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Arthur David Waley; Vita Sackville-West; Sir Osbert Sitwell; Edith Sitwell; Walter de la Mare

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Arthur David Waley; Vita Sackville-West; Sir Osbert Sitwell; Edith Sitwell; Walter de la Mare

by Unknown photographer
bromide print, 14 April 1943
6 3/8in. x 9 1/2in. (162 mm x 240 mm)
Photographs Collection
NPG x45793

Sittersback to top

Artistback to top

Placesback to top

Events of 1943back to top

Current affairs

The War effort continues with women recruited to the Home Guard and Ernie Bevin introducing conscription of miners as coal output continues to flag.
There is panic when a new anti aircraft weapon is heard for the first time in London and 173 people die in the crush to enter an air-raid shelter at Bethnal Green tube station.

Art and science

Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb is used during Operation Chastise - the Dam busters Raid - to destroy three dams in the Ruhr area of Germany. The raid was considered a success, knocking out hydroelectric power, cutting off the water supply to industry and causing devastation through flooding. The operation also, however, cost the allies many lives, and the bouncing bomb was not used again.

International

The invasion of Sicily is successful thanks to Operation Mincemeat, in which false documents were planted on the body of a dead airman to mislead Germany into thinking that the Allied target was Sardinia. The invasion led to the fall of Mussolini and Italy joining the Allies.
42,000 German civilians are killed in a firestorm in Hamburg caused by the Allied bombing in Operation Gomorrah.

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