Cameras & Artists

Berlin's Illustrierte Zeitung last week got around to publishing the photograph purportedly taken by a Nazi fighting plane which followed a Nazi bomber in the first air raid on the Firth of Forth three weeks ago. A cloud of smoke was shown over the cruiser Edinburgh, described as a bomb striking the ship's port side aft of the second funnel. Official British account of the Firth of Forth raid maintained that Edinburgh was not hit directly, but suffered seven casualties when fragments flew aboard from bombs striking the water nearby. Where there is smoke there is not necessarily a hit, and the picture may have told the truth even if someone else lied.

Far more dramatic and specific than this blurry photograph was a series of drawings made by Artist Theo Matejko for the official German Army journal Die Wehrmacht. They represented "official German eyewitness accounts" of the bombing of Ark Royal during an air raid on the British Home Fleet in the North Sea last September. Official British report by Prime Minister Chamberlain: "No British ship was damaged. . . . All of them, Ark Royal included, are carrying out their normal duties, sublimely unconscious of these rumors."

Herr Matejko, an official Austrian staff artist in World War I, perfected his technique in the trenches and has again been given fullest scope for his talent by the German High Command. Possessor of a fluent romantic style, Theo Matejko works usually in charcoal. Aged 45, famed in Berlin as the driver of a white Mercedes racing car, he has flown this year with Nazi sea raiders but does not claim to have seen the alleged bombing of Ark Royal. This may account for considerable artistic license.

"Ark Royal" in the drawings might be the carrier Glorious: she is certainly not Ark Royal, which has a full flight deck. The escorting battleship, aside from being in an unlikely position (aft of the carrier instead of ahead, shielding her), resembles no known British ship (her two masts carry big fire-control tops at the same level).

Worst thing wrong with the pictures is that no plane on a carrier would be headed, as Artist Matejko's are, toward the ship's stern, either before take-off or after landing. They invariably land at the stern and take off at the bow in the same direction as the carrier is traveling, thus utilizing the carrier's ground speed to achieve their landing or take-off air speeds.

Released meanwhile in Berlin was a photograph of Pilot Carl Francke, "the German aviator who achieved the remarkable act of destroying an English airplane carrier in the North Sea, and who was decorated by Field Marshal Hermann Goring with the Iron Cross, first and second class, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant."

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