WAR TOPICS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 239, 18 November 1940, Page 2

WAR TOPICS

THE MAKING OF A FIGHTER

One of the most significant decisions of British pre-war air policy was to arm fighter planes with eight guns. That decision was up till recently wrapped in mystery. But now the story has been told'. It appears that five years ago a specialist officer of the Royal Air Force visited an aircraft factory to discuss a secret specification drawn up by the Air Staff for the provision of a single-seat fighter of a type and armament greatly above anything known. Six or eight guns was the aim,, and the speed was to be 350 miles an hour.. This craft was designed to be a reply to the fast bombers which Germany was known to be building. The creation of a new type of aeroplane, as is generally realised to-day, is a long and complex affair, and to get this design off the drawing board and make machines would take much time. A year or more must pass before the new machine went beyond the prototype stage. Production would probably need another two years, in the existing state of organisation of the aircraft industry.

Meantime Britain's fighters would actually be slower than the new German 1 bombers. This was a serious situation. At the works the officej* was shown a new high-speed monoplane developed and built as a private venture by the Supermarine Aviation Works (Vickers), Ltd. If was planned to fit it with only four guns, and it had a lower performance than that asked for in the specifications; but the plane had all the essentials of a first-class fighter, and the R.A.F. officer wondered whether it could be modified and much precious time saved. Co-oper-ating with the designer, the late R. J. Mitchell, the problem was worked' out. Mitchell said the thing could be done. The report was made to the Air Ministry and what Sir Archibald Sinclair has called "one of the great decisions in the history of the Avar" was taken. The order was placed and the eight-gun Spitfire was born. The Hurricane. At the same time the Hawker firm was asked to produce a fightei to the same specification. Here again there was close co-operation between the Air Ministry and the aircraft industry. A privately-produc-ed design, the four--gun Hawker Fury, Avas taken as the basis of the new plane. The armament was doubled and moved to the wings, a more powerful engine was specified, and other modifications were made. To Mr Sydney. Camm, chief designer for Hawker Aircraft, Ltd., went much of the work that Avas done, and the result was"'the eightigun Hurricane. This plane has shared Avith the Spitfire the honour of beat ing back the bombers which tried to force their Avay over Britain in mass formation, has outmanoeuvred and outfought the German protect ing planes, and ha!s given British pilots the chance to demonstrate

that the boasted German skill in creating engines of war is eclipsed by the people of the British Isles.

NEWS AND THE TRUTH The R.A.F. wins an air battle; immediately, long before the facts have been collected, the Nazi news machine flashes out to the world the fantastic story of another British defeat in the air, British planes destroyed by the hundreds. Britain cowering in terror, writes Kenneth Richmond in the Spectator. In five or six hours—and this is quick work—Ave collect and put on the air such facts and figures as have by then been property ascertained: more complete results are issued after a further six, twelve,, eighteen hours, and -the truth of the relative losses (excluding the many unverifiable enemy losses of crippled planes) has gone out to the world. If it were a wholly rational world that we have to supply with inform mation, . this cold douche of fact, verified in due course by the reports of independent observers, would soon extinguish the blaze of propagandist lying which at first flares out in the headlines of the press in friendly countries, and radiates from their transmitting stations. Ration,-

al people in control of information very naturally expect the truth to prevail and, in the long run, are largely justified in their expectation

BRITAIN AND AMERICA Never again presumably will a statesman in Britain find it necessary to urge good relations with the United States, not for the excellent reasons which govern those relations now but because, as Haldane noted 35 years ago, "it will have to be recognised frankly that the United States will shortly be in such a position that we shall be quite unable to hold cur own against them In the Western Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea." The decision taken in the matter of bases w T il! put an end for 99 years—which should mean for all time —to any question of competition in the West crn Atlantic. And though an American naval officer would still probably be hauled over the coals if he committed another ""indiscretion" like that of the future Admiral Sims Avhen he said at the Mansion House that if ever England Avere menaced by a foreign PoAver "you may count upon every ship, every dollar, every man, and every drop of blood of your kindred across the sea," that is nearer the sentiment of to-day than the anxious calculations of the politicians of 1905.

YOUNG DOCTORS' FINE WORK Young naval medical officei*s, of whom many are dominion students, are daily performing skilful service under the most dangerous and arduous conditions. These younger men —the surgeon lieutenants — have seen the majority of naval action since the war started, as they serve in destroyers and trawlers which had been "in the .thick of it."

Their work is described by a highly-placed medical authority as magnificent. He cited the case of a surgeon-lieutenant fresh from the university who found 50 injured British sailors dug in in the snow in Norway, 40 miles from the nearest village. He got the party to Liverpool without loss.

Another youngster, with a sublieutenant acting as 1 , anaesthetist and a stoker as a nurse successfully operated while a was travelling at full speed, rather than amputate.

"From the small ships to the large ones, from the Arctic to the tropics, the health of the navy gives no sort of worry. It is. simply excellents" said the authority.

"JEWLESS PEACE" IS NAZI PLAN FOR EUROPE Jews in Germany were recently forbidden to use telephones except for calls to doctors and hospitals, ordered to remove red crosses painted on their hospital roofs as protection from bombing, forbidden to enter stores and markets except between 4 and 5 p.m. Das Schwarze Korps, mouthpiece of Heinrich Himmler's Gestapo;, proclaimed that Hitler's gift to Europe will be a "Jewless peace." "As soon as the last Jew is driven out of Germany the rest of Europe, which is awaiting a German peace, may know this peace must be one without Jews . . . Germany's and Italy's victory will secure space far away from European labour and culture where the scum of humanity may try to lead a life of its own toil or die a death it earned." Nazi Jew-haters have long studied the globe, picking out other people's colonies as a home for Europe's Jews. Madagascar stands high on the list. Australia, its Anglo-Saxon population moved to Canada and its great central plain irrigated with Jewish millions,, has been considered. Even Alaska has heen mentioned as the new Jerusalem,. Hinting at tough measures to come, the Himpiler organ warned: "The European Jewish question is not to be solved through homeopathic remedies and not by . . , humane directions."