A Real Give-away

Evening Star, Issue 25893, 10 September 1946, Page 5

A Real Give-away

Then consider this item: “ Guided by aircraft of Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm, British naval units are searching for the German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. ...” This was passed by a censor in 1941. He regarded it merely as a gloss on the statement already released. That those raiders were at large. * He thought it only indicated that the Navy was employing every possible means to track them down, and "was not specific enough to convey any information. But the inference was that the Navy

knew the raiders were in or near home waters. Why? Because Coastal Command aircraft would not be employed in a search in the middle of the Atlantic. Moreover, the expression “ Fleet Air Arm ” indicated that carriers were also being used; for although cruiser aircraft are part of the Fleet Air Arm any search carried out by such aircraft was regarded as being carried out by the cruisers from which they were flown off. So a seemingly uninformative general statement gave the enemy a good picture of what we knew and what we were doing. (To be continued.)