‘Air Trafalgar Day’: Official Commemorations, 1942–1945

Abstract

If 1941 was the most significant year in both defining and affirming the context of the Battle as an event, how was this developed from 1942 onwards? As Chapter 5 confirms, propaganda during this phase necessarily responded to events of the moment during both 1940 and 1941, the Battle, although significant in British eyes, nevertheless at some remove given more recent developments, and few of these very heartening. After all, earlier in 1942 there were no victories to celebrate, Britain’s run of bad luck seemingly unending; the Japanese attacks on British Empire territories reinforced the sense of gloom, the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 a major blow to British prestige. This had been preceded on 12 February by the ‘Channel Dash’, the battle-cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst managing to travel through the English Channel despite a major if improvised effort by the British to prevent them.¹ The ‘mini-Blitz’ also briefly flared through ‘Baedeker’ reprisal raids for RAF attacks against historic German cities including Lubeck, the first against Exeter taking placed on 24 April.² On 21 June 1942 Tobruk surrendered to Rommel’s Afrika Korps, reinforcing yet further the sense of British military vulnerability. Added to these reverses was the Battle of the Atlantic, high merchant shipping losses aggravating Britain’s situation vis-à-vis food and war supplies.