DID IT EVER BEGIN?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 3 July 1943, Page 4

DID IT EVER BEGIN?

GERMAN INVASION OF BRITAIN “BOILING OIL” STORIES A report that the Germans plan to bar the Atlantic harbour entrances to the invading Allies by a screen of burning oil spread over the surface of the water recalls another “boiling oil” story. Associated with this is the intriguing question, “Did the German invasion of England ever begin?” That it did in part and that it was turned back by “a wall of flames” or by “a tide of lire” is the substance of differ-ently-worded versions which are appearing in books about the war. In order to sift fact from imagination as far as can be done while the veil of secrecy is still drawn over many military events, “The Mail” made an enquiry of the British Ministry of Information, London. The reply was that the story lacked any official confirmation. “The truth appears to be,” wrote an officer of the Press Section of the Empire Division of the Ministry, “that, about mid-September. 1940, there were reports that the Germans hud been massing barges and practising embarkation and disembarkation at various ports and the Air Ministry, over a period of several days, issued communiques and bulletins reporting heavy bombing over the so-called ‘invasion’ ports.”

Air Ministry bulletins of that time forwarded from England confirm this

view. Bombing of Antwerp, Ostend, Flushing, Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne

is freely mentioned in them. One issued on 18th September. 1940, refers to the “relentless forestalling offensive, which, for nearly a fortnight, has been going on against the German invasion plan.” It is clear also that many of the harbours were full of barges and that they formed a favourite target for our airmen both by night and day. In one case there is a reference to

“barges which were struck and set ablaze, exploding in flashes of flame which lit up the whole of the docks.” Possibly some of the glow of such fires might have been seen across the Channel and construed as an invasion flotilla being turned back by “burning oil.” Neither in these official announcements nor in the communication from the Ministry of Information is there anything to confirm that even a partial invading force set out for the English coast to “be thrown into the seas set aflame by oil, dying in agony in a sea that had become a flaming cauldron,” as a biographer of General Douglas MacArthur has written.