Eighty years ago this week the Church of England looks forward to post-war reconstruction

 

 

 

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, grandson of the great Victorian architect, presented his plans for a new cathedral in Coventry to replace the one destroyed by German bombs in 1940, It retained the original spire which had survived as a free-standing bell tower but its liturgical design was radical. It had four separate pulpits one at each corner of a central space allowing speakers to proclaim the gospel in different directions. The altar was designed to rotate so that services could be addressed to smaller congregations in just one portion of the cathedral. It provoked uproar from both traditionalists - one of whom labelled it "Surrey vernacular" - and modernists for whom it was too traditional.

The capture of the Marshall Islands, part of pre-war Japanese territory, proceeded smoothly with the conquest of Kwajalein, the first major objective. The US Marines had learned from the bloody lessons of Tarawa and deployed the full range of tracked LVT landing craft which could cross coral reefs. These included armoured LVTs and ones mounting artillery. The islands was also bombed massively and  the naval bombardment used armour-piercing shells to deal with Japanese bunkers.

The Germans had massed 100,000 troops around the landing at Anzio which gave them one-third superiority over the allies. They launched a major counter-attack on an exposed salient held by British troops. At one stage a number of battalions were surrounded but managed to pull back. The salient was pinched out but the British had a strong defensive position centred on the "factory" in the village of Aprilia on which to fall back.