The War in Dorset - November 1941
Weymouth was bombed again at the beginning of November 1941. Devastation around the Abbotsbury Road killed three and injured eleven, including the Mayor of Weymouth, the publican of the Adelaide Arms.
On 10th November 1941 Christchurch Aerodrome became a satellite airfield to the now larger RAF Hurn. It’s Special Duty Flight, which had carried out aerial tests for the secret Telecommunications Research Establishment at Worth Matravers in Purbeck since August 1941, was moved to Hurn. Around this time TRE discovered that ground ‘maps’ could be produced using radar. Varying signals were received from the streets, houses, pines, heath and cliffs of Bournemouth on a plane flight from Christchurch. This became known as ‘Blind Navigation’ enabling bombers to find targets in poor weather and at night.
Guarding RAF Warmwell, two members of Dick’s Dorsetshire Regiment were killed with a Spitfire pilot when his plane crashed on landing on 11th November 1941
See also The Würzburg .
13th November 1941 – the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is
torpedoed and sunk. On the same day the US Neutrality Act is repealed to allow
the arming of merchant ships carrying Lend-Lease cargo to Britain.
17th November 1941 – buses are restricted so none may
leave after 9.30pm due to fuel shortages. Christmas cards, advertising
leaflets, posters and paper handkerchiefs are banned because of paper shortages.
18th November 1941 – beginning of the Allies ‘Operation Crusader’ to relieve the
siege of Tobruk in Libya, North Africa.
25th November 1941 – Germany attacked Moscow.
28th November 1941 – Germany’s siege of the critical Mediterranean
seaport at Tobruk, in Libya, was broken by the Allied 8th Army.
30th November and 8thDecember 1941 – massacre at Rumbala. 25,000 Jews were murdered in woods near
Riga in Latvia by Nazi paramilitary death squads, the SS Einsatzgruppen.
(From WW2-net Timelines and ‘Dorset’s War Diary - Battle of Britain to D Day’ by Rodney Legg, DorsetPublishing Company 2004.)
From ‘Chotie’s Story’
“After my fiasco with the Land Army I went to work at Plummers, Boscombe, where I learnt a lot about displaying fashions. Then, as it was quite a way from home, I transferred to Plummers, Bournemouth and did a spell in the Knitwear Department. I got friendly with a Jewish girl and was spending the weekend at her home in Mudeford when I met George. He was sitting in the back of a car smoking a Petersham pipe, just like Dicker did. That was the attraction. He was motorcycle officer at Blandford Camp, very posh - in fact an old Etonian, which I found out much later on. He used to say he was second best, as he knew that Dicker was first. George never gave me a clue as to his swanky background and he came to our humble abode for Sunday lunch and thoroughly enjoyed my Mum’s apple pie.”
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