[Rob Romero]

Larry,

It probably does give us some sense of the battle:

Whenever I hear of the Wellingtons and Me 110s at Heligoland Bight, my mind's eye envisions a night mission, not a brilliant sun-swept cloudless December sky. As I suspect the painting was officially commissioned during the lull of the "phony war" (before the great air battles to come that would make this seem like a skirmish in comparison) to commemorate this "great Nazi victory over interlopers daring to drop bombs on the homeland" and therefore based on reports and perhaps even some interviews, this painting probably gives us some sense of the conditions, the British formation, 6 O'clock High (not TOCH lol!) attack pattern chewing up the tail of the formation and the feel of the intensity of the fight at the height of the action, as well conveying to posterity a sense of the importance with which this event was viewed by most Germans and the Nazi Party in early 1940 (as suggested by the fact that this may well be one of the first "combat aviation art posters" ever printed). I think the formal yet casual/relaxed feeling 'celebratory' news conference photo I posted earlier up this page (post #25) also conveys some sense of the way this victory was viewed in official circles -I can not think of a similar photo pertaining to the Jagdwaffe in the entire war.

To me this may well an example of "hidden history" that one should always been on the lookout for, much in the way Heinrich Schliemann used Homer's Iliad to literally uncover the historical basis for the legend of the Trojan War -though I am open to being shown that my intuition in this matter is completely off base.