The aerial photo interpreter who made the biggest impact in the Second World War was the brilliant, beautiful Constance Babington Smith. (My wartime novel Bird’s Eye View is fact-based fiction about an aerial photo interpreter.) Constance Babington Smith is well-known in some circles, although most people have never heard of her. But she is credited with […]
Danesfield House is now a luxury hotel, but during the war it was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force, renamed RAF Medmenham, and served as the headquarters for aerial photographic interpretation. It has personal meaning for me, too. I visited this lovely place in 2022, when I was invited to be the guest speaker at a […]
My friend Russ Jeffs was a Royal Air Force veteran who rose to the rank of RAF Wingco, or Wing Commander, before leaving England in the 1950s and moving to Canada. He was an inveterate story-teller with an endless stream of anecdotes about his days in the air force. After Russ moved to Canada, he spent the next […]
My mother-in-law Gerda Drews was a teenager living in Berlin during World War Two. She witnessed the ferocious battle of Berlin, and her family’s tragic experiences after her city fell to the Soviet Army.
Saving fuel for the war effort was of prime importance in the Second World War. People were not allowed to buy gas, tires, or even a new car. Riding alone in a vehicle was considered almost criminal. Saving Fuel When the Second World War was declared in 1939, Great Britain began rationing “petrol” almost […]
Russian women, often known as Night Witches, were the only females in the world engaged in aerial combat during World War Two. These daring young women, some of them just teenagers, flew lightweight aircraft that dodged and darted and dropped bombs on the enemy under cover of darkness. So feared were they that the Germans […]
Bomber crews who flew toward the end of the war, when there were fewer German fighters in the air, were sometimes considered to have an easier ride. But not always, as told in this hair-raising excerpt from Leo Richer’s own memoir.
IF Day was a fake Nazi invasion of Winnipeg that took place in 1942, designed to frighten Canadians into buying more war bonds. At some point during the six long years of the Second World War, probably every Canadian secretly feared an invasion by the enemy. On February 19, 1942, they didn’t have to speculate […]
A career in photography was the goal of Lou Marr, who called herself “the original turnip who fell off the back of the truck” when she joined the Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division.
Bomb girls in Canada were represented by Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl. She was just one of one million Canadian women who worked in factories during the Second World War. Bomb Girls Around the World When World War Two began, British women trooped into factories in full force. They were desperately needed there, as Britain […]
