The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1940. NEW PHASE IN AIR WAR.

Evening Star, Issue 23677, 10 September 1940, Page 4

The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1940. NEW PHASE IN AIR WAR.

London* had long been prepared for the beginning of Germany’s air offensive, and its citizens were well braced to receive the impact of the accentuated assaults which came during the weekend. That, no doubt,* is partly why we now read with admiration of the extraordinary calmness and fortitude of the Londoners in their direst ho.ur of stress. To weigh the worst possibilities in such circumstances and formulate a code of conduct to meet them savours of wisdom and efficiency rather than pessimism. It is a precept that should be applied to every phase of the war and by every country of the British Empire. As long ago as July the air correspondent of tho ‘ Observer ’ wrote: “ If concentrated air attack is launched on a few objectives in these islands, tho Germans may be able to pour over bombers in such numbers that a great many of them will pierce the fighter and anti-aircraft gun defences. Concentrated air attack is very different from dispersed attack of the kind we have been having lately, for it aims, not at peppering a large area, but at blotting out a relatively small area. A port, with its surrounding buildings, or an armament works might be tho selected target.” With the reservations that the Germans over London are not scrupulous in their concentration on military targets and are by no means successful in the “ blotting out ” process, these observations have forecast fairly accurately this month’s developments in the enemy’s tactics. Mass attacks on the docks of London caused considerable damage, and in the densely populated areas in the neighbourhood there has been the heaviest loss of life yet recorded. It is encouraging to learn, however, that the Port of London is not immobilised, the principal discharging and loading berths being intact and work on the food services being maintained. Although it is probably true, as one authority points out, that Hitler, in his race against time, will use this month of September for rapidly recurring and more intensified assaults, it is also true that Great Britain has a genius for countering in the most effective manner possible any methods of attack the enemy chooses to adopt. All through the war Hitler's weapons, secret or otherwise, have been adequately parried by the British, and there is no reason to doubt that the nation so aptly described by Sir Robert Vansittart in a recent broadcast address as the “ Butcher Bird ” will continue to be thwarted at every turn in its campaign to assume ruthless world domination. It London has suffered, so has Goering’s air force. The enemy planes now in use are dropping heavier bombs than tho earlier raiders, and some of them are probably a larger typo of machine. Such factors do not take the sting out of the Royal Air Force fighter attack in the hours of daylight. It may well be said that the more thickly the enemy come the more thickly they fall, and Great Britain is so much further on the road to parity in air .strength. An analysis of the

statistics published recently in regard to losses of planes and production of new aircraft gives a convincing impression that one day’s output of British aircraft is more than sufficient to make up the average loss during a day of heavy lighting. From this it is safe to adduce that British fighter-pilots are not called upon to risk thoir lives in trying to save badly damaged machines. In fighting over their own soil, at any rate, the wiser course is to “ bale out,” and bo assigned in a very short time to a new Spitfire or Hurricane. The fact that German bombers and their crews are suffering much more severely is obviously causing grave concern in the Nazi High Command. Goering’s latest appointment as personal director of the operations from northern France can be accepted only as an indication that the enemy pilots are now expected to make thoir maximum effort and to try to end the war before autumn is over. Certainly it should be apparent that the afford for much longer to be regularly on the debit side of the ledger when losses are computed. And while all this is going on over England R.A.F. bombers are busy taking deadly toll of military objectives in Germany and German-occu-pied territory, hindering vital production, and most likely causing bewilderment among a people who had been led to expect a quick and easy victory.