READERS' REACTIONS
Dartmouth Conspiracy was first published in 1999. Shortly after the first edition came out I was delighted to get letters from people who had enjoyed the book - some of the letters contained information about the raid on Dartmouth and revealed many interesting facts.
|
|
The Only College Casualty WRNS PETTY OFFICER ELLEN WHITTALL
My mother saw policemen breaking into the house next door. The occupant had been killed while on duty at the college.
Her nephew kindly sent me this picture of Ellen Whittall standing outside her house, the one next to ours. |
A Reader's Letter
This letter came from a retired naval officer who was a Dartmouth cadet. He agrees with me that the RAF must have had Intelligence about the raid and had positioned a squadron of twelve Spitfires at the right place and at the right time for an effective attack on the six Luftwaffe raiders.
Another Revealing Letter
It seems that the Luftwaffe obtained their information from German naval cadets making a "good-will" visit to Dartmouth in 1936.
|
On a recent visit to Britannia Royal Naval College I was given a copy of this photograph from the college magazine. It shows the sail-training ship Gorch Fock leaving Dartmouth in the summer of 1936 after German cadets and crew had been invited on a good-will tour of Britannia College. Did they return to Germany with vital information about where the British cadets would be gathered on the first day of term? Perhaps they did - but the attack by six Focke-Wulfs in 1942 was badly timed - they were a week too early, the College was on leave.
