Several pilots, upon landing, have demanded to be taken to German officials in occupied territory. One lad, told that the nearest German officials would be found on the other side of the Channel, replied: ‘They are at Reading. It is useless to lie to me. I know all about it.’ Other captured fliers seem to have the impression that Scotland and Ireland have been occupied and that the British fleet has been sunk. Several of them have had German-English dictionaries among their effects.
One oft-repeated myth concerned an apocryphal German pilot who baled out of his aircraft over London, only to land in the blitzed East End, where he was promptly torn to pieces by an angry crowd before the police could intervene. One variant cast the pilot as an unfortunate Pole whose poor English proved his downfall in Wapping, although neither incident has any basis in fact. Yet another tale told of special Gestapo aircrew, whose viciousness knew no bounds. Klemmer again:
A young pilot was brought down at Folkestone. He had been machine-gunning women and children on the sea front. It turned out that he was an old Cantab and spoke English well.
‘What kind of a soldier are you,’ asked a British officer, ‘machine-gunning women and children?’
The German replied: ‘I have got just as bad an opinion of that sort of warfare as you, but I am just the pilot. When I am told to come down to 20 metres, I come down to 20 metres. I don’t know my navigator or my rear-gunner. The chances are there is a Gestapo man in the plane. Therefore, I obey orders.’
Inaccurate reports about enemy aircrew numbers also gave rise to parachutist scares. Schoolboy diarist Colin Perry recorded on 14 August:
There was a report in the Evening Standard yesterday that twelve airmen had baled out of a bomber we had shot down. It appears as if a sprinkling of Nazi parachutists are already entering our island.
Similar scares arose after 17 parachutes were discovered in the Midlands on 13 August, some decorated with large eagles, and another 59 over a wider area the following day. The mystery drop triggered a massive search by police, troops and the Home Guard. As well as sabotage paraphernalia, maps, pack saddles, wireless sets and lists of targets were also found, although the dummy drop was apparently made by the Luftwaffe with the object of undermining British morale.
Few, if any, listeners attached much credibility to New British Broadcasting Station broadcasts by Lord Haw Haw, commonly supposed to have been William Joyce, a British citizen of Irish-American birth. Many broadcasts by NBBS personalities other than Joyce were incorrectly attributed to him, and at the height of Haw Haw’s popularity during the first two months of 1940 any number of traitors, Quislings and Nazis were ‘unmasked’ by British newspapers as the real Lord. The popular legend that Joyce correctly identified the clock on a certain church (the given location varied infinitely) as running ten minutes slow appears to have been entirely false. Indeed an investigation by the Ministry of Information in January 1941 established ‘no case in which Haw Haw or any German wireless made predictions regarding a specific place or announced any detailed facts which … could not have been obtained through an explicable channel.’ Another Haw Haw story ran that whenever the German wireless warned of a raid on a specific target, bombers turned up on the dot. Yet another rumour local to Winchester was noted by Naomi Royde Smith in September 1940:
Weeks ago there was a rumour nobody believed though everybody spoke of it, to the effect that Winchester Cathedral was not to be bombed because Hitler meant to be crowned there. It was said to be one of Haw Haw’s efforts and some people added the rider that the broadcaster was an Old Wykehamist and had made special arrangements with Field-Marshal Göring to spare his beloved school. Nobody had actually heard Haw Haw say this, and as any Coronation dream would obviously have Westminster Abbey as its centre, the tale died down.
In fact it persisted, for shortly afterwards Royde Smith was obliged to report:
Another dead rumour has done the phoenix act. The nanny of a friend of mine has been told by her brother in law, who heard it on his wireless, that Haw Haw has cast aside all his old school ties and has consented to allow Göring to order bombs to be dropped on Winchester.
It was popularly supposed that Göring flew over London in person during the Battle of Britain. The story, often repeated throughout the war, stemmed from a false German news agency report, in which it was claimed that the Luftwaffe commander-in-chief had piloted a Junkers 88 over the capital on 15 September, escorted by two fighter bombers. By 1942 some in Plymouth claimed to be able to identify Göring’s aircraft by virtue of its distinctive engine note. One elderly workman in Plymouth even confided that he had met Göring in an air raid shelter. This tall tale was told to André Savignon, a displaced French writer living in the city:
Three weeks earlier, during a night raid, he had gone to a shelter – which he pointed out to me – at the other end of the park. His electric torch showed him one other occupant, a very fat man seated on a bench and who was struggling to unknot a bootlace. He crossed over and, without a by your leave, did the job for the stranger; noting meanwhile that these were knee-high boots such as airmen wear, and they looked to be of foreign make. The two men started to chat. My interlocutor, who admitted he was trembling, for the raids frightened him, prophesied gloomily: ‘And they’ll soon come back.’
‘No,’ the other responded, ‘No, they will not come back, be-cause their work is done. I can give you the cer-tain-ty of that, my friend.’
The old workman stared at the stranger, who, in addition to his foreign accent, had a singular air. He suddenly thought: ‘I’ve seen that face in the newspapers.’ Could it be … Yes! Herman Göring! Parachuted down to take stock of the damage wrought! ‘Then I got up and ran. And believe me, a devilish laugh rang out after me.’
There were also innumerable variations on a theme encountered in the First World War, involving a chance encounter with a former German friend or fiancé, usually in Piccadilly, Mayfair or the Army and Navy Stores. Updated two decades on, one from the Lancashire town of Leyland told how an enemy pilot had flown above the rooftops at such a low altitude that he was recognised as a former apprentice at the Leyland Motor Works. Another told of a tradesman who called at a newly let house to solicit orders, only to find the door opened by the brutal Prussian who had commanded the camp in which he had spent the previous World War as a prisoner.
Rumours of new and secret German weapons were never in short supply, as this selection illustrates. An American correspondent in Germany reported that the Luftwaffe were constructing 200 giant tank-carrying aircraft for use in the invasion of Britain, each capable of lifting a 30-ton tank. The tanks, it was said, would be lowered through a trapdoor and let loose on the English countryside. A machine for generating earthquakes was feared, as was a cross-Channel tunnel from which torpedoes would be launched against Dover, as well as giant German guns mounted on the Brocken which could, in half an hour, demolish London. The giant gun scare, backed up by overt German threats, appears to have been taken quite seriously, as Klemmer records:
It was freely rumoured in London in September 1940 that projectiles resembling cannon shells had been found in the city. The rumours gained added credence from the occasional dropping of bombs when airplanes were not known to be over the capital.
The same rumour was updated in 1944 during the so-called Little Blitz, when it was feared that London might be bombarded with a rocket gun, and even said that rockets had fallen on Park Lane. Another rumour at this time told of a 400-ton bomb built in the form of a glider, which would be towed across the Channel by a fleet of German aircraft. Remarkably, warnings of ‘flying bombs’ and ‘robot aircraft’ had appeared in American newspapers as early as 1940, four years ahead of the arrival of V1s and V2s.
Foreign objects thought to have been dropped from enemy aircraft triggered countless scares. In September 1940 considerable anxiety was caused in various parts of the country by the discovery of mysterious white threads in fields. After officials were sent to investigate, it was esta
blished that the threads were nothing more or less than spider webs, and in other cases slime trails left by slugs and snails. In the same vein, it is also reported that some had followed trails of sky-blue wool laid, so they believed, to guide parachutists across the country.
White powder scares attracted far greater attention. The occasional discovery of a patch of white powder in a street or field caused a number of poison alerts, often in the mistaken belief that the mysterious substance was an arsenical compound, which on contact with rain, mist or fog could generate a deadly gas capable of wiping out entire areas. Investigators usually found the powders to be harmless flour or cement, or – as in Newport in September 1940 – a mixture of rice and tapioca. A typical case is described by Klemmer:
In W--, one day, a citizen reported breathlessly to the local ARP that there was a pile of mysterious powder in the roadway. The neighbourhood warden refused to have anything to do with it, insisting on calling in his chief. The chief in turn notified the police. By this time a crowd was collecting. The word got round that the powder was believed to be arsine, the gas which would go directly into the blood stream and cause instant death.
The gas squad were notified. They came with steel cylinders and took samples of the powder. Then the decontamination squad arrived, all rigged out in oil-skins, boots, rubber mittens and gas masks. Aided by the fire department, they scrubbed down the pavement, sprinkled it with lime and pronounced the street safe for traffic. The sample, meanwhile, was being analysed by a local chemist. He reported that it consisted mainly of starch.
The ARP people went to Brighton to another chemist. After exhaustive research … he announced to a breathless audience that Hitler’s secret weapon, in this case at least, consisted of Benger’s baby food. The most amusing part of the whole affair was that the woman who had been responsible for the excitement was there all the time … By the time the woman discovered her loss, the village was in an uproar and the poor woman was afraid to confess her part in the affair.
In May 1940 rumours about ‘arsine’ reached fever pitch, among them a story that the deadly chemical smoke was able to penetrate existing gas masks with ease. As a result, within two months every respirator in the country was fitted with an additional ‘contex’ filter, fastened on with adhesive tape. In Southampton a fire at a local pickle factory in September 1940 triggered a full-scale gas alert, after ‘onions and vinegar frying and boiling together produced a miasma blown by the wind’. Other rumours told of gases intended to lull the population into a state of pliable quiescence, induce vomiting inside respirators, or cause everyone within a two-mile radius to burst. Gas also played a part in the revival of a popular First World War myth first spread in 1915, which held that some unknown but deadly horror would befall users of the London Underground. The warning was supposed to have been given to a kindly nurse by a wounded German officer, brought back from death’s door. In 1940 the revived legend had changed little:
The German pilot is supposed to have become very fond of his nurse in the English hospital to which he was taken after being shot down. When it came time for him to be taken away, he is reported to have told the girl: ‘You have been very nice to me here. I don’t know how to repay you. The only thing I can do now is to warn you – never go out without your gas mask after September 15th.’
To this Klemmer adds:
I have been told that German prisoners, of whom there are some thousands in camps scattered all over the country, seem to be very worried about gas. They are very careful of their respirators, and, it is said, grab them with something approaching panic whenever the alarm goes.
The corollary was a panoply of fantastical countermeasures. One camouflage enthusiast suggested that a gigantic canvas, painted to look like the countryside, might be suspended over London. A related proposal was a scale reproduction of the entire British Isles, to be positioned elsewhere as a decoy. A businessman suggested building a roof over Oxford Street so that stores would not have to fret about the black-out. An American newspaper report announced a device which shot large steel nets high into the air, preventing raiders from penetrating beyond the coast. Another man proposed shells loaded with coiled springs. One optimist proposed that clouds should be frozen so that anti-aircraft guns could be mounted on them; another that a helicopter powered by a ‘perpetual motion engine’ could carry guns, searchlights and men to colossal heights. Often no details were given at all, beyond the sure fact that the ‘secret anti-raid weapon’ would soon be brought to bear on the enemy air force. Conversely, in October 1940 it was whispered that the most effective bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe were British, part of the loot from the lost campaign in France and Flanders.
A persistent myth told of the existence of fantastical death rays, both British and German, said to be able to stop engines from a distance and cause enemy raiders to crash. The story was common to the locality surrounding every Chain Home RDF station in Britain, whose true purpose – radar – remained as secret as the presence of four 360 ft steel transmitter masts allowed. At Bawdsey, in Suffolk, it was said that the engines of cars and even light aircraft had been jammed:
Pre-war motorists in the area recall ‘authentic rumours’, never first-hand but always from reliable sources, of cars whose engines for some unaccountable reason refused to function in spite of every effort on the part of their drivers to rectify faults. The usual story was that an RAF officer would come along the road and ask if the motorist was in trouble and, on receiving the usual answer, would inform the perplexed driver that at such and such a time all would be restored to working order. As in all such stories, this is just what happened, and so the story spread far and wide that the tall towers could inhibit the ignition of car engines.
The death ray story continued to be believed right up until the true nature of radar was revealed to the public towards the end of the war. In fact the Air Ministry had displayed an active interest in destructive rays since 1935. The idea was to generate a beam of electromagnetic waves of sufficient strength to heat living tissue to boiling point, and cause bombs to explode spontaneously. Although it was soon concluded that the power required was beyond current technology, this research did lead to the invention of radar, while the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) continued to fund death ray research by a Dutch charlatan. As R.V. Jones records:
Invariably he had an excuse for the apparatus not working, right up to the outbreak of war. At last, when it was clear that the SIS was not being fooled any longer, and would therefore give him no more money, his final report stated that although the apparatus had been a failure as a death ray, he had discovered that it had remarkable properties as a fruit preserver.
A typical secret weapon-cum-ray rumour, from early October 1940, was described by Colin Perry:
There is now cheering news of a new weapon; a sort of rainbow, apparently – seen over France and here. A ray? Trust the British to invent something.
Rumours of a German death ray surfaced again in London early in 1944, this time in the form of a ‘supersonic beam’ directed from distant aircraft, said to be capable of shrivelling up acres of the city in a matter of seconds.
Several myths surround genuine countermeasures that were actually deployed. During the first year of the war anti-aircraft gunners claimed to have destroyed 444 hostile aircraft, although the true figure was a fraction of this total. During night raids in 1940 Britain was virtually defenceless, since both gun-laying and airborne interception radar remained ineffective, while it was quickly established that searchlights were more helpful in guiding Luftwaffe crews towards vital areas than in spotting bombers for the guns below. On 10 September, after several days’ unopposed pounding of London, large numbers of guns were called into the London area to shoot blind at their maximum rate of fire across 200 square miles of sky. This move was chiefly intended to improve low civilian morale by giving an impression of defence, although it did force the Luftwaffe to fly higher. During September alone, AA batteries fired 260,000 rou
nds of heavy ammunition, yet brought down only one aircraft for every 30,000 shells fired. By January 1941 radar and experience had reduced this figure to 4,000, although official claims that 45 per cent of raiders approaching London were forced to turn back by anti-aircraft fire were never accurate.
Worse still, on occasion the barrage above London was so intense that as many civilians were killed and injured by shrapnel and unexploded shells as by enemy action. During the first serious raid on London in 1943, on the night of 17/18 January, a survey of friendly fire damage revealed the following catalogue: six killed by shell splinters; four wounded by a shell in Enfield; a sailor severely injured by a shell splinter in Gipsy Hill; two civilians killed by another shell elsewhere; one man killed and two injured by a shell which hit a wall in Battersea; and two more killed in like fashion in Tooting. The danger was increased by the introduction of ‘Z’ batteries in 1941, which fired salvos of 100 rocket projectiles at a time, these accelerating to 1,000 mph in under two seconds before detonating simultaneously. The din was likened to ‘an express train passing through the living room, before crashing in the back garden’. On 3 March 1943, a new Z battery positioned in Victoria Park, Hackney, may have triggered the Bethnal Green tube disaster, when 178 were crushed or suffocated following a panic on a stairwell. Other sensational rumours attached to this tragedy, including reports of a fifth column agent who shouted aloud that an oil-bomb had fallen in the street outside.
The record for Balloon Command was no less chequered. During six years of war balloon barrages brought down approximately 100 aircraft, yet three-quarters of these were Allied planes. Just 24 German aircraft are known to have fallen victim to the blimps, whereas in June 1940 the Harwich barrage alone managed to account for two RAF Hampden bombers in a fortnight. True, they undoubtedly boosted civilian morale, and would later bring down no fewer than 278 V1 flying bombs, but like AA fire they could also be dangerous for those on the ground. On 13 June a Heinkel 111 of KG 27 struck a balloon cable over Newport, Monmouthshire, and plunged into a built-up area, killing two children. In October an exploding barrage balloon fell on the Dover Castle pub in Lambeth, killing two firemen. The cable had trailed across railway tracks near Waterloo Station and stopped all traffic for an hour.
Myths & Legends of the Second World War Page 11
