Turning the Tide
Daily Sketch 1940
Ermmm … Looks like we’ve held our own today.
Those Fighter boys sure know what they’re at.
The Polish Squadrons, especially.
Glad I saw this.
It’s another run tonight and those coastal batteries are lethal.
Beautiful artwork of a Royal Air Force squadron leader … if you look at the ranking braid on the arm there looks to be a thin line in between two thick lines … if not, he’ll be a flight lieutenant.
The detail is superb … the Daily Sketch with a headline that would have brought solace to millions in 1940. Certainly to my parents’ families.
This chap, probably a squadron commander, is thinking of the bombing run on Wilhelmshaven … that’s the rumour … but this is 1940, so Bomber Command is flying twin-engine medium bombers such as the Bristol Beaufighter, the Handley Page Hampden, the Bristol Blenheim and the Vickers Wellington.
Let’s hope he’s on Wellingtons.
Soon, he’ll be posted to an HCU - Heavy Conversion Unit - to convert to the massive four-engine Short Stirlings about to come into service.
By the time he’s a wing commander, he’ll be on either the Handley Page Halifax or the Avro Lancaster. The attrition rate, though, is merciless.
To be frank, in Bomber Command he’s unlikely to see the month out.
21 November 2022
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
