Magic at War

"I am informed by the Fuhrer that the big rocket bomb weighs 14 tons. This, of course, is a devastating murder weapon. I suspect that when the first projectiles plunge down into London, the English public will panic." - Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister An hour before sunrise on 13 June 1944, two members of the Royal Observer Corps were on duty at their post on the top of a Martello tower on the seafront at Dymchurch in Kent, England. At that moment, they spotted the approach of a flying object spurting red flames from its rear  and with  the sound of a roaring engine. This was the  first V-1 (Fi 103) flying bomb to be released against Britain and it was rattling towards them. A week earlier, the D-Day and the Normandy landings, had signalled the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. Unkindly, just when the possibility of success and peace looked not too far away, Hitler's  Vergeltungswaffen 1 (German: Vengeance Weapon 1), known as the 'doodlebu...

A major base for the Royal Navy, Portsmouth was an obvious target for bombing raids by the German Luftwaffe. Between July 1940 and May 1944, the city endured 67 air raids. The raids killed 930 people, injuring many more. Over 6,500 houses were destroyed (nearly ten percent of the total) and a further 6,500 were severely damaged.  Bomb damage on Portsmouth Road in the Southsea area of Portsmouth (Source: Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery)  In one of the three major raids, on 10th March 1941, Ray Wickens was on duty with the city’s Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Casualty Service. Wickens was 32 years old and had served in the Casualty Service for one-and-a-half years. By day, he was an electrical salesman. By night, and at the weekends, he was normally a semi-professional magician. Wickens was a founding member of the Portsmouth & District Magic Circle, when it started in 1938.   Ray Wickens (Source: Portsmouth Evening News) On that night, German high-explosive and incendia...