FIRST FAILURE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 92, 15 October 1940, Page 10

FIRST FAILURE

NAZI STRATEGY

A MAJOR DEFEAT

PLANS NOW RECAST

(Received October 15, 2.10 p.m.)

LONDON, October 14,

The importance of the Battle for Britain as a setback for the German plans was emphasised by Major George Fielding Eliot, a United States air expert, broadcasting from Philadelphia, when he said: "While immediate attention is now centred on the confused events in the Balkan Peninsula, the very fact that Germany is now proceeding to the scene of south-east Europe raises the question whether the Battle for Britain is being abandoned by Germany— whether the issue is not a clear-cut victory for the British, and particularly for the Royal Air Force.

"The evidence seems to many minds quite cleai* —that in this Battle for Britain Hitler has at last met with 'a major defeat," he said. "For the first time he has had to turn back from a venture upon which he had set, forth with every prospect of success. For the first time he has made boasts and announced intentions which he has been unable to make good. Naturally every effort will be made by the Germans to distract the attention of the world and the American people from this tremendous fact.

"The failure of the Germans to achieve air superiority over Britain has made invasion of that island a hopeless project. The Axis is now compelled to recast its whole plan of war, and no man would now be bold enough to say what the result will be. A long war has been precisely the sort of war that neither Germany nor Italy was prepared to fight.

"As far as the war in the air is concerned, the German mass production plan has failed."