Evening star., 1940-08-18

GEN. GEORGE MARSHALL.
The Army's chief of stat de-
clared the situation in the West
ern Hemisphere is critical.
A. P. Photo.
trial heart of the United Kingdom, and
dropped their bombs by Birmingham.
the smoky city where former Prime Min
lister Chamberlain, the apostle OF ap-
peasement, makes his home and where
his family made its fortune.
Southampton again. Hastings, where
Duke William the Norman fought against
the Anglo-Saxon in 1906 in the last sue
cessful tuRuapn of EnsIond. Early N
the raofnins The Nazis were
Hastings over Scotland. In one
Bombed Scottish city the residents
p - Of q tenement were pre-
pairing to leave for an afraid shelter.
Before they could quit the house, Ger
man bomb struck it, destroyed it.
The Germans were going over from
Dutch and Belgian bases, in arrange
ments which included bomber in the
center of cluster Of fighting Messer-
schmitts, whose business it is to protect
the bomber from the attack of British
fighting planes while the bomber goes
about it's task of announcing with its
deadly charge its presence to the popu-
lace below They attacked airports of
East Church and Detling, in Kent, bases
for British protectors of Thames Estuary;
of Andover, north of Portsmouth, and
Oldham, in the northwestern industrial
region; of Marlborough and Middlewal-
lop. They bombed arms plants at Exeter
and Plymouth, in Devon and port facili-
ties at Plymouth and Walsend and
Bournemouth, in the general vicinity Of
Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle
of Wight.
The Germans claimed they had swept
British planes from the air around Dover.
The British paid a call on the enemy's
continental roosts, firing oil supplies in
the estuary of the French River Gironde
so that flames could be seen from on
high 200 miles away. The British went
far inland on the continent. They
bombed Junkers aircraft factories at
Dessau and Bernburg, north of Leipzig;
munitions factories at Lunen and Grew
enbroch and IA Nazi airdromes in Ger
many, Belgium, Holland and France.
Thursday was the day when hell moved
into the sky. So thick were the planes
over Britain at one point that an OBJ
server thought the total was 5000, more
than all the planes that took part in the
World War Actually the figure seems
now to have been less than 1000. Berlin
said the following day that Germany
sent over 200 bombers escorted by 800
Messerschmitts.
1t will long be remembered as the day
the Germans almost got to London. The
Stukas dove on Croydon. and London
boasted that not one of the daring
darlings of Hitler took his
Croydon plane back to his home
Suffers base. But before the Stukas
were down, bomb from
one of them sent fragments as it burst
into London bus, which serves Croy-
don, a town of 100000 persons. Croydon
is about as far from London as Alex
andria is from Washington. High in the
air British and Germans battled over
Tilbury dock, the great quay of the
Thames in London. But the British
kept the Germans from getting down
toward the dock.
London was not all. Scarcely spot
| of England was not shadowed by a Ger
man plane. One wave stretched 80 miles
wide. Dozens of small battles ragged
around the clouds. DNB, the German
official news agency, reported II British
| planes were shot down in furious bat
tie over Hawkinge Airport, 10 miles in
land from Dover. In the same area
bitter fighting took place over the
Lympne Airport and the important sea-
port of Folkestone, just south and west
of Dover. The invaders slashed fiercely
| at the balloon barrage over Dover. At
the Lympne Airport three hangers were
damaged by direct hits, runways were
torn up and anti-aircraft positions
ceased firing.
On the sea the Germans, both Berlin