August 31st, 1941 (SUNDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Grave doubts about Bomber Command's claims of damage done to enemy targets are prompted by a new analysis of photographs of the targets. This is made by D.M.D. Butt, a civil servant member of the war cabinet secretariat.
Butt examined 633 flash photographs taken from aircraft at the time of bomb release. On 100 separate raids against 28 targets on 48 nights during June and July. He allowed as a hit any bomb falling within five miles of the target area: a zone of 75 square miles. He found that on average only one bomber in three got hits within the zone. In the industrial Rühr, the ratio lengthened to one in ten. Aided by a full moon, two out of five scored, but so did the enemy, for the better light aided night fighters. Since these figures excluded aircraft which did not find or attack the target area (and many did not), the proportion of hits to total sorties was well under one in three. The prime minister has said that the report demands urgent attention. Air Vice Marshal Robert Saundby, a senior air staff officer, accepted the report, but said that Butt's figures "might be wide of the mark."
FINLAND: After discussing with Marshal Mannerheim and Lt. Gen. Walden (the Minister of War) about the German request that Finland take part in the capture of Leningrad, President Ryti gives his permission that the Finnish troops can cross the pre-1939 border in Karelian Isthmus with few kilometres. The condition is that the Germans deliver 25 000 tons of rye. Mannerheim informs General Erfurth, the OKW representative, the next day.
The Finns learning of the withdrawal of eight Russian divisions from the Karelian Isthmus to bolster the defences of Leningrad, have made a rapid advance to the village of Kivennapa, on the Leningrad to Viipuri road.
They have thus recovered almost all the territory that they lost to the Russians in the "Winter War" last year. The Russians have abandoned, or been forced out of their fortifications based on the former Finnish defences of the Mannerheim Line, and have taken up new positions in the Stalin Line across the isthmus north of Leningrad.
SWITZERLAND: Cheese rationing is introduced. (More holes).(William Jay Stone from http://www.geschichte-schweiz.ch/en/worldwar2.html)
U.S.S.R.: Ukraine: German forces starting to run short of manpower and supplies, face a renewed Red Army offensive along the Dnepr river.
Leningrad: Field Marshal von Leeb is tightening his grip on Leningrad. The Red Army has abandoned Novgorod, 100 miles south of the city after a savage week-long battle, and tonight Moscow Radio admits "the enemy is at the approaches of Leningrad." In the city posters proclaim: "The enemy is at the gates."
But the autumn rains have started early turning the battlefield into a quagmire, halting the Panzers and grounding the Luftwaffe. The Russians are using the respite to turn the city into a fortress. Shop windows are full of sandbags, militia units march through the streets and every gate is guarded.
Everyone is expected to fight. Andrei Zhdanov, the city's Communist Party secretary, says: "We must dig fascism a grave in front of Leningrad."
Large fires started in the city by General Wolfram von Richthofen's Fliegerkorps VIII are being fought by action groups organized by Zhdanov.
Special teams have also been organised to safeguard Leningrad's treasures. Fire units are based on the city's beautiful Tsarist palaces and churches, now kept as museums, ready to deal with incendiary bombs. The priceless painting of the Hermitage are already safe. An armoured train took 500,000 of the finest works to safety as the threat to the city developed.
Today, 70 days after the outbreak of war on the Eastern Front, the first Allied convoy, code named Dervish, arrives in Archangel, USSR. Convoys continued until the end of the war and succeeded in delivering almost a quarter of all war material received by the Soviet Union during the War.
NEWFOUNDLAND: Corvette HMCS Prescott arrives St John's to join NEF
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Admiral Hart has advised British Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, Commander of the RN's East Asia Squadron, that Washington was refusing to endorse proposed British plans for Allied cooperation should war come. (Marc Small)
British Air Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, commander of the garrison in Malaya and Singapore, has made two visits this month to Manila to confer with Hart and MacArthur. (Marc Small)
U.S.A.:The radio show "The Great Gildersleeve" debuts on the NBC Red Network on Sundays at 1830 hours Eastern Time. The show is a spin off of the "Fibber McGee and Molly" show and stars Harold Peary as Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, a windbag, a most eligible bachelor, a bumbling-but-enthusiastic ladies' man and the water commissioner of the town of Summerfield.