DailyNewsGems

Book Review: The Birth of the New York Police Department

Bruce Chadwick, former New York Daily News reporter, presents a breezy and colorful look inside the New York Police Department in the 19^th century, before there was even a police force, when it was just a loose and disorganized group of blundering constables.

In “Law & Disorder: The Chaotic Birth of the NYPD,’’ readers are feted with some of the bloodiest crimes and horrific murders in our nation’s history, during a dangerous time when gambling, prostitution, crime rings, gangs, and drinking spun out of control amid an exploding immigrant population.  In 1845, 36 percent of city’s residents were foreign born; rising to 46 percent in 1850 and 51 percent by 1855.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Chadwick reports, ``there was more gambling in New York in the 1840s and 1850s than any other time in American history until the establishment of legal gambling in Las Vegas a hundred years later.”

Most criminals greased the palms of the constables to look the other way.

Worse still, in the 1840’s, the police didn’t carry weapons, only nightsticks, triggering a number of police injuries.

One of the early reformers of the NYPD was New York Mayor William Havemeyer who in 1845 replaced all the old constables with a force of over one thousand police officers with a new chain of command, including police chief, several assistant chiefs, and precinct captains.

The mayor soon appointed George Matsell as the NYPD's first police chief who established a police academy, where officers could be properly trained with firearms, conditioning, fighting, and revolver marksmanship, along with serving the public’s needs, not just criminals

Police officers in New York weren’t equipped with guns until the 1850s.

Mayor Havemeyer, in fact, was the person who coined the phrase, “New York’s Finest,” when describing his police force.

Most fascinating in Chadwick’s history of the NYPD during this time, was the prominent role newspapers played in the eventual establishment of a police force.

In particular, the Penny Press (tabloid-style newspapers) and newspaper magnates like George Gordon Bennett of The New York Herald crusaded for a professional police force. In addition, the New York Sun was one of the early pioneers in police reporting; and a new journal in the 1850s, The New York Times (under the able leadership of its editor, Henry Raymond), began pouring large sums of money to produce the news, including the introduction of a "Police News" section each day, along with court news.

Despite some early reforms, corruption remained endemic within the NYPD; and the persistent crime wave wouldn’t show a dramatic decrease until the civil service was established in the 1870s.

Still, as Chadwick points out in his fascinating book, the NYPD became the model for other urban law enforcement agencies throughout the nation in the 19^th century, including, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C.

--Bill Lucey

[email protected]

August 31, 2017

Writers Recall Princess Di's Shocking Death

Prince Charles, William (right) and Harry view floral tributes to the Princess of Wales at Kensington Palace after her death in 1997.

Photo Credit: Rebecca Naden/PA

August 31, just a few days from now, will mark the 20-year anniversary when Diana, Princess of Wales, was tragically killed in a car crash.

She was 36.

Diana’s romantic companion, Dodi Fayed, the son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, along with Henri Paul, also died in the crash when their Mercedes S-280 vehicle crashed into a pillar after racing through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel that lies next to the River Seine in Paris on August 31, 1997.

Mr. Paul, her driver, was trying to escape a mad flock of paparazzi chasing them in cars after they left the Ritz Hotel (owned by the Al-Fayed family) where they were dining that evening.

Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, though badly injured, was the only survivor of the crash.

The princess reportedly went into cardiac arrest at about 2:10 a.m. and was pronounced dead at 4 a.m. at Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. 

Diana’s sons, Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, were staying at Balmoral (in Scotland) with the Queen and other members of the royal family when the tragic accident took place.

Soon after her death, British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the nation from outside St Mary Magdalene Church in Trimdon, saying, "She [Diana] was the people’s princess and that’s how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and in our memories forever."

Approximately, three million people swarmed the streets of London for her funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 6, 1997. The service was attended by 2,000 people, 32.10 million people watched the service in the UK and an estimated 2.5 billion people watched it worldwide.

Her brother, Charles Spencer (9^th Earl Spencer), delivered a tender, wistful eulogy, describing Diana as "a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic."

After the ceremony, Diana was laid to rest at the Spencer family home, at the Althorp Estate in northern England.

The final verdict of the inquest, 11 years later (2008), found that at the time of the deadly crash, Mr. Paul, the driver, was guilty of “gross negligence,’’ having been drunk and on anti-depressants when he lost control of the Mercedes.

Paparazzi photographers, the jury decided, who pursued Diana, Princess of Wales across Paris were also guilty for her "unlawful killing."

The investigation additionally noted that Princess Diana and Dodi may survived if they had worn seat belts.

To gain a better appreciation of just how frantic the world was on that fatal night, I asked some writers and journalists where they were and how they responded to the shocking news that the young princess was killed.

• "On the evening of Saturday August 30, I returned to my home in Washington, D.C. after taking my daughter to Princeton University, where she was beginning her freshman year. I was feeling somewhat melancholy, so I went to bed early and didn't tune in the TV or listen to the radio. When I awoke early on the 31st, I turned on my computer and saw the headline that Diana, Princess of Wales had died. I initially thought it was a hoax, but learned the truth when I flipped on the TV, which I watched obsessively like everybody else.

On Tuesday, the president of Times Books at Random House called to ask if I would consider writing a biography of Diana. I said I didn't know, but that all hell was breaking loose on the streets of London and I needed to get there as soon as possible. I arrived on Friday at the gate of Kensington Palace about a half hour after Princes Charles, William, and Harry returned from Scotland. I spoke to many inconsolable people wandering through the city's parks, as well as my English friends who knew Charles and Diana. Everyone was equally stunned about the car crash and bewildered by the public outpouring of emotion.

A friend at NBC got me into the network's headquarters in a bank building across the street from Westminster Abbey, where I observed the funeral from a window ledge on the third floor. It was a cloudless and warm day, and a surreal sight: the parks filled with people as far as the eye could see, and huge crowds lining Whitehall. Since all traffic had been diverted from the center of London, and no airplanes were overhead, there was an almost eerie silence.

As the funeral cortège turned into Parliament Square, the first sound was the clip clop of the six horses pulling the coffin borne on a gun carriage. Then the line of five men and boys hove into view--Charles, William, and Harry, the Earl Spencer, and the Duke of Edinburgh--followed by some 500 representatives of Diana's charities. It was unspeakably sad and riveting: an indelible moment.”

--Sally Bedell Smith, author of "Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life," "Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch," and "Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a Troubled Princess"

• "I was in Washington DC, feeling bemused at the extraordinary attention being given to this sad death of an unhappily-married young woman and the outlandish reaction it provoked. It made me think that after two decades as a foreign correspondent I no longer understood my own country, and that I had greatly under-estimated the emotional power of the tabloid media."

--Martin Walker, who spent 25 years as a journalist with Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, including tours of duty as bureau chief in Moscow and the US, as European Editor and Assistant Editor. Mr. Walker, author of the popular Bruno detective series set in the Périgord region of France is a member of A.T. Kearney's Global Business Policy Council.

• "I was then the London bureau chief of The New York Times, and specifically I was in bed in my London flat and was awoken by the Foreign Desk of The New York Times around 2 a.m. or so to be told that there had been a crash in Paris involving the Princess and that I should start writing the obituary in case she were to die. We ended up printing a 750- word obit in the Aug. 31 paper accompanying the coverage from Paris, and I was to expand it to 2300 words for the paper of Sept. 1 (“Diana: Shy Girl Who Became ‘Queen of People’s Hearts’ “ ) and to write a London-datelined story for the Sept. 1 paper headlined “Charles Accompanies Diana Back Home to a Grieving Britain” . In the ten days following I wrote thousands and thousands of words about the aftermath in Britain, about what the event told us about what had become of Britain and its feelings about the royal family, and of course the funeral and burial.”

--Warren Hoge, who worked for more than three decades at The New York Times in a variety of capacities, including London Bureau Chief, is now Senior Adviser for External Relations at the International Peace Institute.

• "I was in London, with a six-month old baby! And we kind of mobilized as a bureau, dividing up all the coverage. Warren Hoge, the bureau chief, did the main news stories for the next bit of time and I did a lot of the features and state of the nation stories. And of course a big part of the story was how the media responded in the UK, and the symbiotic relationship between the public and the press just then - each fueling the other. "

--Sarah Lyall, New York Times writer at large, based in New York. Lyall was London correspondent for the Times for 18 years.

• "I was on holiday on a Hebridean Island, my then wife (who was a newspaper editor) had to bugger off back to London, leaving me with the kids, and I remember not being in the least surprised or shocked, as I believe Diana had a self-destructive streak as well as a destructive streak. I sided with Prince Charles throughout."

--Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and the Center for European Studies, Harvard, has written 14 books, including, "Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World"

• "Death was on my mind in the summer of 1997 as my beloved father had died earlier in the year and, on the Sunday morning when Diana’s death was announced, I was at a car boot sale trying to clear out some of the accumulated objects which no one in the family wanted to see again.

But I was also excited as my biography of Mother Teresa, who had become a controversial figure by then, was due for publication at the end of the week. After four years work I was enjoying the blissful hiatus when the book is not only written but printed and before any reviewers have had a chance to criticize. In addition, The Times had bought three days of serialization, which my agent assured me would be a fantastic boost.

The links between Diana and Mother Teresa, forged over several years, became much stronger in death. Mother Teresa’s comments that she had been very close to Diana, made immediately after her death, were given good play. Apparently, Diana had hoped to send Prince William to volunteer at a Missionaries of Charity home in Calcutta. Other reports claimed that Diana was thinking of converting to Catholicism and was buried with a rosary that Mother Teresa had given her. Pictures of the tall and elegant Princess in a white suit greeting the diminutive nun were splashed all over the papers - again.

It was a crazy week which showed me how fickle newspapers can be in their loyalties. But the editors were mourning not only Diana herself but the gift she had given them of selling thousands more copies if a picture of her graced their front pages.''

--Anne Sebba is an award-winning British biographer, writer, lecturer, journalist, and author of a number of books, including “Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother,” and “Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died under the Nazi Occupation.”

***

BREAKING NEWS! First BBC News Flash  

•  

  AP Urgent Bulletin announcing Diana had been seriously injured in a car crash moved at 20:11:06 (8:11 p.m. and six seconds) EST on Saturday, Aug. 30, 1997.

BC-France-Diana-Crash

URGENT

Princess of Wales injured in car crash: report

¶   PARIS (AP) _ Diana, Princess of Wales, was seriously injured in a car crash in Paris early Sunday, and one person was killed in the accident, French radio reported.

¶   The crash occurred in a tunnel along the Seine river at the Pont de l'Alma bridge, while paparazzi on motorcycles were following along her car, France Info radio.

¶   (cb)

• This AP News Alert moved at 23:44:06 p.m. (11:44 p.m. and six seconds) EST on Sat. Aug. 30, 1997

^BC-APNewsAlert<

¶   Press Association says Princess Diana has died, according to unnamed British sources

• New York Times: Diana, Princess of Wales, 36, Dies in a crash in Paris

***

Newspapers Reflect on Princess Diana’s Life and Legacy

• “There, in a dark, concrete underpass, lie the tangled remains of a Mercedes limousine. That so glamorous a life should be ended in such a mundane place is the greatest of ironies. Yet it was here, beneath the streets of Paris, that a light to millions around the world was extinguished. Diana, Princess of Wales, was just 36.”

--Jack Gee and John Coles, The Express, September 1, 1997

• "The death of Princess Diana, at age 36 in a Paris car crash early today, brought a sudden, brutal end to a life torn with contradictions...The death of Diana, arguably the most photographed woman in the world, casts still another pall on the future of a British crown that one day may grace the head of her eldest son, Prince William, or even his younger brother, Prince Harry.''

--Eric Malnic and Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times, August 31, 1997

• "In life, Princess Diana gave up the chance to be a queen. In death, she may help prop up the wobbly throne of the dysfunctional British royals."

-Richard Johnson, New York Post, September 1, 1997.

• "Later, in the middle of a soft evening, families walked in silence, with the only sound that of a baby's cry, onto the parched unlit lawns in front of Kensington Palace, where Di and her prince lived when they took their first steps in what was supposed to be a fairy tale...I sat on a bench in the darkness and a woman next to me said, softly, "We shouldn't be here. None of us should be here. She should be here."

--Jimmy Breslin, Newsday, September 2, 1997

• "In the wake of Princess Diana's death, a nation famous for its stiff upper lip has gone weepy.  The celebrated English reserve, symbolized this week by the silent and withdrawn royal family, has been washed away by a tidal wave of tears and flowers from the tens of thousands of ordinary people mourning the loss of their princess."

--Dan Balz, Washington Post, September 4, 1997

• "To be deified, then devoured: That is the fate awaiting the famous in an era that has substituted celebrities for heroes, and that is the fate met by a young kindergarten teacher who would become known to the world as Princess Diana...Diana seemed the exception to one iron rule of celebrity, which is that the public will applaud your fall from the pedestal as lustily as they cheered your climb. Through her divorce from Prince Charles and her battles with Britain's royal family, the public remained solidly on her side. "

--Don Aucoin, Boston Globe, September 1, 1997

• "It is unbearably sad to imagine Diana, bloody and mangled and gesticulating, being descended upon in a tunnel by omnivorous paparazzi. But it is also sad to see the image of Diana, sparkling and shy and smiling being served up in death through as many news cycles as the omnivorous market will bear...God rest her soul, because the journalists won't. Big-name journalists leaped on the tragedy, immortalizing their own five minutes, or five hours, with the fallen goddess."

--Maureen Dowd, New York Times, September 3, 1997

• "She [Princess Diana] was neither the complete saint painted by her hagiographers, nor the scheming witch portrayed by her stuffier enemies. But she had elements of both in her nature, and we all responded to both...Yet by her peculiar genius for affecting multitudes, she demonstrated, in the best moments of her life, what a royal family could be. And those moments were very good indeed."

--A.N. Wilson, The Evening Standard, September 1, 1997

• "She had been, I think, the most remarkable member of the Royal Family since Queen Victoria. She was sad, she needed to be helped, she was entertaining, she was loveable; but she was certainly not an ineffective figure in our national history. At the time of her death, she was still maturing, and gaining in her understanding of the world; that we have lost for good, and it is a great deal."

--William Rees-Mogg, The Times (London, England) September 1, 1997

• "Diana will be deified in death, the fairy-tale princess always denied the happy ending of the storybooks. Whatever her faults and those will now be overlooked, no-one would deny that her short life was suffused with as much sadness as glamour. It matters not whether, in her marriage to the heir to the throne, she was victim or, in part at least, villain. She was in Tony Blair's words, the people's princess."

--Philip Stephens, The Financial Times, September 1, 1997

• "It would be heartwarming to believe that her death will change things. But I suspect the best we can hope for is that she can now be remembered, in the way she longed to be, as the princess who became queen of all our hearts in a fairy story which has no ending."

--Christopher Hudson, The Evening Standard, September 1, 1997

• "She was our greatest royal personality since Queen Victoria. She could have been the most valuable. Properly helped and guided, Diana's extraordinary combination of gifts could have transformed the relationship between royalty and the public, deepening and strengthening it and making it almost invulnerable...Her death, far from being meaningless, was full of meaning even symbolic. She was a martyr to a combination of evils: the coldness of royalty, the prurience of the public in demanding even the most intimate secrets of her heart, and the cruelty of the media in supplying them."

--Paul Johnson, Daily Mail, September 1, 1997

• "As Diana metamorphosed from innocent nursery nurse to revered princess and mother, to wronged, vengeful woman and, more recently, to confident campaigner, the one constant was her determination to be seen as Queen of the people hearts, her image as both a victim and as a benefactor of love."

--Jojo Moyes, The Independent, September 1, 1997

• "The monarchy itself was too snooty, too dim, too stiff and unattractive to survive the scrutiny in the satellite age. What saved it as a source of interest and discourse was Diana who-in life-became a combination film star and faith healer, the magic mix of flesh and spirit."

--David Aaronovitch, The Independent

***

Biographical Sketch of Diana, Princess of Wales

• Born: Diana Frances Spencer, July 1, 1961 in Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk.
• Her Spencer forbearers had been sheep farmers in Warwickshire, who settled in Althrop, Northamptonshire in 1506.
• The Princess's father had been an officer of the British royal household to King George VI and to the present Queen.
• Both her grandmothers, the Countess Spencer, and Ruth Lady Fermoy, were close members of the court of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, including four Spencer great-aunts.
• Diana's paternal ancestors were representative of the Whig oligarchy of the 18th century.
• Diana also descended through several lines through the Stuart Kings: Charles II and James II.
• Other paternal forebears, include: the Great Duke of Marlborough, Sir Robert Walpole, the Marquess of Anglesey, and the Earl of Lucan.
• Father: Edward John Viscount Althorp, the only son of the 7th Earl Spencer.
• Mother: Frances Ruth Burke Roche, the youngest daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy. 

• Siblings: Three: Sarah, Jane, and Charles. Her infant brother, John, died shortly after his birth one year before Diana was born.
• Diana was seven years-old when her parents divorced.
• After her father inherited the title of Earl Spencer in 1975, Diana became known as Lady Diana Spencer.
• Education: Riddlesworth Hall in Norfolk, West Heath (Boarding School) in Kent; a finishing school--the Institut Alpin Videmanette at Rougemont in Switzerland (six weeks).
• Employment: Nanny, babysitter, skivvy (household tasks), student teacher at Miss Vacani's dance studios; teacher assistant at the Young England Kindergarten in Pimlico.
• Marriage: Charles. Prince of Wales, and Diana married on July 29, 1981 at London's St Paul's Cathedral, three weeks after her 20th birthday.
• Children: Prince William Arthur Phillip Louis, born: June 21, 1982 and Prince Henry Charles Albert David, born: September 15, 1984.
• Divorced: August 28, 1996. Diana kept the title of Diana, Princess of Wales. She lost Her Royal Highness title.
• Death: August 31, 1997, after suffering fatal injuries in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris.
• Buried: Althorp Estate – a stately home in the town of Northampton, U.K., located about 70 miles from London.
• Charities Diana supported included: Barnardo's, The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, Centerpoint English National Ballet, RADA, the Royal Academy of Music, the Leprosy Mission, the National AIDS Trust, the Royal Marsden Hospital, Help the Aged, National Meningitis Trust.

Source:  The Times (London England), The Independent

NOTE: A special thank you to all those editors, news researchers, and archivists, who dug up clippings and PDF'S from 1997, including Rick Mastroianni (Newseum), Lisa Tuite (Boston Globe), Laura Harris (New York Post), Dorothy Levin (Newsday), Lauren Easton (Associated Press), Colin Crawford (Los Angeles Times), Eddy Palanzo (Washington Post), Rogan Dixon (The Independent and London Evening Standard), Rose Wild (The Times, London, England), Charles Garside (Daily Mail), and Wendy Parsons (Daily Star).

-Bill Lucey

August 29, 2017

[email protected]

Two Thumbs Up for Dunkirk the Motion Picture

Source:  English Heritage.

 

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

― Winston S. Churchill, speech to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; June 4, 1940

***

Thanks to English-American film director, producer, and screenwriter, Christopher Nolan's motion picture "Dunkirk," the defense and courageous evacuation of British soldiers across the North Sea to England during World War II is still being remembered with thunderous applause, 77 years later.

The motion picture premiered in the United States on July 21 in IMAX, 70 mm and 35 mm film.

The most recent box office figures show that Dunkirk grossed $314 million worldwide; the film was additionally greeted with glowing reviews by critics, some calling it Nolan's best film so far and "one of the greatest war films ever made."

Dunkirk is in the north of France, on the shores of the North Sea near the Belgian-French border.

In late May 1940, 250,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) were pinned against the English Channel near the port of Dunkirk (Dunkerque), facing annihilation or capture by Nazi forces.

The best that could be achieved, many thought, was the rescue of 20,000 men.

So, began Operation Dynamo, when the British sent across the English Channel all they could muster, including civilian craft, to assist in the evacuation. The operation was severely hampered by the lack of Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters who were not available in sufficient numbers to provide adequate air cover, resulting in the vessels suffering a merciless pounding from the Luftwaffe, the German air force.

From May 26 through June 4, the Royal Navy—assisted by civilian craft and some vessels from other nations—evacuated 364,628 men from Dunkirk; 224,686 of which were members of the BEF.

By the time the evacuation was completed, 68,000 soldiers of BEF were killed, captured, or wounded, including at least 2,000 during Dynamo.

To gain a sharper understanding of this heroic evacuation, I reached out to some writers and scholars to ask if there was something about the Battle of Dunkirk that many might not be aware of.

Here are some responses that whistled back to my in-box.

• "For every seven British soldiers who escaped from Dunkirk, one was left behind as a prisoner of war."

--Sean Longden, author and historian who specializes in British social history during World War II.

• "The key point that most accounts ignore concerns the shift in German emphasis from crushing the British and French forces that had been cut off there in order to make the push south and penetrate the new French front being created and developed there.  This step, started by the German commander von Rundstedt and supported by Hitler needs to be understood, as it rarely is, as a result of German experience in 1914.  They had advanced rapidly then only to be held before a new front and tied down into the trench warfare that characterized the front in the West thereafter.  Rundstedt and Hitler wanted to make sure that this did not happen again.  Their decision indeed prevented such a development while simultaneously making it possible for the British and French soldiers to be evacuated in the famous events associated with the name of Dunkirk."

--Gerhard Weinberg, Professor Emeritus at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an authority on Nazi Germany and the origins and course of World War II.

• "It may be important to understand the role of the French troops in holding the "perimeter" as the rescue/evacuation  happened on the beaches.  The film's opening sequence makes it clear that the French are manning a defensive post so that the British soldiers can get through to the beach. But the film gives an almost wholly "BEF" story."

"Interesting contemporary accounts from the other side of the Channel (from those "waiting" in England) show how little the general public knew about what was happening in France after May 10th, once the Germans started their westward sweep. One can only imagine how anxious the soldiers' families must have been.  George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) was in London at that time; he went to Waterloo Station in London to look for his brother in law among the returning troops, and he comments on the fact that many soldiers' uniforms looked water and salt stained.  He never found his brother in law, an Army Medic, who had been killed on the beach at Dunkirk. "

--Rosemary Haskell, Professor of English at Elon University (North Carolina). Born and raised in England, Haskell's father was rescued at Dunkirk.

• "Of the 56 Allied destroyers that took part in the operation, 9 were sunk and 19 damaged; of the 38 minesweepers, 5 were sunk and 7 damaged; of the 230 trawlers, 23 were sunk and 2 damaged; of the 45 ferries, 9 were sunk and 8 damaged. Of the eight hospital ships - each of which was emblazoned with large Red Cross markings easily visible to the Luftwaffe - one was sunk and five damaged. It was quite untrue – as the BBC was to allege in 2004 – that the British civilians who sailed to Dunkirk to save the B.E.F. did it ‘because they were paid’.

Of course, they were indeed paid for their service, as was the entire BEF for theirs, but there were far easier ways of earning a living during those nine days in May 1940."

--Andrew Roberts, British historian, journalist and broadcaster, from his book, "THE STORM OF WAR"

• "I'm afraid I don't share the current enthusiasm for Dunkirk. It was the result of a military disaster but is too often remembered as some kind of heroic victory. It seems to me to be a classic Brexit film, Britain managing to escape from Europe, so the timing is most unfortunate. The British must come to terms with Dunkirk. The French, understandably, see it very differently - rats leaving a sinking ship.''

--Richard Overy, professor of history at the University of Exeter (South West England), who has published extensively on the history of World War II and the Third Reich.

• "What most people don't know, I think, is that the Germans did not actually have an edge in armor or aircraft, and that their original plan of battle for the attack in the west would have played into the hands of the allies. The final plan, however, conceived after the original plans were thought to have fallen into Allied hands, made use of concentrated armor and cut off the Allies from their supply bases. As for Dunkirk, the main folly was [Hermann] Goering's promise that he could eliminate the Allies from the air. He made similar promises, this time to supply encircled German forces from the air, in the Demyansk Pocket near Leningrad and of course in Stalingrad."

--Omer Bartov, an Israel born scholar, especially noted for his studies of the German Army in World War II, is a professor of European History and German Studies at Brown University.

• "What most people would not know or appreciate is that just as Dunkirk began was the first time Royal Air Force Spitfires (a British single-seat fighter aircraft) met the Me109 fighters (German World War II fighter aircraft). Until then, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding (an officer in the Royal Air Force) did not allow Spitfires to operate in France, only Hurricanes.  Both Spits and Hurricanes were designed as defensive fighters, so having to operate over and inland of the French coast was something very new. Training had been built around engaging German bombers coming  to Britain across the North Sea."

"In consequence RAF fighters had only limited time in the combat areas.  Operating in just squadron strengths, they soon found themselves outnumbered, so flying in 'wing' formations was tried. However, with no training in this, three squadrons might fly out to the French coast, but as they could not speak to each other, they quickly split up!  As the squadrons could also be led in the air by their senior pilots, it often happened that the 'wing' could be led by Flying Officer, while the other squadrons had a flight or squadron commander leading their men, so this did not go down well."

"As in the film, the RAF fighters flew in sections of three and it took time to adopt sections of four, such as the German fighters used.  With fours it was easier and safer to break into two pairs for protection, rather than a leader looking for enemy aircraft while the two wingmen kept a close eye on their leader so as to avoid a collision."

--Norman Franks, an English militaria writer, who specializes in aviation topics with a special focus on the pilots and squadrons of World Wars I and II.

 

Dunkirk By the Numbers

• 338,226 troops were evacuated from Dunkirk between May 27 and June 4, 1940.

• 933 ships took part in Operation Dynamo, of which 236 were lost and 61 put out of action.

• 40,000 French troops were taken into captivity when Dunkirk fell.

• The French lost 22 of their 71 field divisions, 6 of their 7 motorized divisions, 2 of their 5 fortress divisions and 8 of 20 armored battalions.

• 126 merchant seamen died during the evacuation.

• 1,000 Dunkirk citizens died during air raids on May 27.

• 50,000 British troops were unable to escape the Continent; of these, 11,000 were killed and the bulk of the remainder were made prisoners of war.

• RAF Fighter Command lost 106 aircraft and 80 pilots, and Bomber Command lost an additional 76 aircraft.

• Other nations lost 17 of 168 vessels taking part.

• BEF equipment abandoned in France included 120,000 vehicles, 600 tanks, 1,000 field guns, 500 antiaircraft guns, 850 antitank guns, 8,000 Bren guns, 90,000 rifles, and 500,000 tons of stores and ammunition.

Source: The Gale Virtual Reference Library, Encyclopedia Britannica; BBC.

--Bill Lucey

August 7, 2017