BRITAIN PREPARED

Evening Star, Issue 23375, 19 September 1939, Page 10

BRITAIN PREPARED

HER GREAT AIR STRENGTH RISK OF SURPRISE RAID REMOTE VIEWS OF MR H. TURNER “To anyone resident in England whoso business necessitated visits to Continental countries, particularly to Germany, it has been obvious that the breaking point must be reached and that the deciding factor would be Germany,” said Mr H. Turner, London manager of the New Zealand Fruit Board, to a ‘ Star ’ reporter this morning. Mr Turner has arrived in Dunedin on one of his periodical business visits.

“ Much has happened since 1 left London on August 4,” Air Turner proceeded, “ but even at that time preparations for the evacuation of children, invalids, and others from tho main cities were well under way. The balloon barrage corps, the anti-aircraft batteries, and the coast guards _ which warn the approach of enemy aircraft wore being rapidly manned to war strength, and the chances of a surprise raid on the outbreak of war were remote.

“ The present lull in tho extension of aerial warfare will have given the authorities time to complete their plans, and so far there has been no indication of Hitler carrying out one of the threats which it is said he made to Mr Chamberlain in September last year —namely, that he could send waves of 50 bombers and fighters against England every hour for 24 hours a day for a week without requiring to use tho saipe plane twice.” BRITAIN’S AIR STRENGTH. Tho actual strength of the British air arm is, of course, a close secret, said Mr Turner, but there seemed no reason to doubt the claim that if that arm wore required for defensive purposes only the chances of enemy airplanes eluding our planes would be reduced to a minimum. It had yet to be shown, however, that we had sufficient planes to do this and at the same time shoulder our full share in attack on the Continent.

That the production of planes is gathering bulk in snowball fashion was beyond question, while it may he assumed that Germany had already reached her peak in this respect. It was conceded that the British air fleet contained a much larger percentage of the latest improved types both in speed and armaments, at least one type of engine which was going into production developing 2,000 h.p. and likely to do over 400 m.p.h. in actual service.

During n visit to Paris a few days before Mr Turner left he was told that Britain was producing machines so fast that they were ahead of the supply of trained pilots and staff, while the reverse was the position in France, where the output of planes was below what the situation required; but production has been speeded up considerably. The demonstration flights which were made bv some hundreds of British planes over France were probably more than just that, and it was believed that a considerable proportion stopped in France to reinforce the French air strength.