Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought- provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

Category: The Blitz - Battle of Britain  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Airforce', 'British Isles', 'British Nazis'.

Woman recalls life in London during the Nazi blitz
It was a German plane, of that I was sure. As a child, growing up in London during World War II, I learned to identify the sounds of British and German aircraft. 900 planes filled the sky. Difficult as it was for us to endure the explosions, gunfire, windows breaking into peaces, and ceilings cracking, we had it easy. The might of the Luftwaffe was focused on the London docks. Around 6 p.m. the "all clear" whistle suggested it was over. Our relief was short lived, as the bombers came back 2 hours later and bombed for the next 8 hours. It was easier now for them to find targets, because London was ablaze.     [ timesargus :: 2008-05-05 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

Luftwaffe pilot Willi Schludecker returns to Bath to apologise for WW2 bombing
Decorated Luftwaffe Bomber pilot Willi Schludecker is to return to the city he bombed to make an apology in the annual remembrance service. He ruined dozens of buildings in Bath, Somerset, in April 1942 in his Dornier 217E-4. His dying wish is to make amends. "The war was madness. I realise now what I did and will come back to say sorry. I was afraid the British would be very angry but I find that now they are very gentle." Chris Kilminster, who lost relatives in the raid said it was a difficult decision to allow Schludecker to take part: "It took me a while to come to terms with the idea."     [ dailymail :: 2008-03-28 :: Bomber Pilots of WWII: B-17, B-24 ]

Hull remembers the secret blitz - Damage to 95% of the city's houses
The site of one of the last bombs to be dropped on Hull during World War II will be the central point for a service, honoring those whose suffering was kept secret from the rest of Britain as their city was reduced to rubble. During the 1941 Blitz, the importance of Hull's docks meant it endured major air raids from Luftwaffe - and later by V1 flying bombs. In spite of the huge price in human life, the destruction of the city's landscape, and damage to 95% of the city's houses, the wipeout was an official secret. "Hull was one of the most bombed cities in WWII and it was never mentioned by name in the media."     [ yorkshirepost :: 2008-03-18 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

UK bid to recognise NZ war hero Sir Keith Park - Battle of Britain tactical genius
A campaign is afoot in London to win recognition for one of New Zealand's greatest war heroes. Sir Keith Park led a key group of fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain. He commanded the RAF's 11 group in 1940 and his Hurricanes and Spitfires fought furious battles with the Luftwaffe. At the RAF Museum, he is looked upon a tactical genius, but after the battle Park fell out with RAF top brass. "He was sent out to do training and he wasn't even mentioned in the official history which was written by the RAF a year later." Trafalgar Square is home to many of Britain's war heroes and Terry Smith is keen to add a statue of Sir Keith wearing his uniform and helmet.     [ tvnz :: 2008-02-10 :: Flying Aces & Fighter Pilots of WW2 ]

The First Day of the Blitz - Firsthand accounts of WWII London Blitz
Peter Stansky's book "The First Day of the Blitz" mixes history, political commentary and firsthand testimony. The "Blitz," miscalled for its awaited quick knockout blow, began at 5 p.m. on Sept. 7, 1940. The bombing was extensive and lasted for 56 of the next 57 days. Over the course of the war, 40% of London's housing stock was made unliveable. Stansky focuses on the first day, when the self-satisfaction of the Phony War was replaced by shock, then terror, then resolve. Stansky covers the "myth of the Blitz": that the British people behaved calmly and the country was unified.     [ jj :: 2007-12-14 ]

Battle of Britain fighter pilots badly trained, had poor kill/loss ratio
Most Battle of Britain pilots were so badly trained they could not shoot straight, says historian Andrew Cumming. Some went into combat after 10 hours of solo flying and without ever having fired their guns. Lack of training facilities, time and recruits hampered Fighter Command's efforts. Documents show the "kill/loss ratio" for the key air battle (24 Aug - Sept 6, 1940) was "unimpressive". The Battle of Britain pilots (The Few) have become legendary figures, not because of reality but because they helped form a heroic national identity. The RAF's performance against Luftwaffe in 1940 was "ineffectual" and we owe much more to the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy.     [ telegraph :: 2007-10-31 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

Recapture spirit of the Blitz with tour - Air raids on Manchester
During the first major air raids on Manchester in World War II, 467 tonnes of high explosive rained down on the city. Luftwaffe bombers also dropped 1,925 canisters of incendiary bombs, killing more than 700 people and damaging 100,000 buildings. The bravery of those who faced the blitz is being remembered in a tour of Manchester. The route will take in many of the worst affected areas, such as the Manchester Cathedral, Masonic Temple and through to St Anne's Church - where an incendiary bomb was discovered on the roof in 1960. Tour leader Jean Bailo (Blue Badge guide, the highest tour-guiding qualification) will provide stories of life during the bombing.     [ manchestereveningnews :: 2007-09-08 :: Tours - History and Battlefields ]

The last recoverable Battle of Britain pilot exhumation called off
A bid to exhume the remains of a man who is thought to be the last recoverable Battle of Britain pilot has been abandoned. Flt Sgt Eric Williams was shot down on a combat mission over the Thames Estuary on 15 Oct 1940. No parachute was sighted when his Hawker Hurricane Mk1 aircraft was shot down - His squadron was attacked by Luftwaffe fighters led by German ace Major Adolf Galland. The operation to recover his remains from the site in Albion Parade, Gravesend, was called off. The Ministry of Defence spent 3 days excavating the area where he crashed but Flt Sg Williams' body is too deep to be reached.     [ bbc :: 2007-07-30 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

The last of the Blitz heroes
65 years ago Hitler's Luftwaffe carried out one of the first in a series of devastating bomb raids over Norwich. Scores of emergency workers were called into action to desperately try to stem the loss of lives. One of our last surviving city firemen called out on that devastating night of raids on May 27, 1942, told how he and his crew bravely fought back the flames as bombs continued to rain down around them. On the first night of the Blitz in 1942 Waller passed the former old thatched Boar's Head in St Stephen's which was alight: "As we drove past the heat was so intense the nap on my uniform started to smoulder."     [ eveningnews24 :: 2007-05-12 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

The Battle of Britain Spitfire ace Iain Hutchinson dies
The battling spirit of Spitfire ace Iain Hutchinson, who survived combat and a German POW camp, has succumbed at 88. He was shot down 5 times and destroyed a string of Luftwaffe planes. It was the actions of pilots such as him during the Battle of Britain that inspired Winston Churchill to proclaim: "Never in the field of human conflict had so much been owed by so many to so few." There are now 70 Battle of Britain pilots left. Most flew the Hurricane but Hutchinson was given the dashing Spitfire. His tally was 3 Messerschmitt 109 fighters confirmed, a Heinkel 111 bomber and a Messerschmitt 110 fighter-bomber probably destroyed, and a 109 damaged.     [ dailymail :: 2007-05-05 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

Britain's poor WWII defence: Nazi boat revealed Dad's Army chaos
A 2-week delay in reporting a German dinghy washed up on the English coast in 1941 reveals a picture of Dad's Army incompetence in Britain's wartime defences. The 11-foot long rubber dingy, rowlocks stamped with a Nazi swastika, was found on the shore at Selsey. Was it just a piece of Nazi flotsam or had it been used to land enemy agents? But it was nearly the end of the month before the coastguard rang the Air Ministry. The local police chief was furious: "From the security point of view... The fact that a German boat can ground on this coast without information reaching either the police or the military for over two weeks is somewhat alarming."     [ thepeninsulaqatar :: 2007-03-03 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

Blitz: The Story of December 29, 1940 - Luftwaffe Air Raid
If, in 1932, any Britons were still naïve enough to cling to their island nation's sense of safety, PM Stanley Baldwin wanted to smash that illusion: "man in the street had to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through." And so, less than a decade later, the bomber did. Impatient with Nazi Germany's failure to prevail, Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to turn its attention from the few to the many. Margaret Gaskin tells the story of the Blitz through the events of a single night that saw the largest air raid on London up to that point.     [ nysun :: 2007-01-08 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

American pilots' finest hour in the Battle of Britain
On Aug. 17, 1940, William Meade Fiske III became the first American to die in the Battle of Britain, 18 months before U.S. entered World War 2. He perished from severe burns received when his Hurricane fighter was set afire by bullets from a German Stuka dive bomber. He was one of 8 Americans who risked their lives to fight for Britain in its greatest hour of need. Only one, John Kenneth Haviland, survived WW2. Alex Kershaw delivers a story of the Americans' role in the battle that prevented a Nazi invasion of England. "The Few" also presents a complete picture of the battle itself, with accounts from both sides.     [ mysanantonio :: 2006-11-17 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

Memorial to blitz dead - More than 100 died in one bomb attack
The deaths of more than 100 people in one single bomb attack in World War II have been remembered in Lambeth. A memorial was dedicated to the victims of the attack on 15 October, 1940. "There was a sort of cover-up at the time as it was not considered good morale to announce so many deaths. Then there was a considerable period of time when people wanted to forget about the horrors of the war. But interest came back and today's event follows about two years of activity," Rob Pateman said.     [ bbc :: 2006-10-15 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

Sex, fear and looting: stories of the Blitz - the Battle of Britain
New history based on interviews gives unvarnished account of bombings and air battle. The slackers, the looters and the just plain terrified persons of the Blitz are being heard, more than 60 years after the bombs fell. The voices often edited out of the patriotic version of Britain's finest hour resurface in a new history of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain. Alison Hancock, Women's Auxiliary Air Force: "I was at a station where you had to suck up to the sergeant because he'd decide where you were going to be posted. I remember sitting on a bench and letting him kiss me because I wanted to go to Fighter Command to be a plotter."     [ guardian :: 2006-10-05 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

Battle of Britain - Facing the real possibility of a Nazi invasion
Vets, spectators gather to remember Battle of Britain - one of the most important stories of the Second World War, and Don W. McLeod likes to tell it. With the Allies faced with the real possibility of a Nazi invasion of England, 2,936 pilots took to the skies against the mighty German Luftwaffe. The Battle of Britain would last four months. "The Battle of Britain was the turning point of World War Two. ... They (the German Luftwaffe) were no longer the dominant air power that they would have been." A total of 544 Allied pilots were killed during the Battle of Britain 1940.     [ hfxnews :: 2006-09-19 :: The Blitz - Battle of Britain ]

Royal Navy, not RAF, stopped Hitler and saved Britain
The courage of "the Few", the Battle of Britain fighter pilots who protected the country from the Luftwaffe, and stopped a full-scale invasion by Nazi Germany, remains one of the great stories of the Second World War. However, 3 military historians have claimed that it was not the gallant Spitfire and Hurricane fighter pilots who saved the country, but the Royal Navy. Operation Sealion would have attempted to land 160,000 soldiers using 2,000 barges. "The Navy had ships in sufficient numbers to have overwhelmed any invasion fleet; destroyers' speed alone would have swamped the barges by their wash."     [ timesonline :: 2006-08-24 :: Naval forces & Battles ]

Mines in the sky and other wartime oddities - A Summer Bright And Terrible
Hitler's Luftwaffe was supposed to reduce Britain to rubble that summer. Everyone knew it could. The German bombers were too fast, too high and too strong for the English fighters' puny machine guns. But by 1940, Air Marshall Hugh Dowding could see them coming, thanks to radar. During the Battle of Britain, Dowding began having encounters with the ghosts of the pilots he lost. Eventually, he went the whole psychic route, worked with a medium, made contact with pilots who had passed beyond and passed along their messages to their widows. The science adviser Lindemann got the idea of seeding the sky with aerial mines on parachutes in front of the German bomber formations.     [ palmbeachpost :: 2006-01-15 :: Weapons, Guns & bombs of WWII ]

A Hitler propaganda blitz that misfired
A faked edition of the London Evening Standard created by the Nazis in an attempt to demoralise the British public revealed. Dated February 17 1940, it reports on 'The massacre of the RAF' and claims the Government has hushed up huge military losses. The newspaper has been gathering dust in MI5 files for decades. It is not known how or where it was discovered or whether it reached any readers in UK. But it, and other Nazi documents released with it, were ridiculed by historians as more worthy of Monty Python than the propaganda machine of an all-conquering dictator.     [ Daily Mail :: 2005-09-07 :: Nazi Propaganda ]

See also

'Airforce'

'British Isles'

'British Nazis'.

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