Eighty Years Ago This Week

  RAF Bomber command launched Operation Gomorrah under which the port city of Hamburg was to be bombed over several days. Almost everything was in favour of the attackers. Bomber Command now fielded a force of some 800 aircraft, mainly four-engined bombers, notably the highly effective Lancaster. H2S navigation radar had been fully introduced and the broad river Elbe leading from the sea to the city provided unmistakable images. After long top-level debate the use of Window had been authorized. Bundles of metal strips were dropped creating confusing images on the defenders' radar, which meant that fighter opposition was weak to negligible. Bomber casualties were low at some 3%. The weather was favourable both to the attackers and to the effect of the bombing; individual fires burned strongly enough to merge into a gigantic firestorm. After years of failure Bomber Command was finally able to put to the test the Trenchardian doctrine that bombing was able to win a war....

  Allied aircraft dopped over Italian cities a leaflet signed by Roosevelt and Churchill inviting Italians to  turn their backs on Mussolini and to abandon support for Nazi Germany, "The time has now come for you, the Italian people, to consult your own self-respect and your own interests, and your own desires for a restoration of national dignity, security, and peace. The time has come for you to decide whether Italians shall die for Mussolini and Hitler-or live for Italy and for civilization." More ominously the leaflet spoke of Italy's vulnerability to attack from the air. At a more practical level, Rome suffered Operation Crosspoint,  its first air raid. It supposedly targeted railway marshalling yards but hit civilian districts, killing killed 1,500 people and damaging the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori Le Mura . George VI's private secretary Sir Alex Hardinge was removed from office after seven years. He was deeply unpopular; socialite MP Chips Channon detest...

  The Allies launched operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. It was the largest amphibious operation of the war so far and featured a large airborne component as well. It was split into a British landing in the East commanded by General Montgomery and an American landing in the West under General Patton. Both were under the command of the British General Alexander, but he did not use a tight rein and his two notional subordinates conducted largely separate campaigns. The attack made Hitler cancel another effort against the Kursk salient on the Eastern Front, ample proof of Germany's massive strategic overeach. Misled by Allied deception operations, the Germans reinforced Greece and not Italy. The Canadian mining millionaire Sir Harry Oakes was murdered on the Bahamas. His French son-in-law was swift ly charged with the crime but there were doubts over his guilt. Ill-advisedly, the governor of the territory, the Duke of Windsor, took personal charge of the investigation and impor...

  The Germans launched Operation Zitadelle aimed at pinching out the Soviet salient at Kursk, beyond which the operation had no serious strategic purpose. Hitler had insisted on some form of offensive on the Eastern Front for reasons of prestige in the teeth of his generals' advice, notably Manstein's. They would have preferred to husband resources for counter-offensive action; with an Anglo-US incursion into continental Europe a growing certainty, German forces were spread ever thinner. But standing on the defensive would have admitted strategic defeat. Worse, the attack had been postponed repeatedly because of weather and for the introduction of the new Panther and Tiger tanks, which were supposed to reverse the superiority of Soviet types. The Germans got the worst of both worlds; their new types were brought into service still with many teeething problems and the Soviets had had time to prepare defensive positions. General Sikorski, the political and military leader of the...