APPENDIX III
In the course of researching the Normandy campaign, the author encountered some differing views on the time being used by the various combatants. After extended study, and with help from many quarters, the following discoveries were made.
SUMMERTIME
The idea of changing the clocks in summer was first seriously raised in 1907 when William Willett, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, circulated a pamphlet ‘The Waste of Daylight’, proposing that clocks be advanced by twenty minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarded by the same amount on four Sundays in September. British time is regulated by Parliament, where this and further attempts to introduce such schemes met with ridicule and opposition, especially from farming interests. However, the pressure of modern war eventually tipped the scale, leading to the introduction of British Summer Time. In the summer of 1916 the clocks were advanced by one hour.
Following the outbreak of the Second World War, a further change to the British clocks was legislated, to take effect in May, 1941. To Greenwich Mean Time and British Summer Time (GMT plus one hour) was introduced the novelty of GMT plus two hours. On 18 April of that year, Sir Stephen Tallents of the British Broadcasting Company was moved to write to Sir Alexander Maxwell at the Home Office asking whether there was any official designation for what the BBC had informally been announcing as ‘Double British Summer Time’. In his reply of 21 April, Sir Alexander informed Sir Stephen that he knew of no official designation; nevertheless, ‘I cannot think of anything better than “Double British Summer Time”, which could not be said to run counter to any official description.’
1944
By 1944, the British had become accustomed to wartime daylight saving. ‘DBST’ began that year on Sunday, 2 April, with clocks advanced to two hours ahead of GMT. The British Army and the Allies in Europe used this time, as broadcast hourly by the BBC on 6195 kilocycles: Operational Orders for GOODWOOD as for other Normandy operations specify synchronization by ‘BBC time’.
Germany in 1944 based its clocks on Central European Time, ‘CET’ (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, ‘MEZ’) which was GMT plus one hour. Like Britain, Germany adopted daylight saving from 02.00 hours on 3 April: Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit (MESZ) was GMT plus two hours. Unsurprisingly, occupied France fell in line with this change, the clocks there also going officially to GMT +2 on 3 April.1
To confuse the issue slightly, Paris and other areas did not necessarily conform to the time standard, and there is evidence that ‘official’ time was not universally observed in France. Some rural and farming communities appear to have worked to sunlight time instead of clock-regulated hours. There is the famous example of the Gondrée café alongside Pegasus Bridge, whose plaque proudly claims it to be the first house in France to be liberated (which is true enough) ‘dans la dernière heure du 5 Juin’. While John Howard’s gliders timed their landing at a quarter-hour after midnight on the morning of Tuesday, 6 June, the Gondrées still thought it was Monday night.
ARMY SOURCES
In the majority of personal accounts of Operation GOODWOOD, apparently precise timings must be regarded with great circumspection. For a great many participants, the experience of 18 July began at dawn after a largely sleepless night and did not end until well after the end of a long summer day. In between there was little opportunity to consult a wristwatch and less to note the precise timing of events. Not surprisingly, a number of those timings in Allied and German accounts of the battle which are capable of being checked are discovered to be wild estimates – sometimes out by hours. Some war diaries have significant gaps at times of intense activity when no one was free to record events.2
However, it is useful to know that when dealing with reliable timings, British and Germans alike are working to the same clock hours. This is of particular importance when dealing with signals logs or with war diaries which have been composed using such logs as a guide. Where available, such documents can provide valuable frameworks around which less accurately timed accounts can be positioned.
16 SQUADRON
Some events not otherwise timed can be precisely placed by virtue of their being captured by aerial photography in the course of reconnaissance missions whose timings were accurately recorded. In the specific case of Flying Officer Wetz’s sequence of 18 July photographs, his times of departure from and return to Northolt are definitively logged. Combined with his precisely recorded route and estimated speed we can construct a reasonably accurate assessment of the timing of each of his nine photographic ‘passes’ over the battlefield. In terms of his log, there can be little doubt that he was present over the battlefield between 11.40 and 12.25 hours.
But even this record is problematic. Aircraft and shipping the world over nowadays use a common clock setting. This is a necessity both to avoid confusion of schedules and to avoid constant re-setting of clocks as time zones are crossed. This setting is variously known as ‘GMT’ (Greenwich Mean Time), ‘UTC’ (Universel Temps Coordonné), or simply ‘Zulu’ (indicating the letter ‘Z’ using the modern phonetic alphabet: ‘Z’ for the ‘zero’ meridian). In 1944, this convention was observed by the Royal Navy, and also widely by the Royal Air Force. But not universally. Many aircrews operating out of the United Kingdom logged their flight times using local time.
This realisation led the author to investigate whether 16 Squadron pilots operating from Northolt in the summer of 1944 used GMT (‘Zebra’, using the 1944 phonetic alphabet) or local time (DBST, two hours different). If the latter, then Mike Wetz was over the battlefield either side of midday, Army time; if the former, his pictures record events two hours later. After expert study of Mike Wetz’s photography, it was concluded that he must have logged his sortie using local time. Thus, his pictures reveal the stage the battle had reached either side of midday, Army time.
The conclusion is based on multiple clues on the ground. At Caen on 18 July, 1944, the sun rose at approximately 04.19 hours and set at 19.56, with zenith about 12.07 (all times GMT). Note that ‘daylight’ is widely assumed to commence thirty minutes before sunrise and end thirty minutes after sunset, giving a total of just under 17 hours ‘daytime’ on the first day of GOODWOOD. Shadows in Mike Wetz’s photographs consistently reveal the sun at least 30 degrees east of south. Therefore the recorded ‘mean time’ of the photography of 11.55 hours cannot be GMT, as GMT noon would put the sun almost due south. The earth rotates relative to the sun at 15 degrees per hour, so 30 degrees east of south would equate to two hours before noon. Therefore it is concluded that Mike Wetz was clearly over Caen two hours earlier than GMT noon, and that his flight was logged using local time, BDST.3
In other words, Mike Wetz’s aerial photography records the period either side of noon, as measured by all the combatants on the ground below. The author apologizes to readers for the complexity of the above. However, given the premise of this work that most written records of the battle contain ambiguities and errors, the value of hard, photographic evidence is paramount.
References
1
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) department of time; Ephémérides Astronomiques from Bureau des Longitudes.
2
Examples are very common and easily found. The War Diary of 3rd Royal Tank Regiment for 18 July begins to cause concern with an inexplicable entry as early as 08.00 hours. Following the 10.00 entry, the diary has no further entries until 14.00. Far from indicating a lack of activity, this absence of entries actually covers four hours of heavy fighting. On a wider scale, General Wolfgang Pickert, recording the story of his III. Flakkorps in Normandy, consistently records the GOODWOOD battle as beginning on 19 July.
3
For this and other discoveries related to aerial photography, the author remains indebted to Geoffrey Stone, who in July 1944 was an officer in 11th Armoured Division’s small but invaluable Aerial Photography Interpretation Section