ENEMY SHIPPING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 129, 14 July 1941, Page 5

ENEMY SHIPPING

ATTACK MOUNTING March 12 was the opening clatfj for a parallel onslaught on th* enemy's shipping which, owing to lack of rail facilities now tries To creep along hi;?* Channel ancl North Sea Coasts, delivering war supplies to the so-called invasion ports ai\<i returning with plundered foodstuffs foT Germans. Up to June 10, 1941, we had accounted since the beginning of the war for 3,211,000 tons of enemy shipping. Of this total 911,000 tons, ox not less than 29 per cent was sunk in the ten weeks) March 25 to Juno 10 alone—that is in ten, weeks witli coincided with the R.A.F.'s new onslaught in northern waters. The Nazis are perturbed it this mounting volume of attack in the; west.,. They know that the spectra of a war on two fronts frightens the German people and they are trying to conceal it from them —particu* larly from the clandestine listeners to thei 8.8.C. Firstly they arc pounding with redoubled severity on tliesa "radio criminals"; secondly, since this deterrent seems; insufficient they are trying to confuse the issue by exactly reversing in ;their, own bulletins the scores previously announced over the ,air from London. Take the. following from amon« many similar examples: June 26, S a.m. British morning press and bulletins give the air battle; score for June 16—26 as 13(5 to 10 in Britain's favour. The same day at 4.30 p.m. th<» German High Command communique broadcasts the figure 136 as tl\« number of British planes destroyed since June 15. The same day at 9.45 p.m. the German radio announces that "The English themselves have admitted the loss of 136 planes, in one week/' The Nazi hope is that the furtive listener to the 8.8.C. on hearing German radio blare out the identical figure will assume that he must have misheard the London announcer But London announcers are wise to this device and have exposed it-To-day the German people is realising that. Britain's! hammer blows in the west are forcing the Reich one* again to fight on the dreaded two fronts. Constant Nazi broadcasts protest that the Third Reich, unhko its predecessor, can manage both at once. "Even the momentous in the East cannot prevent the German nrrned forces from prosecuting the fight against England." (Ger man home broadcast June 28). The very frequency of this assertion—it has been reriterated severa! times daily in the German hom-3 programme of the week under review—merely serves to demonstrate I the nation-wide re-birth of an ok' and justified fear.