41 beach, they often express thoughts like, “what were they thinking” and “how could anyone get off this beach?” It is difficult to understand today the realities, motivations, and pressures of eighty plus years ago. But hindsight is too easy. Any assessment of the Raid must consider the context of those earlier times and appreciate that Jubilee made sense, then, given the global realities faced by the British and ultimately her Russian then American allies in the last months of 1941 and the first part of 1942. The British had little good news in the months preceding Jubilee. In December 1941, the Japanese sunk the pride of the Royal Navy, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and her escorting battle cruiser HMS Repulse in the South China Sea. Two weeks later, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese and in February so too did Singapore. In the Atlantic, German U-Boats experienced their second “happy time” beginning in January. Over the course of the next seven months, they would sink 609 Allied ships totaling more than 3.1 Landing CraftMechanisedMark 1 returning from the beaches during the raid. Source: Imperial War Museum, Wiki Commons.
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