, and a scream from my gunner. As I turned, the bomber disappeared. My gunner said he’d been hit.’

In the event, the air gunner had not been hit. A couple of bullets had come up under him and hit his chest-type parachute, which had knocked it upwards and it had hit his chin. Myles then asked the gunner if he could see the German, and he replied, “Oh, yes, he’s on fire.”

Coming back over the coast, Myles’ starboard engine stopped. A bullet had hit one tank, and fuel had drained out. However, he got home and landed safely.

© Norman Franks 2015, ‘Dowdings Eagles. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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The submarine war occupies a particular grip on the imagination, presenting all sorts of dramatic possibilities in film and literature. The Nazi’s U-boat campaign was no exception, as depicted in the 1981 film ‘Das Boot’ and all the subsequent spinoffs. An illuminating approach, bringing together a diverse range of ‘objects’ from the familiar to the obscure, is taken by U-Boats at War in 100 Objects 1939-1945 - another well-designed collection. An excellent overview which both introduces the scope of U Boot warfare and delves into some unexpected aspects.

The following excerpt presents three randomly chosen ‘objects’, illustrating the breadth of approach adopted here:

The Deck Gun

Although the torpedo is, of course, the weapon most associated with submarines, on the outbreak of the Second World War all Type VII and Type IX submarines were equipped with a deck gun. The gun most widely used was the 8.8cm gun carried on the Type VII. Known officially as tire ‘8.8cm L/45 SK C/35 an U-Boot lafette’, it was designed in 1935 and entered service in 1938. The SK stood for Schiffskanone or Schnellfeuerkanone and ‘35’ the date of original design.

The gun fired a 15kg round with a muzzle velocity of 700mps and a range of nearly 12,000m. A total of 220 rounds were carried on a typical U-Boat. A watertight container on deck held a few rounds for instant use, thereafter shells had to be carried up from the interior of the boat. Tie gun required a crew of three.

The larger Type IX boats carried the more powerful 10.5cm gun, the 10.5cm/45 SK C/32, which fired a 24kg round with a muzzle velocity of 780mps and range of 15,000m. Typical rate of fire was 15 rounds per minute, with a crew of three.

Despite the significant range of both of these weapons, in reality they were only used at relatively close quarters. A U-Boat on the surface in anything other titan a flat calm sea was not a stable gun platform. In fact, the crew were provided with a safety line to prevent them from being washed overboard.The use of the deck gun also placed the U-Boat in a precarious position. With the crew in position, commanded by the Second Watch Officer and a chain of men in the process of supplying the gun with ammunition, the appearance of an enemy vessel would require the gun to be secured and all those on deck crewing and servicing the gun to climb up into the tower and enter the interior of the boat, all of which took time that the U-Boat could ill afford before crash-diving to safety.

Deck guns were thus used most often in what were considered safe circumstances, perhaps intercepting a single enemy merchant, though on more than one occasion the deck gun was known to have successfully shot down an attacking enemy aircraft. As surfacing to intercept enemy vessels became more and more dangerous, it was decided to remove all deck guns and instead to increase the complement of anti-aircraft armament.

The 8.8cm weighed 0.75 tons and the 10.5cm weighed 1.5 tons, so removing these provided a welcome saving in weight and more importantly reduced the drag effect caused by these weapons and allowed a faster crash dive when a boat on the surface was threatened by enemy ships or aircraft.

Enigma Quadrant Maps

As well as a full set of navigational maps, German warships including U-Boats used a further set of maps based on a grid system for use when signalling locations using the Enigma coding machine.

On these maps, the seas were divided into large squares, each square known as a Grossquadrat. These Grossquadrats were given a two-letter code. For example, the North Sea coast of the British Isles was in Grossquadrat AN and the Atlantic Coast of the British Isles in Grossquadrat AM. These ‘squares’ were not always uniform in shape or size but as a general rule, a Grossquadrat could have, for instance, a side length of 160 sea miles, so that the Grossquadrat could encompass an area of more than 25,000 square miles, a very large area.

The Quadrat was therefore first subdivided into nine smaller squares on a 3 x 3 grid. These squares were numbered rather than carrying a lettercode. With an edge length of 54miles, these would cover an area of just under 3,000 square miles. These squares were further subdivided into nine small squares, so that a basic Grossquadrat was subdivided into eighty-one small squares.

A further subdivision reduced the square to an edge length of 6 miles, so an area of 36 square miles. The squares were numbered from 11 to 99 using all numbers except those with a zero, so 19 would be followed by 21.

In order to pinpoint a location within a smallest size square, an alphanumeric code would be used, with two letters and four numerals, so AN5145 would indicate a small area of sea off the Firth of Forth on the approaches to the naval base at Rosyth. To indicate a larger general area, the last two digits would be omitted and replaced with zeros, thus AN5100.

These ‘Quadratkarten’ gave the U-Boats an effective and efficient method of transmitting their positions or positions of convoys they had detected back to U-Boat headquarters (BdU). Unfortunately, of course this also depended on the security ofthe Enigma coding system. Once the Allies had cracked Enigma,he Quadratkarten would not help.

Toilet Facilities

Toilet facilities are not one of the first things that come to mind when thinking of U-boats, but the correct use of such facilities is not just important but a matter of life and death. Typical ocean-going U-boats were provided with two toilets, or ‘heads’ in naval parlance.

However, one of these was generally unavailable for the first part of any war cruise, as the space inside the toilet was used for storing foodstuffs. This resulted in a crew of fifty or more men being forced to use a single toilet.

The toilet itself was an incredibly tiny closet with a small toilet bowl. Clearly, given the lack of space on a U-Boat there was no possibility of a ‘septic tank’ into which the toilet could be emptied. The toilet functioned by means of a flush mechanism - that had to be operated in a very specific manner to avoid disaster. On flushing the toilet, the contents were emptied into a holding tank, which was then sealed closed by a valve.

Thereafter, a second valve emptied the holding tank into the sea. Incorrect operation of the valves could result in not only the contents of the toilet but also seawater under great pressure being vented into the boat. In fact, at least one operational U-Boat, U-1206, was lost due to improper operation of the toilet.

The commander, Kapitanleutnant Schlitt, experienced problems operating the toilet and called for one of the engineers to assist. The engineer operated the wrong valve, resulting in rapid flooding with sewage and seawater entering the boat. This entered the battery compartment below the toilet and caused the release of toxic chlorine gas. The boat was forced to surface to avoid flooding and to vent the poisonous gas, and was attacked by enemy aircraft. The damage sustained was fatal, and the boat had to be abandoned. Thankfully for the crew, the boat was close to shore and the crew managed to swim to safety.

In order to avoid using the toilet, crew would often make use of receptacles such as empty shell casings and save the contents until it was safe to empty them overboard. One can imagine the mess that would be caused when a boat had to carry out an emergency crash dive, and these receptacles ended up being spilt all over the decking, adding to the miasma of unpleasant smells inside a U-Boat.

In safe waters far from any enemy presence, crew members could use the ‘outside toilet’ and simply squat over the boat’s safety rails.

©Gordon Williamson 2020, ‘U-Boats at War in a 100 Objects 1939-1945’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Recently published in Britain and available for pre-order in America and elsewhere is ‘The Second World War in Cartoons’. Dr Tim Benson runs the Political Cartoon Gallery in London, and this authoritative approach shows how ‘the first draft of history’ - as presented in newspapers - was depicted.

This is a unique collection of 900 cartoons tracing the history of the war, creating an unparalleled narrative of the worldwide conflict. These cartoons have never been seen together before. Each presents a succinct and perceptive analysis of the world situation at the time. At the time, they often produced a wry smile - and cartoons did much to sustain morale in the darkest days.

Now brought together from newspaper sources from around the world and presented here in chronological order, they represent a comprehensive history of the war. The editor provides enough context to make them fully comprehensible to the modern reader. However, the skill and intelligence of the individual cartoonists shine through, each offering a telling insight into how the war was perceived at the time.

The following examples come from September 1940, illustrating both the diversity of material and how, brought together as they are here, they become a coherent narrative:

© Tim Benson 2025, ‘The Second World War in Cartoons’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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As we bid farewell to 1945 (for another five years) I am very pleased to be able to conclude with a piece by fellow Substack author and podcaster Christopher Harding. This picks up where my last post from 1945 - The end of the war in the Pacific - ended.

Harding published the bestselling The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives in 2023, just one of his insightful and revelatory books about the people of Japan. Here he examines the many conflicting influences on the Japanese people as they struggled to survive the end of the war and build a new future - ‘a daily encounter with dislocation, hunger, shame, and the frightening unknown’.

Enduring the Unendurable: Japan in the First Weeks After Defeat

At noon on 15 August 1945, millions of Japanese gathered around crackling radios to hear a voice few had ever heard before. It was the Emperor’s. In archaic Japanese, which few of his listeners could fully understand, he told his people they must ‘endure the unendurable, suffer the insufferable.’ The war was over.

And yet, in the days and weeks that followed, ‘over’ was hardly the right word. For ordinary Japanese, defeat was not a single moment but a daily encounter with dislocation, hunger, shame, and the frightening unknown.

The surrender itself was nearly sabotaged. A group of young officers tried to storm the Imperial Palace to steal or destroy the recording of the Emperor’s broadcast, so desperate were they to prevent capitulation. The record had to be smuggled out in a laundry basket.

Even after the broadcast, rumours spread of last-ditch attacks being planned against the approaching American fleet. Remaining Japanese aircraft had to be disarmed, their fuel tanks emptied, lest rogue pilots take off on final kamikaze missions. Senior officers of the Imperial Japanese Army, including Arisue Seizō, stockpiled weapons and hundreds of millions of yen in cash, preparing for a guerilla movement against the incoming Allied forces.

Like most of those postwar kamikaze missions, resistance plans never got off the ground. Army stores, set aside for a prolonged battle to defend the homeland, were quickly looted and the proceeds – carried away in convoys of trucks – fed onto the black market: the foundation of many a postwar fortune for Japanese gangsters.

Meanwhile, millions of ordinary people poured daily out of Tokyo on overloaded trains, clinging to rooftops and hanging off the sides, heading into the countryside for search for food. Most of Japan’s cities had been devastated by American napalm and few Japanese yet knew quite what had transpired at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rationing had broken down and people did what they could to eat. While some tried trains, others smuggled: young women wrapping up sacks of rice to look like babies, strapping them to their backs and cooing at them whenever they had to walk past a police officer.

As August turned into September, eighty years ago, a mood of bewilderment deepened into disgust. Two million soldiers and nearly 700,000 civilians were dead; nine million were homeless. Malnourishment and disease spread, but so too did news of atrocities committed by Japanese forces abroad, the first of whom began arriving home in the autumn.

Anger turned inward: at soldiers and at Japan’s militarists, who had first lied about the need for war and then failed to defend civilians against its consequences. American bombers had met little resistance from fighters or anti-aircraft guns when they flew low over Japan’s cities in the spring and summer of 1945. All the most valuable equipment and most precious personnel had been thrown into the fight abroad.

Alongside anger ran fear. People in Japan had been told to expect that should Allied soldiers make it to the Japanese home islands, the consequences would be grim – not least for Japan’s women and girls. This was largely propaganda, but there was an element of real concern. In the weeks after surrender, the Japanese authorities set up a ‘Recreation and Amusement Association’, recruiting women with few other options to provide sexual services to incoming foreign troops. This was better, so the reasoning went, than subjecting more respectable Japanese women to violence.

Amidst all this, there was still room for a fragile sense of optimism. One of the standout moments from that otherwise grim autumn was the release of a film called Soyokaze (‘Soft Breeze’). A wartime project resurrected immediately after surrender and produced in an extraordinary seven or eight weeks, the film was a classic of cinema in almost no one’s estimation. Its main song, Ringo no Uta (‘Apple Song’), was insultingly basic: ‘the apple’s lovable, lovable’s the apple.’ And yet there was something about the glowing young actress who starred in it, Namiki Michiko, skipping through an orchard and singing about the simple goodness of blue skies and luscious fruit, which resonated with an exhausted population. There was a sense that at some point the sun might really break through the clouds.

Alongside film ran music. Jazz had been big in Japan before the war, but people had been forced to hand in their records or else hide them somewhere at home when the authorities decided that anything that smelled of European or American culture was to be banned. Now, incoming American soldiers brought with them the latest in jazz and other musical styles. Some of them were musicians themselves, including the pianist Hampton Hawes. Others were enthusiasts, who helped to drive a demand for Japanese musicians to play at live venues across the country.

Japan’s Education Minister put it well in September 1945, all but offering a manifesto for the country in the second half of the twentieth century: ‘We go forward with culture.’

Into all this came the Americans, led by General Douglas MacArthur and intent on achieving three core aims. First, Japan was to be demilitarized. The army disbanded, the empire dismantled and war forever to be renounced as a way of serving Japan's interests abroad. Second, decentralization. The Americans believed that big conglomerates, known as zaibatsu, were partly responsible for militarism in Japan, such were their close relationships with senior figures in the government and the armed forces. These conglomerates, like Mitsubishi, were to be broken up. Thirdly, democratization. MacArthur and his young team had a deep faith in the idea that democracy is the best means for human beings to flourish. They believed that if the Japanese were given a true, functioning democracy, their creative energies would be released to rebuild the country.

Quite how all this would go, no one could say in early September 1945. At this point in time there was still the chance that either an armed resistance movement against the Occupation or the anger of ordinary civilians would derail plans for occupying and reforming Japan – which had begun to be laid not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Emperor had simply asked the people of Japan to ‘endure.’ And endure they mostly did, waiting to see what this latest turn in their country’s long and tumultuous history would bring.

© Christopher Harding 2025, cultural historian & broadcaster based at the University of Edinburgh. Christopher Harding is on Substack as well as being the author of several books, including the bestselling The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives.

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