World War: BATTLE OF BRITAIN: Under the Cynical Moon

As London's Big Ben boomed midnight on September's last day, marking the city's two-month holiday from raid warnings, German planes made their fiercest onslaught of many weeks on other British cities.

The Luftwaffe picked out Britain's east coast invasion ports, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Hull, Dover, Ramsgate. Under a cynical harvest moon bombers dropped high explosives and incendiaries, raked streets with cannon fire. For good measure they repeated the performance two nights later.

Hastening to explain the raids in view of Winston Churchill's statement about Germany's "serious shortage" in the air (see p. 25), the Air Ministry assured correspondents that only 30 to 40...

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