100 Years Ago - Germans bomb London

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/court-circular-9tdqztvrn

MAY 8, 1917

Aircraft and submarines

To the Editor of The Times
Sir, It would be foolish to assert that there is any single remedy against submarines; but has the value of aircraft, including seaplanes, been sufficiently realized by the Admiralty? What is the problem? It is to “spot” the submarine. Now what does nature teach us here? The common spectacle of gulls hovering over a shoal of fish, the rarer instance of the mullet hawk or osprey and the kingfishers spying out their prey beneath the surface and descending from a height like an arrow upon it in shallow waters are examples of what nature has evolved in the immemorial warfare of the bird against the fish. Again, no one who has looked over a bridge at a river can fail to have noticed that while it is difficult to see from the level of the bank it is easy to see fish from above. The same law holds good with aircraft and submarines. No patrol boat, however vigilant, can see submarines, submerged or on the surface, as well as aircraft. Aircraft, like patrol boats, can warn with wireless telegraphy vessels on their course, besides possessing greater rapidity, and better facilities for dropping “depth charges” or bombs.
Renewed attention has been paid to the use of aircraft for “spotting” and attacking submarines since Sir E Carson came to the Admiralty. But, without wishing to embarrass the Admiralty, may we ask is their general attitude sympathetic? Not long ago, I am told, seaplanes were described by a senior official as “those toys”. Toys, Sir, in the nursery and in real life have a knack of affecting the destinies of the world. The first motor-car and the Wrights’ first glider were “toys” in that sense. We who believe in the future of aircraft smile to ourselves when we think what our toys will do in a few years, both on sea and land. Warfare today, for the first time in history, is conducted in three dimensions: (1) length; (2) breadth; and (3) depth and height. Are our statesmen as well as our war staffs, aided by science and imagination, thinking what new situations this change has created? In the undersea and the air, directly or indirectly, will this great war and future wars be decided. And the terms of peace — when it comes — will be greatly influenced by air and undersea facts and possibilities. Yours, &c, montagu, 62 Pall Mall, S.W.1, May 4.

VE Day - 72nd anniversary

72 роки тому німці капітулювали

100 років тому

72 років тому

72 років тому

72 Years Ago

An Extract from Osprey Publishing Essential Histories Specials 3: The Second World War: A World in Flames The road to VE day
The key event that made possible the end of the northwest Europe campaign – and the entire Second World War in Europe – occurred at 3.30 pm on 30 April 1945. At that moment, the German Führer, Adolf Hitler, committed suicide in the Reichschancellory Bunker in Berlin, as above ground triumphant Soviet forces advanced to within 330yds/300m of this installation. Back on 22 April, as Soviet spearheads began to encircle the German capital, Hitler had abandoned his notion of escaping to lead Germany’s war from Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, and instead decided to remain in Berlin to meet his fate.

Even into the last hours of his life, Hitler remained determined that Germany would continue its desperate resistance against the Allied advance, if necessary to the last man and round, irrespective of the destruction that this would inflict on the German nation. With the Führer’s death, so passed away this iron resolve to prosecute to the last a war that almost every German now recognized as already lost. On 30 April, though, Hitler ordered that, once he had taken his own life, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, should replace him as Führer. His successor, Hitler instructed, was to continue Germany’s resistance to the Allies for as long as possible, irrespective of the cost.

Yet even before the Führer’s suicide, it seemed to him that several rats had already attempted to desert the sinking Nazi ship. On 23 April, for example, Hitler’s designated deputy, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, had informed Hitler – now surrounded in Berlin, but very much alive – that as the latter had lost his freedom of action, the Reichsmarschall would assume the office of Führer. An enraged Hitler, interpreting this as treason, relieved Göring of his offices and ordered his arrest.