Seventy-one years ago today, in the Dover Straits the weather was fine with light, north-westerly winds and haze. Two sizeable convoys were on the move and an early morning raid by German aircraft was brewing, with the seamen expecting an attack at any moment.

Just after seven, however, it became apparent that the ships were not the target. The raid was heading for Dover harbour. Air Vice Marshal Park, from his bunker in Hillingdon, released a squadron of Spitfires and one of Hurricanes, which raced to the scene to intercept the Germans.

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History, it is said, is written by the victors. As we read it, we should be especially careful if we happened to be on the winning side. Who are they trying to deceive?

A tale of heroic firemen would have played better with the public. It would at least have been a success against the odds that was worth reporting. Add in the need for more planes, more anti-aircraft gunners, more merchant seamen, more of everything really and they could have had an ideal propaganda piece for lashing the public and the economy even more tightly to the State.

The Government and media must have believed the incident to be too much of a crisis to even be a beneficial one.

Whilst I accept the premise that the government was wilfully misinforming the public, surely there was a huge element of self-delusion within the top brass as well.

Even during the Battle of Britain, the RAF had enough information to show that their claims for the number of enemy aircraft shot down were hopelessly wide of the mark.

To conceal this from the pilots was understandable, in order to maintain morale, yet the RAF's senior management seem to have genuinely believed in their supposed qualitative superiority, and subsequently used this as their justification for the criminally wasteful attempts to bring the Luftwaffe to battle through Circus and Rhubarb operations long after the BoB had ended.

I remember from my childhood that the careers of Bader, Tuck, Finucane and many others came to an abrupt end flying pointless missions over France, convinced that they had an inherent advantage over the Luftwaffe.

I think that Richard, without any disrespect, is merely bringing up modern Myth & Legend....one can point out the Truth but when it's 'past its time' it is, in essence, too late.
Were Richard reporting on Thermopylae he would have doubted that 600 Spartans saved the Antique World...and he would probably be right.
Myth & Legend are found in all societies & have been, since long before Weetabix. They're part of our necessary heritage & culture in making us feel good about ourselves...without them we would simply be the accident-prone idiots that Truth would confirm.
Yes, misreporting, downright lying, over-egging & the manipulation of facts is clearly wrong but, if it improves our feel-good factor & can be swallowed by hoi polloi...WTF

I think there was an agenda here. It was the same agenda that we have now, which is why the issue is still relevant - the elites versus the people. This was an unpopular war, with a strong undercurrent of resentment at the treatment of those who had fought in the previous war and then returned to broken promises. Thus, there was a strong movement for this to be the "people's war", on the basis that the people who fought and suffered would have the right to a better (socialist) future.

Focusing on the RAF, therefore, was to focus on the technocratic elite .. a quite overt attempt to assert the thesis that the war was being fought and won by the elites ... positioning the "people" in a supportive role. In fact, it turns out that the day fighter force was the RAF's equivalent of the Maginot line ... the German simply circumvented it by turning to night bombing and attacking the people, aiming to break morale and force regime change.

In the context, therefore, the schwerpunkt was the people ... and their fortitude during the Blitz was the turning point of the war. To acknowledge that was politically dangerous - hence the pursuit of the myth that the elite (the few) won the war ... not the many, thereby strengthening the prevailing myth that we need an elite to rule over us.

“One can only guess at what exactly transpired”.
True, but examination of the pictures, and a little marine and firefighting knowledge will enable a good guess be made, 70 years after.
This is my estimation, for what it’s worth.
They where firemen, Richard, and they wouldn’t run away, anyway. But this case is different.
Take another look at your second picture, of the Sandhurst and the Codrington. The Codrington is a relatively small ship. Clicking on the photo enlarges it and then it can be seen that the bow of the Codrington was afloat, whereas the stern was not. The stern was on the bottom.
In front of the Sandhurst are two large barges, the second one is close to the sea wall, one end is higher than the other. The high end is aground.
See the sea wall, the black line is the high tide mark. It is low tide, there is not enough water beneath the Sandhurst to allow it be scuttled. The tide range can be high in Channel Ports.
Enlarge the third photo, a small group of men is gathered on the stern of the Sandhurst. There are two firemen holding a hose, and some others behind. Some of those others seem to be in ship’s officer’s uniforms, they must be the ship’s officers, there to guide the firemen in their fight (some openings into the ship will lead to dead ends, stores or rope lockers. Others will lead to access ways into the ship. The officers know which was which.)
But every man jack of them, knew at that time that there was no escape from the fire. The ship couldn’t be sunk therefore the fire had to be put out.
So they stayed, and did it.
Perhaps more than 3 GC’s were earned that day.
Perhaps Dover owes them all a memorial.

Perhaps 6 years of doing the right thing for England started something for the media, a habit only destruction will break? ever since they have lied, it used to be you read the mail and the mirror and worked out the truth, the sun enabled Blair to bamboozle the public into supporting him wholesale, I stopped buying it then, shame I liked the crossword and page 3.

I am not at all sure that, during the war the media was doing the "right thing", per se. By and large, as always, the media had its own agenda, alongside the general objective of winning the war.

What is not clear from most of the histories you see written is that there was never any serious doubt that Britain (and the Empire) would win. Thus, throughout the whole period of 1939-45 there were two "wars" being played out ... the one to defeat Hitler, but the other to "win the peace" and determine the shape of post-war Britain.

It would be a mistake, therefore, to think that the people of the time were wholly focused on the shooting war, rallying behind Churchill in a common endeavour. They were not. The war was in many ways was seen as a portal, an opportunity for forging a new political settlement, with a huge amount of discussion and thought on that.

Different newspapers had different ideas, and - of those I have studied - the Mirror seems the most admirable ... writing with a degree of candour and honesty that was not seen elsewhere. That is why in October 1940, Churchill sought to have it closed down, and had to be dissuaded from trying to put a closure procedure into effect.

By and large, though, the newspapers were supporting the status quo - and especially Beaverbrook's Express. This was reflected in the way they presented the war. The lies, therefore, were in support not of the shooting war, but in the pursuit of the longer political agenda. That is as true today as it was then.

The leis they tell:

BBC program on Amazon Tribe in Peru was staged, fabricated and distorted
http://www.soundsandcolours.com/news/bb ... distorted/

Just like BBC Climate reporting and it's weather reports.

Man sets himself alight on court house steps. He wrote a statement, very long but well worth a read.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest- ... se-protest