GREATEST IN HISTORY
AIR BATTLES OF LAST YEAR — i EPIC STORY PUBLISHED IN BRITAIN. MAGNITUDE OF NAZI DEFEAT. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, March 27. The official story is now published or the great days from August 8 to October 31 lasi year when the German air arm attacked Britain in the greatest air ha I lie in history. “Nothing like it.” states the official account, "has ever been fought in the history of mankind. The first decisive encounter between Britain and Germany has taken place in the air and was fought three and four and five, and sometimes more than six, miles above the surface of the earth by some hundreds of aircraft at speeds often over 300 miles an hour.” The account reviews the 84 days of almost continuous attack. “At the outset the Germans sank five ships and damaged five more sailing in our coastal convoys,” it states. “They next did intermittent and sometimes severe, damage to aerodromes. They scored hits on a number of factories which caused production to slow down for a short time.
“In London they did considerable damage to docks and various famous buildings, including Buckingham Palace. They destroyed or damaged beyond repair some thousands of houses. They killed during the day 1700 people, nearly all civilians, and seriously wounded 3360. At night 12.581 persons were killed and 16,065 injured. “What the Luftwaffe failed to do was to destroy the fighter squadrons of the Royal Air Force which, indeed, were stronger at the end of the battle than at the beginning. This failure meant defeat—defeat of the German air force itself, defeat of a carefullydesigned strategical plan and defeat of that which Herr Hitler most longed for—invasion of this island. “Victory was not achieved without cost. The R.A.F. lost 375 pilots killed and 358 wounded.”
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19410329.2.40
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 March 1941, Page 5
Word count
Tapeke kupu
301GREATEST IN HISTORY Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 March 1941, Page 5
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Wairarapa Times-Age. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.