OLD WAR MOVIES

OLD WAR MOVIES

OLD WAR MOVIES

...The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

RUN SILENT RUN DEEP

 

RUN SILENT RUN DEEP

   

Dive the submarine! You sleep next to the torpedoes in a stinking, pitch black room with 80 other men - and have to climb a ladder to go to the loo...

 

   

Step Aboard The Navy's $2.4 Billion Virginia-Class Nuclear Submarine

uss virginia

Christina Shaw / US Navy

The submarines are the United State 's newest and most advanced submarine. The first Virginia slipped beneath the waves just eight years ago and only nine vessels have been completed. They take more than five years to build and run about $2.4 billion apiece. Here, we look at the Virginia class of submarines from stern to bow, finding out what makes these ships unique. We'll start in the engine room, move our way over the reactor, through the barracks to the command center and down into the torpedo room.

The Virginia-class submarine is a new breed of high-tech post-Cold War nuclear subs

The Virginia-class submarine is a new breed of high-tech post-Cold War nuclear subs

Christina Shaw / US Navy

The submarines are nearly 400 feet long and have been in service since 2003

The submarines are nearly 400 feet long and have been in service since 2003

US Navy

The ships were designed to function well in both deep sea and low-depth waters

The ships were designed to function well in both deep sea and low-depth waters

David Nagle / US Navy

So far, nine have entered service — here is Cheryl McGuiness, the widow of one of the pilots killed on 9/11, christening the USS New Hampshire

So far, nine have entered service   here is Cheryl McGuiness, the widow of one of the pilots killed on 9/11, christening the USS New Hampshire

John Narewski / US Navy

Here are the USS Virginia's engines, which powers a pump-jet propulsor rather than a conventional propeller

Here are the USS Virginia's engines, which powers a pump-jet propulsor rather than a conventional propeller

US Navy / Wikimedia Commons

This design cuts back on corrosive damage and also makes the ship stealthier

This design cuts back on corrosive damage and also makes the ship stealthier

Tosaka / wikimedia

The engine room, near the sub's stern, is the place where power from the SG9 nuclear reactor core drives the ship to nearly 32 mph when it's submerged

The engine room, near the sub's stern, is the place where power from the SG9 nuclear reactor core drives the ship to nearly 32 mph when it's submerged

James Pinsky / US Navy

This hallway — extending from the engine room, over the reactor and through the living habitat in the center of the ship — is dark so that sailors can sleep

This hallway   extending from the engine room, over the reactor and through the living habitat in the center of the ship   is dark so that sailors can sleep

James Pinsky / US Navy

The ship has an airlock chamber with room for 9 SEALs

The ship has an airlock chamber with room for 9 SEALs

James Pinsky / US Navy

The SEALs can exit the sub while its underwater by passing through this airlock

The SEALs can exit the sub while its underwater by passing through this airlock

Andrew McKaskle / US Navy

This lock-out chamber is in the center of the ship

This lock-out chamber is in the center of the ship

Andrew McKaskle / US Navy

Submariners eat well — the quality of the food is designed to offset the stress and burden of living underwater for months at a time

Submariners eat well   the quality of the food is designed to offset the stress and burden of living underwater for months at a time

Roadell Hickman / US Navy

As one sailor said, "It's like having comfort food 24-hours a day

Jennifer A Villalovos / US Navy

Going further toward the bow of the sub, the command center is directly beneath the main sail of the sub and where the navigators do their work

Going further toward the bow of the sub, the command center is directly beneath the main sail of the sub and where the navigators do their work

Kevin S O'Brien / US Navy

The command center on the Virginia subs are much more spacious compared previous submarines

The command center on the Virginia subs are much more spacious compared previous submarines

Kevin O'Brien / US Navy

The command center doesn't have to be directly under the deck of the ship in the Virginia-class subs because there isn't a periscope.

The command center doesn't have to be directly under the deck of the ship in the Virginia-class subs because there isn't a periscope.

Peter Lawlor / US Navy

The monitor the Commander is looking at is this is the sub's "periscope" — a state-of-the-art photonics system, which enables real time imaging that more than one person can see at a time

Jeremy Lambert / US Navy

The Virginia eliminates the traditional helmsman, planesman, chief of the watch and diving officer by combining them into two stations manned by two officers

The Virginia eliminates the traditional helmsman, planesman, chief of the watch and diving officer by combining them into two stations manned by two officers

James Pinsky / US Navy

The subs are equipped with a spherical sonar array that scans a full 360-degrees

The subs are equipped with a spherical sonar array that scans a full 360-degrees

Jennifer Villalovos / US Navy

The Virginia subs carry a full crew of 134 sailors

The Virginia subs carry a full crew of 134 sailors

Kevin O'Brien / US Navy

Despite computer navigation systems all routes are plotted manually as well

Despite computer navigation systems all routes are plotted manually as well

Roadell Hickman / US Navy

Down below the command center is the torpedo room, where it is possible to set up temporary bunks for special operations team

Down below the command center is the torpedo room, where it is possible to set up temporary bunks for special operations team

James Pinsky / US Navy

The ships carry up to 12 vertical launch tomahawk missiles and 38 torpedoes

The ships carry up to  12 vertical launch tomahawk missiles and 38 torpedoes

Kevin O'Brien / US Navy

Here an officer on the USS Texas fires water through the torpedo tubes as part of a test

Here an officer on the USS Texas fires water through the torpedo tubes as part of a test

Roadell Hickman / US Navy

The subs were designed to host the defunct Advanced SEAL Delivery system, a midget submarine that transported the Navy SEALs from the sub to their mission

The subs were designed to host the defunct Advanced SEAL Delivery system, a midget submarine that transported the Navy SEALs from the sub to their mission

Jennifer Villalovos / US Navy

The only thing in front of the torpedo room is the bow of the submarine, which contains sonar equipment and shielding designed to make the sub stealthier

The only thing in front of the torpedo room is the bow of the submarine, which contains sonar equipment and shielding designed to make the sub stealthier

James Pinsky / US Navy

Even as they are being built, new improvements and upgrades are being added into the design of the submarines

Even as they are being built, new improvements and upgrades are being added into the design of the submarines

US Navy

That's what the U.S. has in the works beneath the waves

HMS Torbay has five decks and is about 280ft by 32ft by 32ft; a double-decker bus is 32ft by 16ft by 10ft, a football pitch is 330ft long.

Inside a sub: Danny Danziger makes his childhood dream come true

 

Of about 300 military submarines worldwide, 11 are British.

HMS Torbay is a Trafalgar-class hunter-attack submarine built in 1984. It has torpedoes that can engage targets a dozen miles away, missiles that fly 1,000 miles with astonishing accuracy and sonar that picks up vessels up to 70 miles away.

Childhood dream: Danny Danziger takes control of the sub as he gets on board the huge HMS Torbay submarine

Childhood dream: Danny Danziger takes control of the sub as he gets on board the huge HMS Torbay submarine

In October 2001, it launched Tomahawk missile strikes into Afghanistan. It can also be involved in inserting land forces and intelligence gathering.

It has a nuclear reactor that could power Plymouth. It makes its own water, electricity, oxygen and, on a daily basis, bread.

It can get called to go anywhere at any time. The passageways are narrow, the ceilings low and numerous valves, pipes and ancillary pieces of machinery swoop down – even experienced submariners bang their heads.

There’s a constant hissing from pipes and the corridors are illuminated by a pitiless, high-wattage fluorescent light.

Inside a sub: Danny Danziger was able to make his childhood dream come true by spending time inside the HMS Torbay submarine

Inside a sub: Danny Danziger was able to make his childhood dream come true by spending time inside the HMS Torbay submarine

Everything forward of the control room is either a living, operating or fighting space, while everything aft is related to propulsion.

The nuclear reactor is in the middle. The layout can be split into five compartments. The first, at the front, houses one of the two submarine escape compartments and most of the sleeping areas.

Next is the services section. This has the control room, from where the submarine is driven, navigated and where the weapons control panel is located.

It also has the sound room, from where sonar is operated; the galley; mess areas and, at the bottom, the weapon-stowage compartment – the ‘bomb shop’.

Hidden depths: HMS Torbay comes to the surface out of the ocean as the sun rises

Hidden depths: HMS Torbay comes to the surface out of the ocean as the sun rises

Behind this is the reactor compartment, with the reactor heavily shielded in a container no bigger than a wheelie-bin.

Aft of this is the manoeuvring room where the Propulsion Watch monitor the reactor.

Below are the switchboard room and diesel generators. In the final compartment is the engine room.

The ship’s company is divided into four departments: warfare, which operates and fights the submarine; marine engineering, which looks after the reactor, propulsion and fire; weapons engineering, which maintains the missiles and torpedoes; and logistics, which handles food and something about all aspects of the sub, no matter if they’re a propulsion guy or a weapons expert.

If something goes wrong, the nearest person to it has to be able to handle it. ‘You don’t have the time to save a submarine that you would with a surface ship,’ explains an officer.

Virtually everyone has a secondary and often a tertiary role – the leading steward, who serves the officers their meals, will also spend time steering the boat.

There are many potential emergencies: the most dangerous is a administration.

There are 125 submariners, all dressed in dark-blue heavy canvas trousers and a blue cotton shirt.

As a submarine has no keel, it is difficult to manoeuvre on the surface in tight waters, so it was pulled by two tugs.

Once free from hazards, the submarine can move under its own steam. On reaching the open sea, Commander Ed Ahlgren gives the order: ‘Dive the submarine.’

A few moments later the reply on the intercom comes: ‘Diving now, diving now.’ I clamber back down the vertiginous ladder and take a last deep gulp of fresh air as the main access hatch is shut.

A few minutes later we slip under the waters. Once we’re under, there’s no rolling or pitching and unless you look at the depth dial you could be ten metres, 100 metres or 20,000 leagues under the sea.

It’s the same with time: with no natural light, it soon becomes irrelevant if it’s day or night.

In any case, a submarine never sleeps. The crew are divided into two watches; everyone works six hours on and six hours off, so unless you get to sleep immediately after your watch, you’ll be averaging a lot less sleep than six hours – it’s an exhausting gig.

Every crew member knows flood. Submarines are mainly lost because of floods, usually the result of a breach caused by hitting something or being hit. It is one of the few emergencies where a submarine will surface: this reduces the pressure, relieving the amount of water coming in.

As for accommodation, the ‘racks’ are small, narrow bunks, piled three high in a pitch-dark compartment – and there’s no dark darker than the part of a submarine with no lights.

 

Enormous: HMS Torbay has five decks and is about 280ft by 32ft by 32ft; a double-decker bus is 32ft by 16ft by 10ft, a football pitch is 330ft long

Enormous: HMS Torbay has five decks and is about 280ft by 32ft by 32ft; a double-decker bus is 32ft by 16ft by 10ft, a football pitch is 330ft long

A metal pallet with one thin blanket and no pillow was to be my bed. I’m given a plum middle bunk, so I need to do a sort of swallow dive to get into it, followed by a silent prayer that I remain lodged there throughout the night.

On my second night, the fellow above me falls out. On either side of the bed, which was literally wedged between them, were stacks of Spearfish torpdeoes, and even bigger Tomahawk land attack
missiles, each so close I could have reached out and cuddled one.

There are often more men on board than there are bunks, so crew members use vacant bunks while other are on their watch.

The heads – naval term for loos – are one deck above the bunks. To reach them it’s a steep climb up a metal ladder while carrying toothbrush, razor and towel.

The submarine makes its own water, so everyone is parsimonious with it when washing.

In the control room, there are two periscopes: search and attack. Each complements the other, providing a television feed, high magnification for looking at long-range shipping and a thermal-imaging function for low-light conditions.

They do have an intelligence-gathering function, but periscopes aren’t used much now apart from ensuring ship safety – the days of submarines using a periscope to see what they are doing in a fight are long gone.

At periscope depth – when the submarine is lying just below the surface of the water – it is in quite a dangerous position as it can’t be seen and if it were hit by a ship it could be cut in two.

When the search periscope is raised, the navigational aids are updated by GPS.

However, when deep, the submarine’s position is calculated using tidal-stream predictions with recordings of the submarine’s speed and log.

Apart from when the periscope is raised, the captain can’t see where he’s going.

High-tech: HMS Torbay is a Trafalgar-class hunter-attack submarine built in 1984 and it has torpedoes that can engage targets a dozen miles away

How long could you go without daylight, family contact, or any precise idea of where you are? A submariner on HMS Talent can do it for three months. Andrew Preston survived five days - and surfaced with a new respect for our silent service

HMS Talent

HMS Talent can stay well over 1,000ft down and undetected for months, producing its own oxygen and drinking water from the sea. The only limit to its endurance is carrying enough food, which means 90 days

The only way into the 2ft-wide bunk is to commando-crawl headfirst into the darkness. To one side lies a Tomahawk land attack cruise missile. To the other is a no less menacing Spearfish heavyweight torpedo.

There’s no way of knowing whether it’s night or day, or where, or how deep underwater you are. The only way to distinguish the days of the week is by remembering what you have eaten. Saturday is steak night; if it was a roast lunch then pizza in the evening it’s Sunday. Curry means it’s Wednesday.

Nine inches above my nose is a steel rack, which holds in place four more 20ft-long missiles ready for loading, while just a few feet below me, beneath the submarine’s pressure hull and steel outer casing, is the Red Sea.

This is the weapons stowage compartment, or ‘bomb shop’, where I am trying to sleep alongside £20m-worth of live weapons. They do at least provide comfort from the heat – my left leg is slumped over the aluminium capsule of the Tomahawk while my right arm hugs the cool torpedo. All I can see, looking back past my feet, is a round steel door surrounded by illuminated dials and marked ‘Torpedo Tube 2’. It’s one of five loaded and ready.

Sonar operators track ships and submarines in the sound room on HMS Talent

Sonar operators track ships and submarines in the sound room; they can tell just by the sound the class of vessel, and can sometimes even identify a particular ship

The only sounds are the whirring of the ventilation and snoring from young trainees who have just come off shift at 1am. The air smells surprisingly fresh, although there are hints of oil, wet towels and stale feet. Water is at a premium, and only the chefs and some crew from the engine room are allowed a shower every day. There’s also only one washing machine and tumble dryer.

The ‘bomb shop’ is an overflow sleeping space. Most of the 125-man crew live crammed into three-tier bunk spaces, their only privacy a tiny green curtain they can pull across. Many of the junior submariners still ‘hot bunk’ too, sharing with someone on an opposite shift.

The bunks are so cramped that submariners talk of ‘coffin dreams’. The most common are that the beds above are collapsing and set to crush you, or that you have been buried alive as you turn expecting to open the curtain and instead your hand hits steel. But working six hours on and six hours off, you soon learn to try to catch any moments of sleep whenever you can.

Officer Of The Watch on HMS Talent and the Lookout on the bridge

Officer Of The Watch and the Lookout on the bridge

At 3.20am, there are three short, loud blasts of the ship’s siren. ‘Harbour Stations. Harbour Stations’ blares out. Within minutes the whole crew are up and alert. We are about to enter the Suez Canal.

Live was given exclusive access to nuclear-powered submarine HMS Talent for five days during her latest seven-month deployment. On board is an extraordinary, confined, calm and ordered world with its own rituals and routines and even its own language, ‘Jackspeak’. The boat can stay well over 1,000ft down and undetected for months, producing its own oxygen and drinking water from the sea. The only limit to its endurance is carrying enough food, which means 90 days.

It’s easy to think of these boats, built in the Eighties, as expensive and outdated Cold War toys, but they are still perfectly designed for stealthy surveillance and potential attack.

‘She carries some of the most advanced weapons, and is also one of the quietest submarines in the world,’ says Simon Asquith, the commanding officer on Talent.

Just as a ‘bomber’ submarine carrying our Trident nuclear deterrent is at sea every day of the year, and has been since 1968, so too the Royal Navy now always has a hunter-killer submarine such as HMS Talent ‘east of Suez’. They are reticent about exactly where they go, but look on a map and you’ll see Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iran and Afghanistan.

‘It’s great PR for surface ships if they have a success while doing counter-piracy, or if they board a boat and carry out a big drugs bust,’ says Cdr Asquith. ‘But lots of these operations have a submarine input and that’s never discussed, and rightly so.

‘They call us the silent service, but the danger of that is that we become the forgotten service, as very little of what we do can be reported. Even my wife has no idea what we’re doing 90 per cent of the time.’

With the Strategic Defence Review imminent, the Navy is concerned that it will take hits. It seems a decision over a replacement for Trident will be fudged, while some hunter-killer subs may be retired early or not have their lives extended, as replacements from the new Astute class, at £1 billion each, start to come on line.

HMS Talent's weapons stowage compartment

The weapons stowage compartment, where the Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes are kept

But they can’t afford to lose too many at a time when submarines are a growing threat. The number commissioned and being built worldwide is rising rapidly. Their lethal potential was shown in March when a torpedo from an unseen North Korean sub sank a South Korean navy gunboat. North Korea denies it, but 46 sailors were killed and it could have escalated into war.

‘Submarines are a surprise growth area,’ says David Ewing of Jane’s Underwater Warfare Systems. ‘India is working on a nuclear sub, which could have a destabilising effect, and currently has one on loan; Brazil is going like mad to build one and the Russians are starting to churn out the things. Iran is also trying to get as many mini-subs as it can, while North Korea has 88 subs.

‘Rogue states are likely to go for smaller subs,’ he adds, pointing to a new danger from smaller conventional submarines using AIP, or Air Independent Propulsion: ‘They have to go slowly but they’re very quiet, can stay down for a long time, about 12 or 14 days, and are perfect for use just outside a harbour when you can pop off anything coming out one by one – get one of those in the Straits of Hormuz and you’re looking at trouble.’

An officer is welcomed aboard on the HMS Talent as the submarine heads into Suez

An officer is welcomed aboard as the submarine heads into Suez

It’s 5.40am, the sun is slowly rising over the desert, and a small speedboat appears from an inlet, heading directly at us. The atmosphere on the bridge suddenly becomes twitchy. The guard carrying an SA80 rifle in the mastwell turns to face the boat. If required, there are also two 7.62mm machine guns mounted on either side of the bridge.

Fast attack boats have been seen as a danger to navies since the suicide attack on the USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen. But Cdr Asquith soon relaxes – it turns out to be an Egyptian army boat.

HMS Talent is leading a convoy northwards up the Suez Canal. Stretching out behind us is a long line of enormous container vessels and tankers, each separated from the one behind and in front by half a mile of clear water. It’s slow progress and will take us more than 12 hours from one end of the canal to the other.

Dotted every couple of hundred yards on both banks, facing away from us, are what look like toy soldiers. Each carries a rifle across his chest, standing alone on top of a sand dune in what will soon be ferocious 40-degree-plus heat. Occasionally one dares turn to sneak a glance at the menacing black whale-like shape slowly gliding up the canal behind them.

Relaxing in the Junior Rates Mess on HMS Talent

Relaxing in the Junior Rates Mess; all crew eat the same food, including the commanding officer

On the bridge with Cdr Asquith is a local guide, while down below in the wardroom (or officers’ mess), an Egyptian army officer and an air force pilot are on board in case of communication problems with the sentries on shore.

Although it’s Ramadan and they can’t eat, they have to wait and flick through well-thumbed magazines as the British officers, sitting beneath framed photographs of the Queen and Prince Philip, tuck in to porridge with golden syrup, followed by a full English with rolls baked on board and countless ‘wets’, or cups of tea or coffee.

Food is hugely important for morale, with ‘steak night’ a highlight. It also helps measure out time – for example you hear ‘only three steak nights until we’re home.’

The White Ensign flies from the bridge on the HMS Talent as a guard keeps watch with a 7.62mm machine gun

The White Ensign flies from the bridge as a guard keeps watch with a 7.62mm machine gun

Considering the tiny galley, the lack of storage space and a budget of only £2.28 per person per day, the three substantial meals a day are impressive. Fresh fruit and veg and milk are a rarity, though. The junior ratings mess, senior ratings mess and wardroom all have the same food and, according to Cdr Asquith, the crew ‘choose not to drink’, although they make up for that on their boisterous trips on shore.

There are limited opportunities to exercise: there are a few dumbbells, a bike tucked away among the sonar computer equipment, and one rowing machine at the aft end, the back half of the sub, which holds the turbine-generators, main engines and nuclear reactor.

To get there is a trek in itself. You walk through thick steel airlock doors at either end of a tunnel over the reactor (look through a porthole in the floor and you see the wheelie-bin-sized core). Then go past the manoeuvring room, lined with reactor control panels and dials, and down a deck where the crew are doing a ‘Row The Suez’ challenge in aid of a children’s hospice.

Officers on the bridge and the Casing Party below as HMS Talent arrives at Souda Bay, Crete

Officers on the bridge and the Casing Party below as the submarine arrives at Souda Bay, Crete

Temperatures hit 45°C, so rowing just one mile while jammed between rows of grey cabinets in the switchboard room (basically an electricity substation), and knowing you’re just ten feet from a nuclear reactor is both exhausting and unnerving.

Otherwise they relax watching recorded TV series (Californication and The Inbetweeners are favourites on this deployment) and films, or just read. Other boats have had an aquarium and a pet python, while the crew of a ‘bomber’ submarine built a crazy golf course.

But on this deployment there’s been little time for leisure. As the threat of submarines grows so does the importance of anti-submarine warfare, and Talent has engaged in exercises and manoeuvres with US aircraft, Type 23 Frigate HMS Northumberland, and a Los Angeles Class submarine, USS Alexandria, and also, for the first time in recent years, with an Indian Navy submarine.

This was on top of their covert work, keeping the boat running, and constant training and practice against fire and flood. On Saturday night they switch off the nuclear reactor, hoping to restart it after ten minutes.

‘Think of it as like a jumbo jet switching off its engines and then starting them again,’ says the deadpan XO (Executive Officer) Ian Surgey. ‘With a bit of luck we won’t sink to the bottom… anyone fancy a hot chocolate?’

Banter fills a lot of the time, much of it about the surface navy fleet, which they semi-jokingly call ‘skimmers’ or ‘targets’. While it is a source of great pride that all submariners know how their boat works so they can react in any emergency, and they all do multiple jobs (the wardroom steward, for example, does a 90-minute stint driving the boat), they like to suggest that their surface colleagues are less well informed.

‘They get up, go to the gym, train and do a write-up and get a cracking tan then finish by 4pm, and can phone or email home any time they like,’ says Leading Seaman Hackett.

Differences became clear when some of the crews swapped for a day with HMS Northumberland.

‘Their Captain has a day cabin, an evening cabin and a three-piece suite,’ says Cdr Asquith. ‘The captain on aircraft carrier Invincible even has a Range Rover on board for him to drive away on. I’m lucky if there’s a Daihatsu hire car waiting for me when I get to port. I do have a space back at Devonport, though, where I park my Ford Ka, to the embarrassment of some of my crew.’

Commander Asquith (on right) and Lieutenant Commander Bull in the wardroom on HMS Talent under a portrait of the Queen

Commander Asquith (on right) and Lieutenant Commander Bull in the wardroom under a portrait of the Queen

There’s little luxury for the commanding officer on Talent. He and the XO have napkins in silver rings laid out for them, and he also has his own cabin, but it’s tiny, with a sofabed, a desk and a wash basin. For a shower or the lavatory he has to walk down a deck and share the two loos and one shower with the other 17 officers.

If they don’t exactly see themselves as an elite, submariners do recognise they’re different.

‘My wife and I were introduced to Prince Philip at a drinks party,’ says Cdr Asquith. ‘I told him I was just back from six months in the Middle East, most of it spent underwater. He looked at me and said “You’re mad.” He turned to my wife and said “He’s mad.” Then he just walked on.’

Once out of the canal, the sub comes into its own when it dives. Unlike in the films, this is a slow process. First the back goes down at a steep angle as the aft ballast tanks are opened. The front follows as the forward tanks are allowed to flood and the boat drives down. This is all managed from the control room. While Sean Connery in The Hunt For Red October had space to stride around, here the commanding officer sits on a tatty chair jammed in by the ladder to the conning tower.

HMS Talent's Ship Control

Monitoring the submarine's systems at Ship Control and the Planesman steering the submarine and keeping depth using the wheel

When underwater the boat is driven using a wheel that allows you to steer and change depth. It feels responsive turning to port and starboard but to dive or rise you have to pull and push surprisingly firmly. As you get faster, the controls get twitchier.

‘A nuclear reactor, 125 crew, and half a billion pounds worth of boat… no pressure then,’ says the XO as I have a go 300ft down in the Mediterranean.

The other cliché that’s absent is the pinging. The submarine uses passive sonar, so it listens rather than transmitting sound and waiting for it to bounce back. While at periscope depth, the search and attack periscopes can see as far as the horizon, but once dived the sonar operators become the eyes and ears of the boat. They can tell just by sound the class of vessel, and sometimes even narrow it down to a particular named ship.

‘Each vessel has its own signature,’ says Chief Operator Golby. ‘For example, merchant vessels have one shaft, warships have two, and each will have its flaws, which you come to recognise.’

When I listen I can hear a merchant vessel 50 miles away, as well as a lot of ‘bio’ – dolphins and shrimps.

Overflow sleeping quarters between torpedoes in the bomb shop on HMS Talent

Overflow sleeping quarters between torpedoes in the bomb shop; most of the 125-man crew live crammed into three-tier bunk spaces

‘It was a good feeling to hide from Northumberland and send a green grenade at their bridge to simulate a torpedo, but to go up against an American sub in an exercise and win is even sweeter,’ admits Leading Seaman Hackett.

On returning to the surface after a dive, going up the conning tower is a true assault on the senses – the sunlight burns your eyes, but it’s the pungent smell of salty seawater and fish that really hits you.

‘Quite often the first one up will throw up,’ warns Lt Richard Holland, smiling, as he sends me up the three metal-runged ladders that lead to the bridge.

Once used to the light and the rolling of the boat, it’s a relief to be in the open air. ‘Yes, it can be beautiful, but less so in a force seven off Stornoway or in the Irish Sea,’ says Lt Holland.

The crew can send and receive a limited number of emails when near to the surface, when they also get a news summary and the football scores, but once back home they will still have plenty to catch up with. HMS Talent set sail under a Labour government but returned to a coalition, and they are keen to know how this is going. Their knowledge of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is sketchy, and they also ask about the long-finished World Cup.

The 29-bulkhead watertight door, which shuts off the forward escape compartment on HMS Talent

The 29-bulkhead watertight door, which shuts off the forward escape compartment

‘I left with my children in one school year and will come back with them in another, having missed various birthdays and the whole of the summer holidays,’ says Cdr Asquith. ‘It’s very difficult for families – they really are the unsung heroes.’

While on deployment, the crew (average age 25) become a surrogate family, looking out for each other. Six more trainees qualify while we are on board. As they queue to get into the junior mess the new submariners can read Cdr Asquith’s message to the crew on the noticeboard. British hunter-killer submarines have fired in anger in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

It says: ‘We must always be ready to conduct operations and know that, in time of war, this will require us to inflict extreme violence on the enemy. It is in the darkest moments that resilience and a sense of humour are most needed.’

In that his crew will certainly not let him down.

 

High-tech: HMS Torbay is a Trafalgar-class hunter-attack submarine built in 1984 and it has torpedoes that can engage targets a dozen miles away

Communications are complex, ranging from UHF (ultra-high frequency) down to very low-frequency waves, which can be received only when just below the surface.

On a ‘sneaky’, intelligence-collecting patrol, a submarine won’t communicate for six weeks, but receives information daily by satellite when at periscope depth.

Once it has surfaced, submariners can use email and go out on the casing to make phone calls and have a cigarette.

At the port forward end of the control room is the boat’s control console, where a team of three drives the submarine. The planesman operates the control column, which is similar to an aircraft joystick.

But unlike an aircraft there are 12 people on watch in the control room. Planesman Andy ‘Robbie’ Robinson admits this can prove trying.

‘You’ve got so many backseat drivers. It’s a nightmare.’ Forward of the control room is the sound room.

When it comes to sonar, a submarine operating off Land’s End can detect a ship leaving Bristol and the operators are able to determine the number of shafts it has and the number of blades on each shaft, and so identify the type of ship.

So, what do the oceans sound like? ‘The Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Pacific are all much the same, but the Arctic is my favourite ocean,’ says Richie Barrow, a senior sonar rating.

‘When ice is starting to form, you hear ambient sound all around, cracking and groaning. Further inside the marginal ice zone, there are larger blocks of ice which creak, crunch and smash against
each other.

Then, as you reach the ice cap, it goes completely quiet.’ Apart from squeaking porpoises, it’s listening to whales that proves popular among submariners.

‘It really gets to the guys,’ says Barrow. ‘When you’re stuck on board, a million miles away from your family, the whales will make a grown man cry. They sound so sad and lost.’

Food has to last for three months and anything fresh is eaten within the first fortnight. But pizza bases and pastry are made by hand and, says one officer, ‘if you’re on the early morning watch, there’s nothing nicer than the smell of baking bread drifting up from the galley’.

The menu follows the same pattern every week: Wednesday night is curry, Friday lunch is fish and chips, and on Sunday there’s a roast.

The standard is superior school food. Once, when the Torbay’s task was extended by eight weeks, the crew were simply served less food to make it stretch until they reached port.

‘Effectively you get put on the Atkins Diet,’ says Lieutenant Craig Spacey. ‘You’re fed tins of meat and not many carbs. I lost over a stone-and-a-half. We ended up with one slice of bread per day.’

Being in a submarine takes a while to adjust to, even for experienced submariners. ‘You feel lethargic because of the lack of fresh air and your sleep schedule gets out of whack,’ says Lieutenant-Commander Dan Reiss, on exchange from the US Navy.

‘Then there’s the confinement and bumping into people all the time, which builds up over the first few days – guys get kind of angry with each other. But it becomes . . . I won’t say peaceful, but a comfortable way to live.’

As for health, viruses spread like wildfire in the closed atmosphere with coughs and colds in the first couple of weeks and in the final weeks when the men are run down.

They do a dangerous and demanding job in uncomfortable conditions and don’t get the recognition they deserve.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

BATTLE OF BRITAIN

 

WORLD WAR II: LONDON IN COLOR

The air raids by German Luftwaffe planes on English cities and towns in 1940 and 1941—attacks known collectively and famously as the Blitz—were terrifying, but they failed in their key aims: namely, to demoralize the British people, and to destroy the UK’s war economy. London, not surprisingly, suffered the brunt of the Blitz: More than a million London houses were ruined or badly damaged, and more than 20,000 civilians were killed in the city alone. (Roughly 40,000 civilians were killed in the whole of England.)

Here, LIFE.com presents color photos taken in London during the war, in tribute to the spirit of Britons who would not be cowed.

“These were the times,” Churchill wrote in his war memoirs (also serialized in LIFE magazine in 1949), “when the English, and particularly the Londoners, who had the place of honor, were seen at their best. Grim and gay, dogged and serviceable, with the confidence of an unconquered people in their bones, they adapted themselves to this strange new life [of the Blitz], with all its terrors, with all its jolts and jars.”

“Away across the Atlantic,” Churchill wrote, “the prolonged bombardment of London, and later of other cities and sea-ports, aroused a wave of sympathy in the United States, stronger than any ever felt before or since in the English-speaking world. Passion flamed in American hearts, and in none more than in the heart of President Roosevelt. I could feel the glow of millions of men and women eager to share the suffering, burning to strike a blow. As many Americans as could get passage came, bringing whatever gifts they could, and their respect, reverence, deep love and comradeship were very inspiring. However, this was only September, and we had many months before us of this curious existence.”

“I felt,” Churchill recalled, “with a spasm of mental pain, a deep sense of the strain and suffering that was being borne throughout the world’s largest capital city. How long would it go on? How much more would they have to bear? What were the limits of their vitality? What effects would their exhaustion have upon our productive war-making power?”

“To the Prussians of modern Berlin,” LIFE wrote in January 1941, at the height of the Blitz, “old London is a hated symbol of all that makes Englishman superior people. For six months the Nazis bombed the British capital, by day and by night, without more than denting it. On the night of December 29, they tried to set fire to it. In that one night German bombers dropped an estimated 10,000 two-pound incendiary bombs.”

“All the painfully-gathered German experience was expressed on this occasion,” Churchill wrote of an infamous raid in late December, 1940. “It was an incendiary classic. The weight of the attack was concentrated upon the City of London itself. It was timed to meet the dead-low-water hour. The water-mains were broken at the outset by very heavy high-explosive parachute-mines. Nearly fifteen hundred fires had to be fought. The damage to railway stations and docks was serious. Eight [Christopher] Wren churches were destroyed or damaged.”

“The Guildhall was smitten by fire and blast,” Churchill recalled almost a decade later, in 1949, “and St. Paul’s Cathedral was only saved by heroic exertions. A void of ruin at the very center of the British world gapes upon us to this day. But when the King and Queen visited the scene they were received with enthusiasm far exceeding any Royal festival.”

“The Germans,” wrote LIFE in 1941, before America entered the war, “are said to be greatly puzzled over London’s willingness to take continual punishment without so much as a thought to surrender. The British, they think, are licked and refuse to accept the fact. But the British are not by any means licked and if, in the end, they win the war it will be due in no small way to the magnificent way in which the people of London are standing up to the siege.”

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

   

 

 

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

 

   

 

   

 

   
BATTLE OF BRITAIN

 

In the summer and autumn of 1940, Germany's Luftwaffe conducted thousands of bombing runs, attacking military and civilian targets across the United Kingdom. Hitler's forces, in an attempt to achieve air superiority, were preparing for an invasion of Britain code-named "Operation Sea Lion." At first, they targeted only military and industrial targets. But after the Royal Air Force hit Berlin with retaliatory strikes in September, the Germans began bombing British civilian centers. Some 23,000 British civilians were killed in the months between July and December 1940. Thousands of pilots and air crews engaged in battle in the skies above Britain, Germany, and the English Channel, each side losing more than 1,500 aircraft by the end of the year. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, speaking of the British pilots in an August speech, said, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." The British defenses held, and Operation Sea Lion was quietly canceled in October, though bombing raids continued long after.

 

The  Battle of Britain took place between August and September 1940. After the success of Blitzkrieg, the evacuation of Dunkirk and the surrender of France, Britain was by herself. The Battle of Britain remains one of the most famous battles of World War Two.

An original "Never was so much" poster

The Germans needed to control the English Channel to launch her invasion of Britain (which the Germans code-named Operation Sealion).

They needed this control of the Channel so that the British Navy would not be able to attack her invasion barges which were scheduled to land on the Kent and Sussex beaches.

To control the Channel the Germans needed control of the air. This meant that they had to take on Fighter Command, led by Sir Hugh Dowding, of the Royal Air Force.

The main fighter planes of the RAF were the Spitfire and the Hurricane.

The Germans relied primarily on their Messcherschmitt fighters and their Junkers dive bombers - the famed Stukas.

At the start of the war, Germany had 4,000 aircraft compared to Britain's front-line strength of 1,660. By the time of the fall of France, the Luftwaffe (the German air force) had 3,000 planes based in north-west Europe alone including 1,400 bombers, 300 dive bombers, 800 single engine fighter planes and 240 twin engine fighter bombers. At the start of the battle, the Luftwaffe had 2,500 planes that were serviceable and in any normal day, the Luftwaffe could put up over 1,600 planes. The RAF had 1,200 planes on the eve of the battle which included 800 Spitfires and Hurricanes - but only 660 of these were serviceable. The rate of British plane production was good - the only weakness of the RAF was the fact that they lacked sufficient trained and experienced pilots. Trained pilots had been killed in the war in France and they had not been replaced.    

Britain had a number of advantages over the Luftwaffe. Britain had RADAR which gave us early warning of the approach of the German planes. By the Spring of 1940, fifty-one radar bases had been built around the coast of southern Britain. We also had the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) which used such basics as binoculars to do the same job. By 1940, over 1000 ROC posts had been established. British fighter planes could spend more time in the air over Kent and Sussex as we could easily land for fuel whereas the German fighters could not. German bombers could fly for longer distances than their fighter planes could cover and therefore, the bombers could not always count on fighter cover for protection. The German fighters were also limited in that they could not reload their guns if they ran out of ammunition while over Kent etc. Our fighters could. Without sufficient fighter cover, the German bombers were very open to attack from British fighter planes.

The battle started on July 10th 1940 when the Luftwaffe attempted to gain control of the Straits of Dover. The aim of the Luftwaffe was to tempt the RAF out for a full-scale battle. By the end of July, the RAF had lost 150 aircraft while the Luftwaffe had lost 268. In August, the Luftwaffe started to attack Fighter Command's airfields, operation rooms and radar stations - the idea being that the RAF could be destroyed on the ground so that the Luftwaffe need not fight them in the air. Without radar the RAF would be seriously hampered in terms of early warning and the destruction of operation rooms would cut off communications between fighter bases and those at the heart of the battle controlling the movement of fighter planes. Destroyed runways would hamper the chances of a fighter plane taking off.

Bad weather stopped the Luftwaffe from daily raids in August but August 15th is seen as a key date as nearly all the Stuka dive-bombers were destroyed by this date as they fell easy prey to the British fighter planes. Therefore, pin-point bombing of radar stations was all but impossible.

From August 23rd to September 6th, the Luftwaffe started night time bombing raids on cities. The RAF was also badly hit with 6 out of 7 main fighter bases in south-eastern England being put out of action. Biggen Hill was wrecked. However, for all this apparent success, the Luftwaffe was losing more planes than the RAF was - 1000 German losses to 550 RAF.

One event did greatly aid the British. The head of the Luftwaffe - Herman Goering - ordered an end to the raids on radar bases as he believed that they were too unimportant to matter. Albert Speer - a leading Nazi throughout the war - claimed in his book "Inside the Third Reich" that a number of important decisions were made based on Goering's ignorance. As Goering did not understand the importance of something, it was dismissed as unnecessary for success. As a result of this, the radar station at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight functioned throughout the battle and gave Fighter Command vital information regarding German targets.

In the spring of 1940, Hitler's armies smashed across the borders of the Netherlands and Belgium and streamed into the northern reaches of France. The German "Blitzkrieg" moved swiftly to the west and the south, splitting the British and French defenders, trapping the British army at Dunkirk and forcing its evacuation from continental Europe. The Germans entered Paris on June 14 and forced


RAF Pilots, 1940

France's surrender on June 22. The British now stood alone, awaiting Hitler's inevitable attempt to invade and conquer their island.

Great Britain was in trouble. The soldiers rescued from Dunkirk were exhausted by their ordeal. Worse, most of their heavy armaments lay abandoned and rusting on the French beaches. After a short rest, the Germans began air attacks in early summer designed to seize mastery of the skies over England in preparation for invasion. All that stood between the British and defeat was a small force of RAF pilots outnumbered in the air by four to one.

Day after day the Germans sent armadas of bombers and fighters over England hoping to lure the RAF into battle and annihilate the defenders. Day after day the RAF scrambled their pilots into the sky to do battle often three, four or five times a day. Britain's air defense bent but did not break. By September, the Germans lost enthusiasm for the assault. Hitler postponed and then canceled invasion plans, turning his attention to the defeat of Russia. In appreciation of the RAF pilots' heroic effort, Winston Churchill declared: "Never before in human history was so much owed by so many to so few."

The "Few" in Their "Finest Hour"

In the summer of 1940, twenty-one-year-old Pilot Officer John Beard was a member of a squadron of Hurricanes based near London. Waiting on the airfield while his plane is rearmed and refueled, Beard receives word of a large German attack force making its way up the Thames River towards London. The afternoon sun illuminates a cloudless blue sky as Beard and his fellow pilots lift their planes off the grass airstrip and climb to meet the enemy. The defenders level off at 15,000 feet and wait for the attackers to appear:

"Minutes went by. Green fields and roads were now beneath us. I scanned the sky and the horizon for the first glimpse of the Germans. A new vector came through on the R.T. [radio telephone] and we swung round with the sun behind us. Swift on the heels of this I heard Yellow flight leader call through the earphones. I looked quickly toward Yellow's position, and there they were!

The appearance of German bombers in the skies over London during the afternoon of September 7, 1940 heralded a tactical shift in Hitler's attempt to subdue Great Britain. During the previous two months, the Luftwaffe had targeted RAF airfields and radar stations for destruction in preparation for the German invasion of the island. With invasion plans put on hold and eventually scrapped, Hitler turned his attention to destroying London in an attempt to demoralize the population and force the British to come to terms. At around 4:00 PM on that September day, 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters

Sept. 7, 1940 - the beginning of the
London Blitz

blasted London until 6:00 PM. Two hours later, guided by the fires set by the first assault, a second group of raiders commenced another attack that lasted until 4:30 the following morning.

This was the beginning of the Blitz - a period of intense bombing of London and other cities that continued until the following May. For the next consecutive 57 days, London was bombed either during the day or night. Fires consumed many portions of the city. Residents sought shelter wherever they could find it - many fleeing to the Underground stations that sheltered as many as 177,000 people during the night. In the worst single incident, 450 were killed when a bomb destroyed a school being used as an air raid shelter. Londoners and the world were introduced to a new weapon of terror and destruction in the arsenal of twentieth century warfare. The Blitz ended on May 11, 1941 when Hitler called off the raids in order to move his bombers east in preparation for Germany's invasion of Russia.

"They came just after dark... "

Ernie Pyle was one of World War Two's most popular correspondents. His journalism was characterized by a focus on the common soldier interspersed with sympathy, sensitivity and humor. He witnessed the war in Europe from the Battle of Britain through the invasion of France. In 1945 he accepted assignment to the Pacific Theater and was killed during the battle for Okinawa. Here, he describes a night raid on London in 1940:

ADVERTISMENT

"It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire.

They came just after dark, and somehow you could sense from the quick, bitter firing of the guns that there was to be no monkey business this night.

Shortly after the sirens wailed you could hear the Germans grinding overhead. In my room, with its black curtains drawn across the windows, you could feel the shake from the guns. You could hear the boom, crump, crump, crump, of heavy bombs at their work of tearing buildings apart. They were not too far away.

Half an hour after the firing started I gathered a couple of friends and went to a high, darkened balcony that gave us a view of a third of the entire circle of London. As we stepped out onto the balcony a vast inner excitement came over all of us-an excitement that had neither fear nor horror in it, because it was too full of awe.

You have all seen big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the whole horizon of a city lined with great fires - scores of them, perhaps hundreds.

There was something inspiring just in the awful savagery of it.

The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor, only to break out again later.

About every two minutes a new wave of planes would be over. The motors seemed to grind rather than roar, and to have an angry pulsation, like a bee buzzing in blind fury.

Children sit among the rubble
of their home September 1940

The guns did not make a constant overwhelming din as in those terrible days of September. They were intermittent - sometimes a few seconds apart, sometimes a minute or more. Their sound was sharp, near by; and soft and muffled, far away. They were everywhere over London.

Into the dark shadowed spaces below us, while we watched, whole batches of incendiary bombs fell. We saw two dozen go off in two seconds. They flashed terrifically, then quickly simmered down to pin points of dazzling white, burning ferociously. These white pin points would go out one by one, as the unseen heroes of the moment smothered them with sand. But also, while we watched, other pin points would burn on, and soon a yellow flame would leap up from the white center. They had done their work - another building was on fire.

The greatest of all the fires was directly in front of us. Flames seemed to whip hundreds of feet into the air. Pinkish-white smoke ballooned upward in a great cloud, and out of this cloud there gradually took shape - so faintly at first that we weren't sure we saw correctly - the gigantic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

St. Paul's was surrounded by fire, but it came through. It stood there in its enormous proportions - growing slowly clearer and clearer, the way objects take shape at dawn. It was like a picture of some miraculous figure that appears before peace-hungry soldiers on a battlefield.

The streets below us were semi-illuminated from the glow. Immediately above the fires the sky was red and angry, and overhead, making a ceiling in the vast heavens, there was a cloud of smoke all in pink. Up in that pink shrouding there were tiny, brilliant specks of flashing light-antiaircraft shells bursting. After the flash you could hear the sound.

Up there, too, the barrage balloons were standing out as clearly as if it were daytime, but now

Dec. 29, 1940 - St. Paul's Cathedral
emerges from the flames during
one of the most devastating raids.

they were pink instead of silver. And now and then through a hole in that pink shroud there twinkled incongruously a permanent, genuine star - the old - fashioned kind that has always been there.

Below us the Thames grew lighter, and all around below were the shadows - the dark shadows of buildings and bridges that formed the base of this dreadful masterpiece.

Later on I borrowed a tin hat and went out among the fires. That was exciting too; but the thing I shall always remember above all the other things in my life is the monstrous loveliness of that one single view of London on a holiday night - London stabbed with great fires, shaken by explosions, its dark regions along the Thames sparkling with the pin points of white-hot bombs, all of it roofed over with a ceiling of pink that held bursting shells, balloons, flares and the grind of vicious engines. And in yourself the excitement and anticipation and wonder in your soul that this could be happening at all.

It was really a terrific sight and quite beautiful. First they seemed just a cloud of light as the sun caught the many glistening chromium parts of their engines, their windshields, and the spin of their airscrew discs. Then, as our squadron hurtled nearer, the details stood out. I could see the bright-yellow noses of Messerschmitt fighters sandwiching the bombers, and could even pick out some of the types. The sky seemed full of them, packed in layers thousands of feet deep. They came on steadily, wavering up and down along the horizon. 'Oh, golly,' I thought, 'golly, golly . . .'

And then any tension I had felt on the way suddenly left me. I was elated but very calm. I leaned over and switched on my reflector sight, flicked the catch on the gun button from 'Safe' to 'Fire,' and lowered my seat till the circle and dot on the reflector sight shone darkly red in front of my eyes.

The squadron leader's voice came through the earphones, giving tactical orders. We swung round in a great circle to attack on their beam-into the thick of them. Then, on the order, down we went. I took my hand from the throttle lever so as to get both hands on the stick, and my thumb played neatly across the gun button. You have to steady a fighter just as you have to steady a rifle before you fire it.

My Merlin [the airplane's engine] screamed as I went down in a steeply banked dive on to the tail of a forward line of Heinkels. I knew the air was full of aircraft flinging themselves about in all directions, but, hunched and snuggled down behind my sight, I was conscious only of the Heinkel I had picked out. As the angle of my dive increased, the enemy machine loomed larger in the sight field, heaved toward the red dot, and then he was there!

I had an instant's flash of amazement at the Heinkel proceeding so regularly on its way with a fighter on its tail. 'Why doesn't the fool move?' I thought, and actually caught myself flexing my muscles into the action I would have taken had I been he.

When he was square across the sight I pressed the button. There was a smooth trembling of my


The Heinkel 111
mainstay bomber of the German attack

Hurricane as the eight-gun squirt shot out. I gave him a two-second burst and then another. Cordite fumes blew back into the cockpit, making an acrid mixture with the smell of hot oil and the air-compressors.

I saw my first burst go in and, just as I was on top of him and turning away, I noticed a red glow inside the bomber. I turned tightly into position again and now saw several short tongues of flame lick out along the fuselage. Then he went down in a spin, blanketed with smoke and with pieces flying off.

I left him plummeting down and, horsing back on my stick, climbed up again for more. The sky was clearing, but ahead toward London I saw a small, tight formation of bombers completely encircled by a ring of Messerschmitts. They were still heading north. As I raced forward, three flights of Spitfires came zooming up from beneath them in a sort of Prince-of-Wales's-feathers maneuver. They burst through upward and outward, their guns going all the time. They must have each got one, for an instant later I saw the most extraordinary sight of eight German bombers and fighters diving earthward together in flames.

I turned away again and streaked after some distant specks ahead. Diving down, I noticed that the running progress of the battle had brought me over London again. I could see the network of streets with the green space of Kensington Gardens, and I had an instant's glimpse of the Round Pond, where


A Londoner's view of the air war.
The vapor trails mark the
twisting turns of the combatants

I sailed boats when I was a child. In that moment, and as I was rapidly overhauling the Germans ahead, a Dornier 17 sped right across my line of flight, closely pursued by a Hurricane. And behind the Hurricane came two Messerschmitts. He was too intent to have seen them and they had not seen me! They were coming slightly toward me. It was perfect. A kick at the rudder and I swung in toward them, thumbed the gun button, and let them have it. The first burst was placed just the right distance ahead of the leading Messerschmitt. He ran slap into it and he simply came to pieces in the air. His companion, with one of the speediest and most brilliant 'get-outs' I have ever seen, went right away in a half Immelmann turn. I missed him completely. He must almost have been hit by the pieces of the leader but he got away. I hand it to him.

At that moment some instinct made me glance up at my rear-view mirror and spot two Messerschmitts closing in on my tail. Instantly I hauled back on the stick and streaked upward. And just in time. For as I flicked into the climb, I saw, the tracer streaks pass beneath me. As I turned I had a quick look round the "office" [cockpit]. My fuel reserve was running out and I had only about a second's supply of ammunition left. I was certainly in no condition to take on two Messerschrnitts. But they seemed no more eager than I was. Perhaps they were in the same position, for they turned away for home. I put my nose down and did likewise."

The change to bombing the cities also gave Fighter Command time to recover from its losses and for pilots to recover from the many hours a day they operated which took many to the brink of exhaustion.  

On September 15th came the last major engagement of the battle. On that day, the Luftwaffe lost 60 planes while the RAF lost 28. On September 17th, Hitler postponed indefinitely the invasion of Britain though the night time raids - the Blitz - continued. London, Plymouth and Coventry were all badly hit by these raids. 

Recent research indicates that Hitler’s heart was not in an attack on Britain but that he wanted to concentrate his country’s strength on an attack on communist Russia. However, no-one in Britain in the autumn of 1940 would have known about this and all indications from April 1940 onwards, were that Hitler did intend to invade Britain, especially after his boast to the German people - "he's coming, he's coming!"

In a continuation of the propaganda war, the British government claimed that the RAF had shot down 2,698 German planes. The actual figure was 1,100. The RAF lost 650 planes - not the 3,058 planes that the Luftwaffe claimed to have shot down - more than  the entire RAF!

Why were the Germans defeated ?

1. The Germans fought too far away from their bases so that refueling and rearming were impossible. The German fighters had a very limited time which they could spend over Britain before their fuel got too low.

2. British fighters could land, refuel and rearm and be in the air again very quickly.

3. The change of targets was crucial. It is now believed that Fighter Command was perhaps only 24 hours away from defeat when the attack on the cities occurred. The breathing space this gave Fighter Command was crucial.

4. The Hurricane and Spitfire (above) were exceptional planes - capable of taking on the might of the Luftwaffe.

The scene is still one of the most evocative in this island's history: dashing young pilots in their fighter planes, defying the odds as they speed across blue summer skies towards the intruder above southern England.

A German aircraft goes into an uncontrollable spin, smoke pouring from its bullet-riddled engine as it plunges to earth.

At an RAF station on the ground, the mellifluous voice of Vera Lynn wafts from a nearby wireless. From the House of Commons chamber, Winston Churchill's whisky-soaked growl rouses a nation to resistance at its moment of darkest peril.

Hurricane

Old reliable: This restored Hawker Hurricane shows the classic fighter plane in all its glory

Seventy years on, the Battle of Britain continues to have such resonance because the campaign so magnificently fused an epic quality with a moral purpose.

It represented the classic fight between good and evil; between freedom and tyranny.

It was the ancient myth of St George slaying the Dragon made real. The Arthurian legend translated into the modern world, with the Knights of the Round Table cast as the selfless-RAF pilots and the sword of Excalibur as the fighter force.

Yet, for all this heroic glory, a sad injustice hangs over the battle.

For the summer of 1940 will always be associated with the Supermarine Spitfire, the single-engined RAF plane which became the most potent symbol of Britain's fight against German subjugation. The very name Spitfire is now synonymous with victory in the air.

But this is a travesty of what really happened in the crucial months of 1940.

Spitfire

A dogfight for credit: The Supermarine Spitfire was faster in the skies, but much slower to produce in the factories, which meant there were less of them in the air

For the RAF aircraft which actually won the Battle of Britain was an older, larger, slower but still deadly fighter, the Hawker Hurricane.

Without the Hurricane, the RAF would have probably lost the Battle of Britain, because there were simply not enough Spitfires emerging from the aircraft factories and into the squadrons.

In the national struggle for survival, the Hurricane dominated the front line.

When Churchill made his famous tribute to the men of the RAF in August 1940, telling Parliament that 'never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few', it was the Hurricane units that deserved the lion's share of the Prime Minister's accolade.

On the eve of the Battle of Britain in early July 1940, Fighter Command's operational force throughout the United Kingdom was made up of 29 squadrons of Hurricanes and 19 of Spitfires, proportions that were to remain the same throughout the coming months.

The overall distribution between the two fighters was largely reflected in German losses. According to the Air Ministry's own figures, for every two Luftwaffe planes brought down by the Spitfires, three were shot down by Hurricanes.

Messerschmitt

Enemy destroyer: Even though the Hurricane shot down three German planes for every two by Spitfire, Germans considered it a slight on their honour to be downed by a Hurricane

'It was the aircraft for the right season. It came at a time when it literally saved the country and it performed magnificently,' said Eric 'Winkle' Brown, the renowned test pilot.

Despite tributes such as this, the Hurricane never received the credit it deserved.

A graphic indicator of this indifference could be seen in the mass flypast over London in September 1945, held to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Astonishingly, not a single Hurricane was included in the RAF's formation.

Even during the war, the plane's record was ignored, its achievements belittled.

After the defeat of the Luftwaffe, the air industry magazine Flight commented in September 1940 that in comparison to the Spitfire, the Hurricane was 'equally remarkable in its own particular way', but had received 'far less than its due attention from a somewhat fickle public'.

Hurricane and spitfire

Together: A Spitfire, in the foreground, flies with a Hurricane

This was partly a result of wartime propaganda, as the Government exploited the image of the Spitfire to boost morale.

Tellingly, the official campaign of 1940 to raise money for aircraft production was called 'the Spitfire Fund'.

When a group of citizens in North London tried to set up a 'Hurricane Fund', they encountered only widespread indifference and even ignorance about the plane.

Further lustre was added to the Spitfire's reputation by newsreels, articles and films such as The First Of The Few, the 1942 biopic in which Leslie Howard played the part of the plane's designer, Reginald Mitchell.

Nor can it be denied that the Spitfire, with its intrinsic elegance, had greater aesthetic appeal than the more solid Hurricane, which had much thicker wings.

Moreover, the Spitfire was a faster plane, enjoying a superiority of 30mph in level flight and 70mph in a dive.

Hurricane

Made of different stuff: This wrecked Hurricane shell shows the mix of materials that made its design so different to the Spitfire

It exuded sleek modernity, while the heavier Hurricane evoked the past, not least in the structure of its airframe which owed its origins to the Hawker biplanes of the late 1920s.

Throughout its life, in contrast to the all-metal Spitfire, the Hurricane's fuselage was built partly of wood and fabric.

So strong was the bias against the Hurricane that a form of Spitfire snobbery arose during the Battle of Britain, where victories by the Hawker planes were falsely attributed to the more glamorous Spitfire fighters.

Hurricane pilot Tom Neil of 249 Squadron recalled going to a cinema in Leeds to see a newsreel report of an encounter in which one of his sections had shot down a Junkers Ju88 bomber over the Yorkshire coast.

'The British Movietone News commentator credited the Spitfire with shooting down the German aircraft, producing whoops of disbelief and annoyance,' he said.

The Spitfire snobbery even extended to German airmen, some of whom seemed to regard the idea of being shot down by a Hurricane as an insult to their honour.

Spitfire

Cultural icon: The Spitfire continues to inspire young people today but the Hurricane might have occupied an equal or even superior footing had its illustrious history not been airbrushed by the RAF

One Hurricane pilot, Eric Seabourne, ended up in a hospital in Portsmouth after he had been badly injured in a dogfight. In the bed next to him was a German pilot.

'He had been shot down by a Hurricane, which he thought much below his dignity. If it had been a Spitfire, it would have been OK - but not a Hurricane,' recalled Seabourne.

This complacent, dismissive judgment was one of the prime reasons that the Germans lost the Battle of Britain, for they badly underestimated the fighting qualities of the Hawker plane.

The Hurricane might not have been as fast or as beautiful as the Spitfire, but it had a host of other virtues.

It was highly manoeuvrable, with a turning circle even tighter than that of a Spitfire. Because of its traditional method of construction, it was easy for factories to produce in large quantities, a vital factor in early 1940 when the Spitfires were still in short supply.

Just as importantly, its airframe made it straightforward to repair. No fewer than 60 per cent of all Hurricanes that crashed on British soil ended up back in service with squadrons.

Bader

Legend: Fighter pilot Douglas Bader, who lost both his legs in a flying accident, thought the Hurricane had 'a marvellous gun platform'

With a wide undercarriage, lack of vices and intrinsic strength, the Hurricane was the ideal fighter for raw recruits, a priceless asset during the Battle of Britain when the demand from the operational squadrons for new pilots was so high.

The plane's structure also made the plane astonishingly resilient in combat. The Hawker could absorb phenomenal amounts of punishment, with enemy bullets often passing right through the fuselage.

Ben Bowring, of 111, believed that the Hurricane 'would keep flying almost after it was destroyed'. On one occasion he was able to land after his wings had been all but wrecked in combat.

'That aircraft's a bloody miracle,' he said after jumping out.

In addition, the Hurricane's thick wings, each of which contained four Browning machine guns, also provided a unique stability when attacking the enemy.

The famous legless pilot Douglas Bader, who flew Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain, regarded the fighter as 'a marvellous gun platform.

It was a victim of Spitfire snobbery from both sides

The sloping nose gave you a splendid view forward and the plane remained rock steady when you fired', whereas on the Spitfire, 'the recoil effect was noticeable'.

And Sir Hugh Dowding, who masterminded the 1940 victory as head of Fighter Command, had no doubt about the importance of the Hurricane: 'It was a jolly good machine, a rugged type, stronger than the Spitfire.'

Remarkably, given this fine record, the Hurricane was a plane that the British Government neither ordered nor even wanted when Hawker's chief designer, Sydney Camm, first came up with the proposal for a new high-speed monoplane in March 1934.

In an era of slow biplanes, Camm's design represented a major technical-advance, but the Air Ministry was not interested because it had already commissioned a prototype of the Spitfire.

'It is regretted that, at the present time, the Department is unable to give active encouragement to the scheme proposed,' wrote the Ministry to Camm, a statement showing classic bureaucratic lack of prescience.

But Camm, who combined a ferocious-sense of determination with a volcanic temper, was not a man to give up easily, largely as a result of his tough upbringing.

The eldest of 12 children born to a working- class carpenter from Windsor, he had developed his passion for aeronautics while still a schoolboy.

At the outbreak of World War I, when he was just 21, he went to work for one of Britain's pioneering-aircraft manufacturers, Martin and Handasyde - where he soon showed a precocious talent for design - before going on to join Hawker.

During an amazingly fruitful career, he designed 52 types of aircraft and presided over the manufacture of 26,000 planes - including the Harrier jump jet, the world's first successful vertical take-off and landing fighter.

But the Hurricane-remained his most significant achievement.

Undaunted by the Air Ministry's rejection in early 1934, Camm pressed on with his monoplane project as a private venture, modifying the design to make it even more effective.

His persistence paid off, helped by development problems that were plaguing the rival Spitfire.

Once the Hurricane had made a successful first flight on November 6, 1935 - five months ahead of the Spitfire's first trip - the Air Ministry relented and placed an order for 600.

The first operational Hurricanes went into service with 111 Squadron in December 1937, just as the drumbeat of war was echoing across Europe.

Compared with lightly armed biplane fighters that barely reached 200mph, the new 300mph Hurricanes were a revelation for their air crews.

On the eve of conflict, the Hurricane invigorated the RAF.

As the Battle of Britain ace Group Captain Peter Townsend, later the love of Princess Margaret, wrote: 'We were at one with ourselves and our machines.

'It was the Hurricane, really, which gave us such immense confidence, with its mighty engine, the powerful battery of eight guns and its feel of swift, robust strength.'

And such optimism proved to be well-founded. The Hurricane was the only RAF fighter to see action in every major theatre, from the start of the war to its finish.

It fought heroically in the doomed Battle of France, over Dunkirk, in the Balkans, in the North African Desert, and even in the war against the Japanese over the Burmese jungle, during which campaign it was occasionally used to drop the lethal petro-chemical gel napalm on the enemy.

More than 2,000 Hurricanes fought with the Soviet air force, while some specially adapted Hurricanes, known as Hurricats, were catapulted from merchant ships to defend the Atlantic convoys from aerial attack.

Altogether, 14,533 Hurricanes were built, the last in August 1944.

But, as with the nation, the Battle of Britain represented the Hurricane's finest hour. Without this fighter, the RAF's defences would have been too overstretched to survive.

Contrary to German mythmaking, the Hurricane proved a mortal foe to the Luftwaffe, on some estimates shooting down more than 1,000 German planes.

Bleeding to death, the Nazi forces continued to misjudge both the power and numbers of Fighter Command.

After September 15, 1940, the day which was subsequently designated Battle of Britain Day because it represented the final defeat of the Luftwaffe, one German airman, Hans Zonderlind, wrote of how his confidence turned to dismay while conducting a raid.

'We saw the Hurricanes coming towards us and it seemed the whole RAF was here,' he said.

After the war, the German general Gerd von Runstedt confessed that the Battle of Britain had been the turning point in the conflict.

He said: 'That was the first time we realised we could be beaten and we were beaten and we didn't like it.'

Too readily sidelined or forgotten, the Hurricane is owed a huge debt for saving Britain, and indeed the world, in the triumphant months of 1940.

 

Reach for the sky: Ambitious plans unveiled for 116m tall beacon to commemorate the Battle of Britain

 

A twisted beacon taller than the Houses of Parliament could be created to remember the sacrifices made during the Battle of Britain.

The 116-metre tall landmark building is planned for The Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, north west London, and would be almost 10 metres taller than the famous clock tower at the Palace of Westminster.

The building, provisionally called the Battle of Britain Beacon, would be visible from the centre of London and will house a permanent exhibition about the Battle of Britain if construction goes ahead.

Beacon of Britain: Artist's impression of the new Battle of Britain memorial proposed for the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon in north London

Beacon of Britain: Artist's impression of the new Battle of Britain memorial proposed for the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon in north London

The Royal Air Force Museum is currently marking the 70th anniversary of the air campaign and announced its vision for the future at a fundraising dinner last night.

Development director Keith Ifould said the project would cost an estimated £80 million secured through private funding and there are several interested parties.

The distinctive design has also been well received, he said.

Tales of valour: A display of a 'dogfight' envisaged on top floor of the beacon

Tales of valour: A display of a 'dogfight' envisaged on top floor of the beacon

‘We have had an amazingly positive response to it. Lots of people are saying 'this must be built'.’

It is hoped the building would allow wider public access and ensure that the museum's unique collection of Battle of Britain aircraft, memorabilia and archives is preserved for future generations.

Grand scale: An aircraft hangar is also planned for the site. This year see the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain

Grand scale: An aircraft hangar is also planned for the site. This year see the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain

The museum is consulting on its plans and hopes to complete the project within the lifetime of some of the surviving veterans of the Battle.

Nearly 3,000 RAF pilots, including hero Douglas Bader who lost both legs but carried on flying, were involved in the Battle, which killed 544.

Fighter pilot Douglas Bader

Fighter pilot Douglas Bader, whose heroism was vividly recaptured in the film Reach For The Sky, commanded the RAF Canadian Fighter Squadron during the Battle of Britain in 1940

 

Ready for action: RAF fighter pilots respond to the scramble

Ready for action: RAF fighter pilots respond to the scramble

Scramble!! There is no other word like it for reviving the sensations of the Battle of Britain just 70 years ago.

For RAF fighter pilots it was the signal to fling themselves into the sky ready for combat.

 

For years we have believed it was the brave young men of the RAF Fighter Command and their two superb aircraft, the sturdy Hurricane and the elegant Spitfire, that won the Battle of Britain.

It appears we have been mistaken. It was, apparently, an American superfuel that gave our fighters the edge over the Germans.

In fact, according to a U.S. science writer, the RAF may have been shot out of the sky without it.

Groundbreaking: RAF Spitfires such as these, above, were using super-fast fuel developed in the U.S. to win the Battle of Britain against German forces

Groundbreaking: RAF Spitfires such as these, above, were using super-fast fuel developed in the U.S. to win the Battle of Britain against German forces

It is a suggestion almost certain to start a dogfight with historians and veterans - indeed almost anybody who knows anything about the Battle of Britain.

And it follows an unfortunate pattern of our allies across the Atlantic trying to rewrite war history.

Tim Palucka contends that the fuel gave our planes superior altitude, manoeuvrability and rate of climb, enabling them to dodge the Luftwaffe.

Writing in the journal Invention And Technology, he suggests that the 100-octane fuel developed in the U.S. just in time for battle replaced a 87-octane version previously used by the planes, giving British pilots a crucial edge.

The Royal Society of Chemistry is now inviting experts to challenge the claim, amid reports from military experts that the story has been 'corrupted' to give the impression America was instrumental in the battle, when in fact it was British engineers that came up with the formula.

The enemy: British soldiers guard a Luftwaffe fighter plane that went down during the Battle of Britain in 1940

The enemy: British soldiers guard a Luftwaffe fighter plane that went down during the Battle of Britain in 1940

According to aviation defence expert Michael Gething the fuel was pioneered by RAF Air Commodore Rod Banks in the 1930s.

Known as 'Rod's cocktail', the fuel was first tested in the 1931 Schneider Trophy seaplane races. In 1937 Banks urged the RAF to use the 100-octane fuel even if the supply was limited, but it was the U.S. Army Air Corp that took on its mass production.

Mr Gething said: 'This reeks of a corruption of a story that is true and pre-dates the Battle of Britain.'

By contrast, Mr Palucka says the fuel was invented by Eugene Houdry, a Frenchman who settled in the U.S. He said he developed a catalyst to convert useless crude oil into high octane fuel, revealing his 'cracking' process at a Chicago chemicals conference in 1938.

Enlarge myths

Mr Palucka wrote: 'Luftwaffe pilots couldn't believe they were facing the same planes they had fought successfully over France a few months before.'

The fuel is credited with increasing the Spitfire's speed by up to 34mph. But historians say it was only one of a number of factors that helped Britain win.

Bill Bond, of the Battle of Britain Historical Society, said: 'If this played such a vital part why didn't we hear this story 70 years ago?

'High octane fuel certainly helped us in the Battle of Britain but it was the design of our Spitfires and Hurricanes that was critical as they were more manoeuvrable than the Messerschmitt 109.'

A spokesman for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Brian Emsley said of Mr Palucka's claim: 'If it's refutable we want it to be refuted.'

  • Gwilym Williams from Swansea was sent to Belgium in 1939, by the MI5 to infiltrate the Abwehr, Hitler’s spy service
  • Discovered plans including stealing a Spitfire and landing a German U-boat on a South Wales beach

 

Secret mission: Gwilym Williams from Swansea was sent to Belgium in 1939, by the MI5 to infiltrate the Abwehr, Hitler¿s spy service

Secret mission: Gwilym Williams from Swansea was sent to Belgium in 1939, by the MI5 to infiltrate the Abwehr, Hitler's spy service

A former Welsh police inspector became a double agent pretending to work for Hitler while feeding vital information to MI5.

Gwilym Williams from Swansea was sent to Belgium in 1939, to infiltrate the Abwehr, Hitler’s spy service.

He constructed a fake persona as a fanatical Welsh nationalist and was so convincing that he managed to uncover a series of secrets.

He informed the M15 about a plot to land a German U-boat on a South Wales beach, a scheme to steal a Spitfire.

He even intercepted a plan to pour poison into the Cray Reservoir near Brecon, which would have caused havoc if it had been successful.

Mr Williams died aged 62 in 1949, but his story was only recently discovered after an author researching a book learned of his story in declassified security files at the National Archive.

His escapades are detailed by John Humphries in his book called Spying For Hitler, reported the Mirror.

The files revealed that he left the police force in his home city of Swansea with a record showing   he been reprimanded for being drunk on duty and assaulting residents.

The only noteworthy fact on his record was that he had once stopped a run-away horse.

But in September 1939, MI5 sent him to Belgium to infiltrate the Abwehr, Hitler’s spy service.

The book tells how Mr Williams was recruited after intelligence led spy chiefs to realise that the Nazis were planning to forge links with Welsh nationalists.

As a direct response MI5 invented an imaginary cell of Welsh saboteurs led by the retired police inspector, who had learned French and German during the First World War.

Infiltrate: Adolf Hitler speaks to a crowd of German soldiers at a large rally in Hannover

Infiltrate: Adolf Hitler speaks to a crowd of German soldiers at a large rally in Hannover

Mr Williams' training was almost non-existent and the only demand was that he had to memorise the names of prominent members of the Welsh nationalist party.

He was dispatched to Antwerp to meet his German handlers and carried out his spy duties with resounding success,  although he risked being tortured if caught.

'He had the Abwehr jumping through hoops and helped us win the intelligence war,' said Mr Humphries.

Among his missions were plans to destalbilise the enemy bases such as aerodromes, power stations and munitions factories.

He became so deeply entrenched with the Nazis that at one point he was offered £50,000  to fly a British spitfire over to France so it could be examined by them.

Mr Humphries said: 'John Masterman, chairman of the Twenty Committee which ran the double-cross system, regarded Gwilym Williams as Britain’s best agent.

V for verve, vocabulary and vehemence: Churchill

V for verve, vocabulary and vehemence: Churchill

My guess is that had Winston Churchill been more terse, a year could have been knocked off the Second World War. For what comes across in this anthology of his speeches and writings, chronologically arranged by his authorised biographer Sir Martin Gilbert, is how orotund he was, how fruity and ponderous, like an old fashioned ham actor of the Victorian period who has played King Lear too often.

When I read his famous radio broadcasts, which are as well-known as Shakespeare - ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets … We shall never surrender’ - it is impossible (a) not to hear that rich and much-imitated brandy-soaked bulldog growl and (b) to imagine any modern politician wanting to get away with being so poetical and mannered. Today people expect snappy ‘soundbites’ not lugubrious histrionics.

Illustrious forebear: The 1st Duke of Marlborough

Illustrious forebear: The 1st Duke of Marlborough

Perhaps Churchill was always anachronistic? Throughout his life he looked back wistfully to the golden age of the Dukes of Marlborough, even to a misty and romantic time of epics and sagas that never quite existed outside story books.

Visiting Haig and the generals on the Somme during the First World War, Churchill regretted that the heroism of military commanders had vanished.

His ancestor, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, had directed a battle ‘in the midst of the scene of carnage, with its drifting smoke clouds, scurrying fugitives, and brightly coloured lines … He sat on his horse often in the hottest fire’.

Haig sat behind a desk miles away, ‘a painstaking, punctual, public official’, poring over maps and replying to telegrams. ‘There is no need for a modern commander to wear boots and breeches.’ Churchill’s tone is regretful and nostalgic.

Churchill had served courageously in India and the Sudan, and in the Boer War. He took part in a cavalry charge at Omdurman in 1898. He was captured in South Africa in 1899 and escaped by hiding under coal sacks on a train. Though he witnessed plenty of horrors - ‘so terrible were the sights and smells that the brain failed to realise the suffering and agony they proclaimed’ - he nevertheless always saw war and warfare as glorious and glorifying, as something that paradoxically brought out the best in people.

He loved the danger and excitement, which ‘invest life with keener interests and rarer pleasures’. This schoolboyish enthusiasm, couched as it was in the prose style of the authors he’d devoured as a pupil at Harrow (Macaulay, Gibbon, Kipling - what would he have made of Hemingway or Tolkien?), affected all he wrote and said.

36 Minutes...

The length of Churchill's 'Battle of Britain speech in 1940

Even if only giving a speech about trades unionism or the recent budget, Churchill’s language and narrative thrust was colourfully bellicose and bombastic, full of apocalyptic Old Testament images of fires, floods, clashing swords, ‘the perils of the storm’ and a determination that ‘the fight will be a fight to the finish’. Whether his adversary was Herr Hitler or a political opponent in Dundee, Churchill always saw ‘fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats’.

President Kennedy said of Churchill, ‘He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle’. Churchill was forever choosing to get himself into the thick of it - and it wasn’t only words.

He began the First World War as First Lord of the Admiralty, but resigned from government in order to join the Royal Scots Fusiliers and see action in the trenches. He wanted to share ‘the toils and passions of millions of men. Their sweat, their tears, their blood bedewed the endless plain …’

As mentioned above, what modern politician would dare talk about blood bedewing endless plains? And how many modern politicians would willingly put their own lives at such risk? Churchill may have deployed rhetoric - but at bottom it was not empty rhetoric, even if it got him nowhere in the short term. Throughout the Twenties and Thirties, when for the ruling classes it was the era of cocktails and laughter, Churchill alone kept worrying about the Hun. As early as 1924 he noticed that ‘the enormous contingents of German youth growing to military manhood year by year are inspired by the fiercest sentiments’.

A soldier at heart? Winston Churchill at the age of nineteen as a second lieutenant at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst At war: Lieutentant Colonel Winston Churchill with the 6th Battalion, The Royal Scottish Fusiliers, during the First World War

A soldier at heart? Winston Churchill at the age of nineteen as a second lieutenant at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst

At war: Lieutentant Colonel Winston Churchill with the 6th Battalion, The Royal Scottish Fusiliers, during the First World War

British bright young things were fox-trotting to Noel Coward. In Germany there was a new generation wishing ‘to square the black accounts of Teuton and Gaul’, and for whom Hitler was the figurehead. As Churchill pronounced in 1932, there was ‘the light of desire in their eyes to suffer for their Fatherland’.

For gathering evidence of the neglect of Britain’s defences and warning the Commons about the scale of German rearmament, ‘I was depicted a scaremonger’, Churchill lamented. ‘Masses of guns, mountains of shells, clouds of aeroplanes - all must be ready,’ he implored.

They were not. Neville Chamberlain was duly humiliated by Hitler, and in September 1939 Churchill moved into full weather forecaster mode, promising that ‘the storms of war may blow and the lands may be lashed with the fury of its gales’.

By May the following year, Churchill, at the age of 65, at last became Prime Minister. ‘I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.’

His style became Biblical, Wagnerian, Homeric. His radio broadcasts were clarion calls ‘to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime’. It was as if he feared the end of the world, and was half relishing it.

The culmination of the measured, thunderous cadences came in the summer of 1940, when 526 pilots were killed in action in the skies above Britain. ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’

Here we see the orator’s tricks. 526 was a heck of a lot to lose. But perhaps Britain really did only have Churchill’s rhetoric to protect it? When the Nazis were poised to invade, we had only 20,000 trained troops, 200 artillery guns and 50 tanks. Realistically, during our ‘darkest hour’ we couldn’t even have defended Eastbourne.

Sarah Robinson was just a teenager when World War II broke out.

She endured the Blitz, watching for fires during Luftwaffe air raids armed with a bucket of sand.

Often she would walk ten miles home from work in the blackout, with bombs falling around her.

As soon as she turned 18, she joined the Royal Navy to do her bit for the war effort.

Soldiers

Some WWII soldiers, and families of those lost in the war, have complained society today shows no sign of the effort they made to help

Hers was a small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation's sense of service and sacrifice.

Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally.

But was it worth it? Her answer - and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s - is a resounding No.

They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It's not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger.

Sarah harks back to the days when 'people kept the laws and were polite and courteous. We didn't have much money, but we were contented and happy.

'People whistled and sang. There was still the United Kingdom, our country, which we had fought for, our freedom, democracy. But where is it now?!'

Royal Navy  

 

Sarah Robinson, who joined the Royal Navy when she was 18, says the Britain she once knew no longer exists

The feelings of Sarah and others from this most selfless generation about the modern world have been recorded by a Tyneside writer, 33-year-old Nicholas Pringle.

Curious about his grandmother's generation and what they did in the war, he decided three years ago to send letters to local newspapers across the country asking for those who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences.

He rounded off his request with this question: 'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

What is extraordinary about the 150 replies he received, which he has now published as a book, is their vehement insistence that those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war would now be turning in their graves.

There is the occasional bright spot - one veteran describes Britain as 'still the best country in the world' - but the overall tone is one of profound disillusionment.

'I sing no song for the once-proud country that spawned me,' wrote a sailor who fought the Japanese in the Far East, 'and I wonder why I ever tried.'

'My patriotism has gone out of the window,' said another ex-serviceman.

In the Mail this week, Gordon Brown wrote about 'our debt of dignity to the war generation'.

But the truth that emerges from these letters is that the survivors of that war generation have nothing but contempt for his government.

They feel, in a word that leaps out time and time again, 'betrayed'.

New Labour, said one ex-commando who took part in the disastrous Dieppe raid in which 4,000 men were lost, was 'more of a shambles than some of the actions I was in during the war, and that's saying something!'

He added: 'Those comrades of mine who never made it back would be appalled if they could see the world as it is today.

'They would wonder what happened to the Brave New World they fought so damned hard for.'

Nor can David Cameron take any comfort from the elderly.

His 'hug a hoodie' advice was scorned by a generation of brave men and women now too scared, they say, to leave their homes at night.

Immigration tops the list of complaints.

'This Land of Hope and Glory is just a land of yobs and drunks'

'People come here, get everything they ask, for free, laughing at our expense,' was a typical observation.

'We old people struggle on pensions, not knowing how to make ends meet. If I had my time again, would we fight as before? Need you ask?'

Many writers are bewildered and overwhelmed by a multicultural Britain that, they say bitterly, they were never consulted about nor feel comfortable with.

'Our country has been given away to foreigners while we, the generation who fought for freedom, are having to sell our homes for care and are being refused medical services because incomers come first.'

 

The dome of St. Paul's Cathedral (undamaged) stands out among the flames and smoke of surrounding buildings during heavy attacks of the German Luftwaffe on December 29, 1940 in London, England. (AP Photo/U.S. Office of War Information)

 

2

A formation of low-flying German Heinkel He 111 bombers flies over the waves of the English Channel in 1940. (Deutsches Bundesarchiv/German Federal Archive) #

3

Three anti-aircraft guns flash in the dark in London, on September 20, 1940, throwing shells at raiding German planes. Shells in stacked rows behind the guns leap about as the concussions from the firing loosen them. (AP Photo) #

4

These London schoolchildren are in the midst of an air raid drill ordered by the London Board of Education as a precaution in case an air raid comes too fast to give the youngsters a chance to leave the building for special shelters, on July 20, 1940. They were ordered to go to the middle of the room, away from windows, and hold their hands over the backs of their necks. (AP Photo) #

 

5

A German twin propelled Messerschmitt BF 110 bomber, nicknamed "Fliegender Haifisch" (Flying Shark), over the English Channel, in August of 1940. (AP Photo) #

6

The condensation trails from German and British fighter planes engaged in an aerial battle appear in the sky over Kent, along the southeastern coast of England, on September 3, 1940. (AP Photo) #

7

Fires set by bursting German bombs lit up the docks along the River Thames in London, on September 7, 1940 and brought into vivid relief the merchant ships lying alongside the many docks which line London's busy port. British sources said the bombing that night was the heaviest of the war to date. (AP Photo) #

8

A great column of smoke billowing upward from a fire started at Plymouth, South West England, in November 1940, as a result of heavy enemy bombardment. (AP Photo) #

9

The tail and part of the fuselage of a German Dornier plane landed on a London rooftop shown Sept. 21, 1940, after British fighter planes shot it down on September 15. The rest of the raiding plane crashed near Victoria Station. (AP Photo) #

10

Workmen fit a set of paraboloids in a sound detector for use by anti-aircraft batteries guarding England, in a factory somewhere in England, on July 30, 1940. (AP Photo) #

11

The biggest shipping center for London's food-supplies, Tilbury, has been the target of numerous German air attacks. Bombs dropping on the port of Tilbury, on October 4, 1940. The first group of bombs will hit the ships lying in the Thames, the second will strike the docks. (AP Photo) #

12

Two German Luftwaffe Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers return from an attack against the British south coast, during the Battle for Britain, on August 19, 1940. (AP Photo) #

13

A bomb is fitted to the wings of a British raider prior to the start of an assault on Berlin, on October 24, 1940. (AP Photo) #

14

A ninety minute exposure taken from a Fleet Street rooftop during an air raid in London, on September 2, 1940. The searchlight beams on the right had picked up an enemy raider. The horizontal marks across the image are from stars and the small wiggles in them were caused by the concussions of anti-aircraft fire vibrating the camera. The German pilot released a flare, which left a streak across the top left, behind the steeple of St. Bride's Church. (AP Photo) #

15

People shelter and sleep on the platform and on the train tracks, in Aldwych Underground Station, London, after sirens sounded to warn of German bombing raids, on October 8, 1940. (AP Photo) #

16

The Palace of Westminster in London, silhouetted against light from fires caused by bombings. (Library of Congress) #

17

The force of a bomb blast in London piled these furniture vans atop one another in a street after a raid on December 5, 1940. (AP Photo) #

18

This smiling girl, dirtied but apparently not injured, was assisted across a London street on October 23, 1940, after she was rescued from the debris of a building damaged by a bomb attack in a German daylight raid. (AP Photo) #

19

Firemen spray water on damaged buildings, near London Bridge, in the City of London on September 9, 1940, after a recent set of weekend air raids. (AP Photo) #

20

Hundreds of people, many of whom have lost their homes through bombing, now use the caves in Hastings, a south-east English town as their nightly refuge. Special sections are reserved for games and recreation, and several people have "set up house", bringing their own furniture and sleeping on their own beds. Photo taken on December 12, 1940. (AP Photo) #

21

Undaunted by a night of German air raids in which his store front was blasted, a shopkeeper opens up the morning after for "business as usual" in London. (AP Photo) #

22

All that remains of a German bomber brought down on the English south-east coast, on July 13, 1940. The aircraft is riddled with bullet holes and its machine guns were twisted out of action. (AP Photo) #

23

British workers in a salvage yard break up the remains of wrecked German raiders which were shot down over England, on August 26, 1940. (AP Photo) #

24

A huge scrap heap where German planes, brought down over Great Britain, were dumped, photographed on August 27, 1940. The large number of Nazi planes downed during raids on Britain made a substantial contribution to the national scrap metal salvage campaign. (AP Photo) #

25

A Nazi Heinkel He 111 bomber flies over London in the autumn of 1940. The Thames River runs through the image. (AP Photo/British Official Photo) #

26

Mrs. Mary Couchman, a 24-year-old warden of a small Kentish Village, shields three little children, among them her son, as bombs fall during an air attack on October 18, 1940. The three children were playing in the street when the siren suddenly sounded. Bombs began to fall as she ran to them and gathered the three in her arms, protecting them with her body. Complimented on her bravery, she said, "Oh, it was nothing. Someone had look after the children." (AP Photo) #

27

Two barrage balloons come down in flames after being shot by German war planes during an aerial attack over the Kent coast in England, on August 30, 1940. (AP Photo) #

28

Air raid damage, including the twisted remains of a double-decker city bus, in the City of London on September 10, 1940. (AP Photo) #

29

A scene of devastation in the Dockland area of London attacked by German bomber on September 17, 1940. (AP Photo) #

30

An abandoned boy, holding a stuffed toy animal amid ruins following a German aerial bombing of London in 1940. (Toni Frissell/LOC) #

31

A German aircraft drops its load of bombs above England, during an attack on September 20, 1940. (AP Photo) #

32

One of many fires started in Surrey Commercial Dock, London, on September 7, 1940, after a heavy raid during the night by German bombers. (AP Photo/Staff/Worth) #

33

Fires rage in the city of London after a lone German bomber had dropped incendiary bombs close to the heart of the city on September 1, 1940. (AP Photo) #

34

London children enjoy themselves at a Christmas Party, on December 25, 1940, in an underground shelter. (AP Photo) #

35

The effects of a large concentrated attack by the German Luftwaffe, on London dock and industry districts, on September 7, 1940. Factories and storehouses were seriously damaged; the mills at the Victories Docks (below at left) show damage wrought by fire. (AP Photo) #

36

The Record Office in London, lit by flames ignited by a German air in 1940. (LOC) #

37

Princess Elizabeth of England (center), 14-year-old heiress apparent to the British throne, makes her broadcast debut, delivering a three-minute speech to British girls and boys evacuated overseas, on October 22, 1940, in London, England. She is joined in bidding good-night to her listeners by her sister, Princess Margaret Rose. (AP Photo) #

38

Soldiers carrying off the tail of a Messerschmitt 110, which was shot down by fighter planes in Essex, England, on September 3, 1940. (AP Photo) #

39

Through bombs and sirens, the Windmill Theatre carried on providing music, revue, and ballet performances for the people of wartime London. The artists sleep on mattresses in their dressing rooms, living and eating on the premises. Here, a scene behind the scenes shows one of the girls having a wash while the others sleep soundly surrounded by their picturesque costumes, after the show on September 24, 1940, in London. (AP Photo) #

40

A German raid smashed this hall in an undisclosed London district, on October 16, 1940. (AP Photo) #

41

A huge crater was made in a road at Elephant & Castle, London on September 7, 1940, after a night raid on London . (AP Photo/Staff/Worth) #

42

Two girls on the south coast of England look out toward the beach through a barbed wire fence constructed as part of Britain's coastal defenses (LOC) #

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The artist Ethel Gabain, newly appointed by the Ministry of Information to make historical war pictures, at work among bombed ruins in the East End of London on November 28, 1940. (AP Photo) #

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A forward machine gunner sits at his battle position in the nose of a German Heinkel He 111 bomber, while en route to England in November of 1940. (AP Photo) #

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A boy sits amid the ruins of a London bookshop following an air raid on October 8, 1940, reading a book titled "The History of London." (AP Photo) #

Her words may be offensive to many - and rightly so - but Sarah Robinson defiantly states: 'We are affronted by the appearance of Muslim and Sikh costumes on our streets.'

Hoodie

This picture of a teenage hoodie making a disrespectful gesture at Tory leader David Cameron illustrates a wartime WAAF's comments that Britain has become 'a land of yobs and drunks'

But then political correctness is another thing they take strong issue with, along with politicians generally - 'liars, incompetents and self-aggrandising charlatans' (with the revealing exception of Enoch Powell).

The loss of British sovereignty to the European Union caused almost as much distress. 'Nearly all veterans want Britain to leave the EU,' wrote one.

Frank, a merchant navy sailor, thought of those who gave their lives 'for King and country', only for Britain to become 'an offshore island of a Europe where France and Germany hold sway. Ironic, isn't it?'

'Our culture is draining away and we are forbidden to say anything'

As a group, they feel furious at not being able to speak their minds.

They see the lack of debate and the damning of dissenters as racists or Little Englanders as deeply upsetting affronts to freedom of speech.

'Our British culture is draining away at an ever increasing pace,' wrote an ex-Durham Light Infantryman, 'and we are almost forbidden to make any comment.'

A widow from Solihull blamed the Thatcher years 'when we started to lose all our industry and profit became the only aim in life'.

Her husband, a veteran of Dunkirk and Burma, died a disappointed man, believing that his seven years in the Army were wasted.

'It is 18 years since I lost him and as I look around parts of Birmingham today you would never know you were in England,' she wrote.

'He would have hated it. He also disliked the immoral way things are going. I don't think people are really happy now, for all the modern, easy-living conveniences.

'I disagree with same-sex marriages, schoolgirl mothers, rubbish TV programmes, so-called celebrities and, most of all, unlimited immigration.

'I am very unhappy about the way this country is being transformed. I go nowhere after dark. I don't even answer my doorbell then.'

A Desert Rat who battled his way through El Alamein, Sicily, Italy and Greece was in despair.

'This is not the country I fought for. Political correctness, lack of discipline, compensation madness, uncontrolled immigration - the "do-gooders" have a lot to answer for.

'If you see youngsters doing something they shouldn't and you say anything, you just get a mouthful of foul language.'

Undoubtedly, some of the complaints are 'grumpy old man' gripes, as the veterans themselves recognise - from chewing gum on pavements and motorists using mobile phones to the march of computerisation ('why can't I just go to the station and buy a railway ticket?') and the dearth of pop music tunes you can hum.

But it is the fundamental change in society's values which they find hardest to come to terms with.

Bring back birching and hanging, the sanctions they grew up with, they say. Put more bobbies back on the beat.

'We were rigidly taught good manners and respect for older people,' said a wartime WAAF, 'but the nanny state has ruined all that. Television programmes are full of violence and obscene language.

This Land of Hope and Glory is in reality a land of yobs, drug addicts, drunkard youths and teenage mothers who think they are owed all for nothing.'

Aged 85, she has little wish to go on living.

For others, the strength of character that got them through the war is still helping them to survive the disappointments of peacetime.

A crofter's son from Scotland who served on the Arctic convoys taking supplies to Russia found the immediate post-war years hard.

Soldiers

Soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force leave the UK for France aboard a troopship to help the French Resistance during WWII

'In those days we had no welfare support from any source. It was as though we had served our country to the full and were then forgotten.

'However, we were very resilient and determined to make a go of it, and many of us, including myself, succeeded.

'How times have changed now, with the countless many clamouring to get welfare benefits for the asking.'

A medic who made it through Dunkirk and D-Day thought the fallen would be appalled by the lack of manners in modern life and the worship of celebrities, plus 'the patent dishonesty of politicians'.

Another common issue was their bemusement at the idea anyone could live in constant debt.

'We were brought up to believe that if you hadn't the money, you waited till you had!' one wrote.

However, this particular man was unusual among the 150 respondents in believing that there were many pluses to modern life.

He even had a good word to say about the European Union and felt it would appeal to the fallen 'if only for maintaining the peace in Europe over the past 60 years or so'.

He praised the breaking down of class barriers in Britain compared with the years when he was young and 'infinitely' increased prosperity.

'More clothes, cars, holidays abroad, home ownership. As a young teacher in the Fifties I had one suit (Army issue) and the luxury of a sports jacket and flannels at the weekend.

'Education has made vast progress. In my early days I taught classes of 50. Only five per cent of children went on to further education compared with over 40 per cent today.

'The emancipation of women has also been a huge plus, with the introduction of the Pill a large contributor. Before the war, women teachers were dismissed as soon as they married.'

A Land Girl who laboured on farms in Devon during the war agreed that 'we have so much to be grateful for.

'So much progress has been made to transform the standard of living since the war.'

But she could not help asking whether people were any happier.

She bemoaned the advent of the Pill and the collapse of sexual morality. 'In my day, drugs were unknown, families remained together, divorce was a rarity and children felt secure.

'We're now controlled by Germany and France. What a sad irony!'

'Were our sacrifices made so hooligans may run wild? And aggressive behaviour be accepted as the norm by TV interviewers and society in general?'

A captain with a Military Cross for valour under fire thought Britain was still the best country in the world.

The 'occasional' sight of parents and nicely dressed children gave an otherwise gloomy veteran of the Italian campaign a sense that 'what we did all those years ago was not for nothing'.

A grandmother, the widow of a Royal Marine who took part in the D-Day landings, felt the National Health Service had descended into chaos but was grateful for a pensioner's free television licence, 'which brings art, travel and animals into my home', and being able to text her grandchildren.

Just being alive was a bonus. 'Although I hate what is happening to our country, I am so happy to be here, grumbling, but remembering better, happier days,' she wrote.

But one of the bitterest complaints of the veterans was that their trenchant views on many of the matters aired here were constantly ignored by those in authority.

Their letters of complaint to councillors and MPs went unanswered.

It was as if they didn't matter, except when wheeled out for the rituals of Remembrance Day.

Graves and poppies

One person complained it is not right those lost in the World Wars are only remembered publicly on Remembrance Day

'Why do so many of the British public confuse sentimentality with genuine concern for others?' asked one letter-writer.

But this was the generation honoured in Remembrance services last weekend, showered with gratitude and teary-eyed sentiments as their dwindling ranks marched unsteadily past the Cenotaph and other war memorials throughout the UK.

The overall impression any reader of the letters gets is that this generation feel unheard, unwanted and unimportant.

This remarkable collection of their thoughts should give us pause for reflection.

They may be deemed beyond their sell-by date (and many of their views may seem unacceptable, flouting every sort of 'ism' imaginable) but, by their deeds of 60-plus years ago, they have won the right to be listened to and their disillusionment noted with respect.

In one letter in this collection, an RAF mechanic quoted a poem about comrades who fell in battle: 'I mourned them then, But now surviving in a world, Indifferent to their hopes and dreams, I grieve more for the living.'

 

 

Down time: A soldier orders a cup of tea in the Forces Canteen at Victoria Station in 1942. The soldier pictured was the butler of a close friend of photographer Cecil Beaton

Relaxed: A soldier orders a cup of tea in the Forces Canteen at Victoria Station in 1942. The soldier pictured was the butler of a close friend of photographer Cecil Beaton

As well as glamorous portraits of British soldiers, Beaton's portfolio also catalogues famous landmarks, such as a war-ravaged Bloomsbury Square

As well as glamorous portraits of British soldiers, Beaton's portfolio also catalogues famous landmarks, such as a war-ravaged Bloomsbury Square in London

War effort: A female welder works on the deck of a new ship in Tyneside in 1943, in another expertly-composed Beaton photograph

War effort: A female welder works on the deck of a new ship in Tyneside in 1943, in another expertly-composed Beaton photograph from the 7,000-strong collection

Dressed to impress: Smartly-dressed Flight Lieutenant David Donaldson of No 149 squadron RAF poses for a Beaton portrait, while right, a wren serving with the crew of a harbour launch in Portsmouth, 1941 Dressed to impress: Smartly-dressed Flight Lieutenant David Donaldson of No 149 squadron RAF poses for a Beaton portrait, while right, a wren serving with the crew of a harbour launch in Portsmouth, 1941

Dressed to impress: Smartly-dressed Flight Lieutenant David Donaldson poses for a portrait. Right, a wren serving with the crew of a harbour launch in Portsmouth, 1941

The photographer, whose most notable subjects included Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, was commissioned for an altogether grittier photographic project that could be used as propaganda.

Moving him away from his usual fare of royalty and fashion models, the Ministry of Information asked Beaton to document Britain's war effort.

The renowned photographer pictured young men and women in a typically glamorous light, in spite of the ravages, destruction and chaos engulfing Britain in 1940.

Battered: A wider image from Beaton's collection shows bomb damage to the Church of St. Anne and St. Agnes in London in 1940

Battered: A wider image from Beaton's collection shows bomb damage to the Church of St. Anne and St. Agnes in London in 1940

Make do and mend: A sailor on board HMS Alcantara uses a portable sewing machine to repair a signal flag on a voyage to Sierra Leone, while a British sailor on shore leave in Harrogate looks natural in front of the camera in 1941 Make do and mend: A sailor on board HMS Alcantara uses a portable sewing machine to repair a signal flag on a voyage to Sierra Leone, while a British sailor on shore leave in Harrogate looks natural in front of the camera in 1941

 

 

Make do and mend: A sailor on board HMS Alcantara uses a portable sewing machine to repair a signal flag on a voyage to Sierra Leone, while a British sailor on shore leave in Harrogate looks natural in front of the camera in 1941

Photogenic: Although also cataloguing damage to buildings in the war, Beaton also captured wonderful images like this one of Wren officers at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich in 1941

Photogenic: Although also cataloguing damage to buildings, Beaton also captured images like this one of Wren officers at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich in 1941

Villagers cross duckboards over floating bamboo poles in Kwangsi, China in 1944. The poles were soaked in fresh water to prepare them for construction use

Villagers cross duckboards over floating bamboo poles in Kwangsi, China in 1944. The poles were soaked in fresh water to prepare them for construction use

War heroes: Squadron Leader M L Robinson of No 609 Squadron RAF sits on the wing of his Hawker Hurricane at RAF Biggin Hill in 1941 for a relaxed portrait picture

War heroes: Squadron Leader M L Robinson of No 609 Squadron RAF sits on the wing of his Hawker Hurricane at RAF Biggin Hill in 1941 for a relaxed portrait picture

Blitz spirit: A workman clears debris from the floor of st Mary-le-Bow after its first bombing. The church was completed destroyed in 1942.

Blitz spirit: A workman uses a wheelbarrow to clear debris from the floor of St Mary-le-Bow church after its first bombing. It was completed destroyed in 1942.

His eye-catching portfolio stays away from corpses, blood and the unimaginable horror of the front line, featuring instead photogenic soldiers presenting a united front for the Allied Forces.

PHOTOGRAPHER, WRITER, OSCAR-WINNING DESIGNER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CECIL BEATON

Iconic: Renowned photographer Cecil Beaton

Iconic: Renowned photographer Cecil Beaton, who died in January 1980

Throughout a distinguished career, Cecil Beaton achieved worldwide fame as a photographer, designer, writer, cartoonist, diarist and socialite.

The Hampstead-born photographer is widely remembered as the leading British portrait and fashion photographer of his day.

During his career he photographed Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother, who he described as his favourite royal sitter.

He was also employed as staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue, and went on photograph Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.

As a commissioned war photographer, it was Beaton's image of a young girl in Great Ormond Street Hospital which arguably persuaded America to join the global conflict.

Before the image was published on the cover of Life magazine in 1940, America was yet to participate in the Second World War.

But the evocative image saw the U.S. public put further pressure on their government to assist Britain.

After the Second World War he turned to Broadway, working as a set, lighting and costume designer.

His creative flair saw Beaton win Academy Awards for costume design on films Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964).

He also designed the period costumes for the 1970 film On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

By the end of the 1970s his health had deteriorated, and he died at his Wiltshire home in January 1980, aged 76.

Elsewhere he features soldiers relaxing after a Libyan desert patrol and a sailor repairing a signal flag on the way to Sierra Leone.

Well traveled: Wren stewards at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich form this picture in Beaton's portfolio, along with a war image from Cairo, Egypt, in 1942 (right) Well traveled: Wren stewards at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich form this picture in Beaton's portfolio, along with a war image from Cairo, Egypt, in 1942 (right)

 

 

Well traveled: Wren stewards at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich form this picture in Beaton's portfolio, along with a war image from Cairo, Egypt, in 1942 (right)

Global effort: Men of the Long Range Desert Group enjoy a moment's relaxation after returning to headquarters in, Siwa, Libya, in 1942

Global effort: Three men of the Long Range Desert Group enjoy a moment's relaxation with cigarettes after returning to headquarters in, Siwa, Libya, in 1942

She recognised them as being similar in style to the work of Beaton, and confirmed they were his work by matching them to his diary records.

She said: 'The Ministry was in disarray in those days and the records weren't kept well.

'It was not practice to record the name of the photographer. But we always knew these images existed somewhere.'

After ceasing wartime operations, the Ministry of Information deposited Beaton's war photos with the Imperial War Museum, London.

The photographer was briefly reunited with his vast body of work shortly before his death.

Suave: Battle of Britain pilot Neville Duke, who later broke the World Air Speed record, pictured with his Spitfire at RAF Biggin Hill in 1941

Suave: Battle of Britain pilot Neville Duke, who later broke the World Air Speed record, pictured with his Spitfire at RAF Biggin Hill in 1941

If you've ever wondered how close London’s landmarks came to being blown up in the Blitz, a new interactive map has the answer. The Bomb Sight project allows people to zoom in on a map of the capital to see the damage inflicted during the heaviest period of bombing by German planes. It was created by a collaboration between Dr Catherine Jones of the University of Portsmouth and the The National Archives, and funded by the charity JISC. To see the interactive version of the map click here

Enlarge The map allows users to zoom in and exactly exactly how much damage German bombers inflicted on London. It uses a census of bomb sites, and is the first time the data has been made easily accessible.

The map allows users to zoom in (inset) and exactly exactly how much damage German bombers inflicted on London (right). It uses a census of bomb sites, and is the first time the data has been made easily accessible.

The site can tell people exactly when their area was hit, and even show photos from the period.

'The Bomb Sight project is mapping the London WW2 bomb census between 7/10/1940 and 06/06/1941,' the team say on their site.

'Previously available only by viewing in the Reading Room at The National Archives, Bomb Sight is making the maps available to citizen researchers, academics and students wanting to explore where the bombs fell and to discover memories and photographs from the period.

SO HOW DID THEY DO IT?

The project has scanned original 1940s bomb census maps, geo-referenced the maps to add their exact location.

The team then digitally captured the geographical locations of all the falling bombs recorded on the original map, and created an easy to use website and app to display it.

'We have combined the location of each of the falling bombs over an 8 month period of the London Blitz together with geo-located photographs from the Imperial War Museum and Geo-located Memories from the BBC WW2 People’s war archive.

The Bomb Sight is using the Bomb Census Map.

The maps are part of an extensive array of material collected during the Bomb Census Survey 1940 to 1945, organised by the Ministry of Home Security, and are held in The National Archive.

Users can manipulate the statistics and see different data, ranging from the entire census to only those bombs dropped.

'You can explore statistics for different areas and see how many bombs fell in different wards and boroughs in London as well as read memories of Londoners contributed to the BBC WW2 People's War and images from the Imperial War Museum to allow you to visualize what it was like in London at such a difficult time.'

There is also an augmented reality version of the site for Android handsets which can show people information as they walk around the capital

image002.png

The team has also created an augmented reality version for Android mobile phones that uses GPS to pinpoint the user. Tourists can simply point their phone at an area to see if it was bombed, and if it was, find out more.

The team has also created a mobile phone version that overlays bomb information onto a live video feed taken from the phone's camera, and using GPS to pinpoint the location.

'The augmented reality view shows you markers hovering over where bombs fell, scaled to show closer locations with larger markers and smaller ones for those further away,' the developers say. 'For some more contextual information, where we can, we add a label with the name of the street it fell on. If you click on the marker, you’ll get a bit more information about the bomb and how far away from your location it fell.'

THE BLITZ IN LONDON - A MILLION HOMES HIT AND 40,000 CIVILIANS KILLED

St Paul's Cathedral miraculously escaped WWII air raids.

St Paul's Cathedral miraculously escaped WWII air raids.

The Blitz (from the German word, 'lightning') was the most intense bombing campaign Britain has ever seen. Between 7 September 1940 and 21 May 1941 there were major raids with more than 100 tonnes of high explosives were dropped on 16 British cities.

London, was attacked 71 times and bombed by the Luftwaffe for 57 consecutive nights. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, almost half of them in London

Birmingham, Liverpool and Plymouth were also hit eight times, Bristol six, Glasgow five, Southampton four, Portsmouth three, and there was also at least one large raid on another eight cities. Deeply-buried shelters provided the most protection against a direct hit, although the government in 1939 refused to allow tube stations to be used as shelters so as not to interfere with commuter and troop travel.

However, by the second week of heavy bombing the government relented and ordered the stations to be opened.

Each day orderly lines of people queued until 4 pm, when they were allowed to enter the stations, and by mid-September 1939 about 150,000 a night slept in the Underground.

Despite the blanket bombing of the capital, some landmarks remained intact - such as St Pauls Cathedral (right), which was virtually unharmed, despite many buildings around it being reduced to rubble during the 57 nights of raid.

The site give an astonishing view of every bomb records during the Second World War

The site give an astonishing view of every bomb records during the Second World War, and allows users to zoom in

Viewers can zoom in to see the areas worst hit, with each red dot representing a bomb

Viewers can zoom in to see the areas worst hit, with each red dot representing a bomb

The astonishing sight reveals the blanketing of bombs German forces dropped on Britain's capital during the Second World War

The astonishing sight reveals the blanketing of bombs German forces dropped on Britain's capital during the Second World War

Once an individual bomb has been located, the site shows details of it, and pictures and other information from the surrounding area

Once an individual bomb has been located, the site shows details of it, and pictures and other information from the surrounding area

All hands to the pump: A fireman dampens down flames in a bombed building during the Blitz in London in 1940. Four years later, Beaton photographed the Chinese Police force grouped in a circular doorway at headquarters in Chengtu All hands to the pump: A fireman dampens down flames in a bombed building during the Blitz in London in 1940. Four years later, Beaton photographed the Chinese Police force grouped in a circular doorway at headquarters in Chengtu

All hands to the pump: A fireman dampens down flames in a bombed building during the Blitz in London in 1940. Four years later, Beaton photographed the Chinese Police force grouped in a circular doorway at headquarters in Chengtu

Digging in: A woman made homeless by the Blitz receives a hit meal at a welfare centre in Bermondsey, London, in 1940

Digging in: A woman made homeless by the Blitz receives a hit meal at a welfare centre in Bermondsey, London, in 1940

 

Maureen Cleaver was just seven years old in 1939 when her father John was called up into the Army to fight in World War II - and she didn't see him again for six years. But she remembers the night he came home as though it were yesterday.

It was late and there was a brisk knock at the front door. Her mother, Elizabeth, asked Maureen to answer it.

'There stood Dad,' Maureen recalls now, 'but he didn't recognise the 13-year-old girl standing there as his daughter. In his mind, I was still a little girl. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I've come to the wrong house" - and promptly turned round to leave! Of course, he didn't get very far.'

soldier comes home

The return of men from war was often fraught with emotional difficulties, with the women and children sometimes finding it difficult to reacquaint with 'the stranger'

Maureen's brother David, who was just six years old, was woken up specially to meet his father - a man he knew only from old photographs - 'and was promptly violently sick', recalls Maureen, who is now in her 70s.

Maureen Cleaver's story is just one of the striking, often heart-warming, but sometimes tragic, stories of the hundreds of thousands of women left behind to keep the home fires burning - and the family going - during the rigours of World War II.

They are stories that touch us all, even today. For in the two years after 1945, more than four million British servicemen were sent home after the most destructive conflict in history, to be reunited with women who'd barely seen them in years and children who simply didn't recognise them.

For the first time, writer and historian Julie Summers has assembled the recollections of the women who were left behind - and then had to cope with the return of what she calls the 'stranger in the house'.

One of those women, Margaret Wadsworth of Blackpool, explains their plight. 'The boys who came back were not the boys who went away. They were men. Different men with different ideas; and they found us different, too.

'The shy young girls they left behind had become women - strong, useful women with harder hearts and harder hands, capable of doing jobs that men never dreamed women could do.'

It wasn't easy. As one soldier's wife, now in her 90s, says of their return: 'When their war ended, our war began.'

Summers says: 'Women had their work cut out. They had to create a homely order out of the mess left by six years of war. She would have to be patient, caring and loving, but above all practical. She would not be able to take a well-earned rest, or expect to have the burden of responsibility lifted from her shoulders.'

Even more dramatically, many of those waiting mothers, wives, daughters - even former girlfriends - had to make complicated, lifechanging decisions when their men came home. Some made almost unimaginable sacrifices.

strangerinthehouse.jpg
Women were left at home with the children, who years later men would barely recognise when they returned

Historian Julie Summers has gathered stories from women about the war

Take Monica Littleboy, a dentist's daughter from Norfolk, who'd met financial journalist George Symington when she moved to London as a young woman.

'The charm and courtesy of this young man swept into my heart,' she recalls. 'It was my first experience of deep feeling.'

But when war broke out, George told Monica that he would have to

leave London to join his grandfather's regiment, the Gordon Highlanders. 'When he left for Scotland,' she says, 'it was as if one more light had gone out of my life.'

 

Monica went back to Norfolk and became an ambulance driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She heard very little about George, beyond the fact that he'd sailed for Malaya in 1941 with his regiment.

During the war she had a string of boyfriends, including one older officer who'd been serious about marrying her until he, too, was posted abroad.

Then, out of the blue, one night in the autumn of 1945 she got a telephone call from George.

'I could hardly believe it,' she recalls, 'and was not a little perturbed, as I was rather involved with my present boyfriend.'

Nevertheless, Monica agreed to see him - and minutes later, George arrived at her door with his kitbag, straight from the troopship that had brought him home from four years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

'I couldn't believe my eyes,' she says. 'This was not the young man I had known. Misshapen, pitted, scarred, only the eyes were the same.

'I thought of the handsome boyfriend I was to meet next weekend - dark, tall, in command of every situation. Then I looked at this hulk of humanity and my heart bled.'

That night, George took a train to Scotland to visit his parents. 'My heart did not go with him,' Monica explains, 'but my pity did.'

Over the next few weeks, she could not get the image of George out of her mind. 'I couldn't stop thinking about the ghastly humiliations he must have suffered.'

Not long afterwards they met in London, where George suddenly lapsed into a coma for two days with malaria - and Monica came to a fateful decision.

'Here was the challenge given to me for peacetime: Could I keep this man alive and help him to get back into life again? I loved the spirit of the man but could love nothing else. I had to do it.'

George and Monica were married in the spring of 1946, but theirs was not to be a storybook romance. 'I shall never forget our honeymoon,' she says. 'My husband was mentally sick as well as physically. He could not eat what he wanted after being starved for so long. He could not play games without getting dizzy, nor drive a car. He wept when he went to the cinema.

'All his mental scars would come out all the time. I was horrified; shocked at what I'd done.'

Over the next few years, Monica lavished gentleness and sympathy on her new husband, who'd managed to get a job with the oil giant BP. 'But the more I gave him, the more I was rejected,' she says.

Women were left at home with the children, who years later men would barely recognise when they returned

Women were left at home with the children, who years later men would barely recognise when they returned home from war

'Then my wonderful inner strength pulled me up. I knew I had to get on and take the lead. I resolved to start a family. What better way of going forward?' In 1951, their daughter Alexandra was born - but George's health did not improve.

'He was no companion and difficult to handle,' she says. 'He was quiet, morose and joyless. His work drained him and left nothing for anyone or anything else.'

But Monica did not give up. The couple stayed together, and after his retirement in the early 1990s they travelled.

But by 1999, George had relapsed into the 'introverted, difficult and silent man' he'd been when he got back from Borneo, and for the last year of his life he was also looked after by carers who told Monica that her husband was 'dead inside'.

After his death in 2000, Monica wrote: 'The eyes that so haunted me when George asked me to marry him in 1945 were still there when he died. I have to live with the thought that I don't know whether I did anything for him.'

But while Monica Littleboy was selfless when it came to the man who returned to her after the war, other women were a little less so - some even discovering a new-found sexual confidence.

'War aphrodisia', as it has been called, is often attributed to men on the verge of battle, but it also affected the women left behind.

As author John Costello explains: 'Women celebrated their new freedom with liberated fashions and behaviour. They bobbed their hair, donned shorter skirts, smoked in public and wore the heavy make-up which had formerly been the mark of the harlot.'

Lillian James may not exactly have been a harlot, but she was certainly not afraid of exploring her sexuality. Married to Greg James in 1939, she gave birth to a daughter, Muriel, the following year. Three months later, her husband was called up.

Lillian sent her husband a picture of their daughter on her first birthday, which Greg kept on a string around his neck.

Unbeknown to Greg, though, in 1942 Lillian gave birth to a boy, Johnnie, by another man - and Greg's sister Jean decided to write to her brother to tell him the unexpected news.

At first Greg was shocked, but when his sister confirmed that the family had rallied round and accepted the baby as part of their family, he accepted it - even asking Lillian in his letters to let him know about Johnnie's progress.

In 1944, Lillian had a rather less discreet affair with an American GI, and early in 1945 gave birth to another son, Adam. Once again, Greg's sister acted as a go-between, and when the soldier was finally demobbed in October 1945 he returned to his daughter - and two sons by other men.

Shortly afterwards, Greg told his sister that he'd come to terms with his wife's infidelities 'because she'd found herself in an extraordinary situation during the war, working in a service canteen in Plymouth, surrounded by temptation', and he'd decided to treat the two boys as if they were his own.

Greg and Lillian had a fourth child, William, in 1947, who was the spitting image of his elder sister but looked nothing like his other two 'brothers'. But the family secret was preserved for 40 years.

It was only after Greg and Lillian were dead that his sister finally told the truth to her own daughter. 'Your uncle Greg was a man with a huge heart,' Jean confided.

The women who were left behind could be every bit as forgiving. Diana Hopkinson certainly was. She'd married David Hopkinson before the war, and in 1940 their son Thomas was born just before his father was sent abroad to fight.

For the next three years, Diana had to survive on her husband's letters. 'There were times,' she recalls, 'when I felt a profound and sometimes devastating loneliness.'

When David was hospitalised in Jerusalem with dysentery in 1942, she wrote to him: 'If we had lived in happier times, our love might have spread wider but not been more intense. I mean that separation, wars and troubles cannot affect in any way the strength we have through the depth of our love.'

A force member is fitted with a suit, made specially for demobbed men

 

A force member is fitted with a suit, made specially for demobbed men

Separation is one thing, but physical desire is quite another - as David acknowledged in a letter to his wife shortly after he was discharged from hospital: 'This deepens my personal sense of loss and sometimes centres it on a single point: sexual deprivation. After all, the physical is the one link of our love which has been cut off dead.'

Not long afterwards, David wrote to say that 'fidelity or infidelity had no dominion in their tragic wartime situation', and suggested that they should 'go their own ways sexually'.

Back home, and caught up with her infant son, Diana was far from sure that she wanted another sexual partner. But in 1943 she had a brief affair, which she describes now as a disaster.

'All we had to give each other was affectionate pity, as was soon revealed in that unsatisfactory and unsatisfying night together. I was left in no doubt that there could be no fulfilment for me until David returned.'

In February 1944, her husband came home for the first time in almost four years. 'Only when we had reached our home,' she recalls, 'and stood looking down at Thomas, our sleeping son, unrecognisable to David from the baby he'd left, did I begin to realise that we had at long last truly come together.'

That night, in bed, Diana told David about the death of his oldest friend, which had a devastating impact. 'He turned away from me,' she remembers, 'and did not speak. I caught my breath in fear. Moments passed before I put my hand on his shoulder, lightly.

'When at last he turned towards me, we made love as if we were partners in a solemn rite: strange, speechless but familiar.'

But it wasn't just husbands and wives who felt the pain of separation. It was also felt by the daughters of the men who went away.

In 1943, when Anne Stamper was seven-and-a-half, her father Stanley was called up. When he returned four years later, she felt like he had become a stranger. 'It was very awkward going up and saying, "Hello Daddy",' she says.

It wasn't until she was a teenager that Anne got to know her father properly. 'I suspect he was never very good with small children,' she says. 'Nevertheless, the war deprived me of having a father for those four years, and I did have to get reacquainted with "the stranger in the house".'

For many women, however, the war brought not just separation but, ultimately, loss.

Alice Hill met her future husband Arthur when she was 15 in 1935. They were married when she was 21. Three years later, in July 1944, Arthur was killed in Normandy.

Now 88 and almost blind and deaf, Alice recalls: 'I was pretty bad for a long time. I knew I'd never have children, and that was a great sadness. I'd lost my stake in the future.'

After Arthur's death, she lived with her parents until they both died. 'It's funny to think of it now,' she says, 'but I've still got wedding presents I've never used. I'd just gone on using my mother's things.'

Alice Hill has visited her husband's grave in Normandy several times, and in 2003 made a final trip.

'I felt absolutely at peace,' she said afterwards. 'I don't need to go back there again because I know I've done everything I can for my Arthur.'

This frail old lady adds now: 'The war cost me a normal life.'

So it did for thousands upon thousands of women in those years - who now, for the first time, find their voice and tell their stories.