WAR TOPICS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 264, 29 January 1941, Page 6

WAR TOPICS

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i "~ HOW WE STRUCK ITALY BRITAIN'S FLEET AIR ARM . ' NEW SPECIALISED FIGHTER The crippling of the Italian Meet at Taranto is the second important British victory in the war. states Major F. A. '-lc V. lloberlson. V.D, < the authority on aeronautics. "The first, " he says, "was the de- ' feat of the German air attack on J Great Britain. The credit for the ; latter goes to the Royal Air Foicc, that for the former to the Fleet Air Arm. Only the Fleet Air Arm could have struck the Italian warships so liard, because only that body could have brought torpedoes within striking range of the enemy licet, and only torpedoes could have done such overwhelming damage. "The type of aircraft used in the attack was the Fairey Swordfish, ■which is known in the Navy as a T.S.R. machine. The initials stand for torpedo Spotter reconnaissance. As hanger space on an aircraft carrier is limited, the Fleet Air Arm cannot indulge in many specialist types of aeroplane. The Swordfish and the Albacorc arc both the T.S.R class; the Skua and the Roc (both products of 'he Blackburn firm), have "to combine the duties of fighter and dive-bomber. In addition, the wings of ship-borne aircraft (with the exception of the Sea Gladiator) have to fold back to save space in the hangars and on the lifts, and there are other requirements which tletract from their performance and make them/ class for class, inferior to shore-based machines. For this reason the Italians have never built carriers, reckoning that long-iangc bombers with bases on Sardinia, Pantellaria, and the Dodecanese, could cover the whole Mediterranean "However." says Major Robertson, "the Fleet Air Arm has recently acquired a specialist fighter, the Faiiey Fulmar, which is faster and altogether better than any other shipborne fighter. Already the Fulmar has been in action, and has shot down a number of Italian reconnais-

sance machines Avhich were trying

to shadow the British Fleet. If the Italians can he kept in ignorance of the movements of our warships, their task of getting supply ships across to Libya and the Dodecanese will become more hazardous even than it was before."

FIRE-BOMBS MAY. BURN OUT EUROPE With the Nazi fire-bomb onslaught on the City of London, and the R.A.F.'s devastating retaliatory raids on Bremen on three successive nights the air war has apparently entered a new and more terrible phase. The appalling effects of intensive concentrated incendiary raids are now apparent. The present campaign, if continued, must scorch and gut many European cities, and reconstruction, after the war, will take generations to accomplish. Incendiary bombing is not new. It has been carried out on a larije scale by both sides since, the "blitzkrieg" was unleashed against France And even before the war, firebomb devastation was recognised as an inevitable consequence if hostilities broke out. But it was not until the Germans launched their short, sharp', concentrated assault oil the combustible old business quarter that the fiery horror was properly understood. London Clearance. Twenty . thousand incendiary bombs crashed into Bremen, while smoke was still rising from the ruins caused by only about half that number in the City of London. German high-explosives and firebombs, and the work of dynaniife squads, have done for London lately things that her multitude of local authorities have long been procrastinating over. They have cleared the way for necessary reconstruction and wiped out much that wasn't creditable in the world's largest city. -(Continued foot next coiamn).

MAN IS MODEST HERO

STUCK TO HIS POST BLAZING SHIP THAT REACHED TORT After Hie crew ol' a bombed and blazing British ship bad taken to a lifeboat, the captain decided that bis ship still hod a fighting chance, recalled bis men, put the lire out, and brought his .ship home. One hero of this story is a coloured man, George Taylor, whose home is in Freetown, Sierra Leone,- on the west coast of Africa, With a bullet wound in one eye "and half-blinded in the othci, he stuck to the wheel on the bridge, obeying his captain's orders, as the slow-moving ship did her best L ° elude the raider. Taylor, one bright brown eye peering from a bandaged head, itsisted that he had done nothing. "Captain Thomas, my skipper, was great," he said in a Scottish eye hospital. "He did everything for the ship and her crew that any man could have done. If I can go back with one eye I'd | like to .sail with him again."

Carried! on For an Hour.

''For an hour wo dodged us the aeroplanes came tearing down to us with its machine gun rattling," Taylor said. It was at this point that he stopped a bullet and became a hero. Crouching on the deck clutching the spokes with one hand and I with his brain just able to interpret his captain's orders, he carried on for another hour. By that time the whole ship was blazing, and orders were given to abandon her. "We had one lifeboat and a dinghy left."; Taylor said. "Everyone got into the boat except the captain, the chief and second engineers, two radio men, the cabin boy and myself. Alter the. boat had got away! ? Captain Thomas inspected the damage, decided that his ship was not vet lost, and with a signal lamp itcalled the boat, A warship which had answered the ship's SOS before her .radio had been blown to pieces was told, "We are managing nicely, thank you, and do not require help.

CHEST, CHIN AND HOT AII| MUSSOLINI DESCRIBED Miussoliui wilt, not feel flattered at the way Mr/W. H- Hearst,, the American newspaper magnate, has described him. "Something of a four-flusher, like Louis Napoleon —ail gilt braid, cock feather's, and horse feathers," was Mr Hearst's summing up. "It takes more than, chin, chest and hot air to be a real leader," lie added. The Scripps-Howard newspapers in the U.S.A. are equally uncomplimentary, according to the 8.8.C. They describe Mussolini as "a laterday synthetic Caesar," and say that they would hats to be in Mussolini's place, A crop of caricatures of Mussolini and his Foreign Minister (Count Ciano) has appeared on walls in Milan and Rome. Italian newspapers also report the appearance of anti-Fascist postcis on billboards, and state that antiFascist pamphlet;; are circulating in Milan. But much of beauty and historic interest lias also gone—and London in the throes of war, scarred, grimy, patched up, and down-a-heel, is in no mood to contemplate amid the Avreckage the good that may ultimately come, of it. In "the city"—stronghold of regularity, orthodoxy, and hard-and-fast commercial customs —black-jac-keted business me p. and their staffs are suddenly faced with multitudinous problems of impromptu reorganisation. They arc keeping a good face on their losses, London's answer to the raid has been to strengthen the fire-fighting system, and if incendiary raids are repeated on the same scale there will be a more extensive and more efficient system of fire-spotting to minimise the