AIR WAR OVER ENGLAND TESTS HER DEFENCES

Grey River Argus, 6 September 1948, Page 5

AIR WAR OVER ENGLAND TESTS HER DEFENCES

Manoeuvres Prove a Success '"(N.Z.P.A.—REUTER CABLE) (Rec. 8.30). LONDON, Sept. 4. Senior R.A.F. officers watching “Operation Dagger”—current mock air war—had already concluded that British air defences were sound, but they have been pleasantly surprised by the speed with which radar plotting enabled jet fighters to intercept fast, high flying modern bombers. The jets claimed many kills off the coast. The operations is one of the biggest exercises since the war, and began on Friday over the Midlands and Southern England. Several “engagements” took place, including a dog fight over the "Thames Estuary between Meteop jet fighters and American Superfortresses at 30,000 feet. The “Ops” room in Stanmore is that from which the Battle of Britain was directed. When the battle was resumed on Saturday afternoon, “Southland” started 'with a series of raids on East Anglia, then suddenly switched to a mass raid by Superfortresses on Lincolns, crossing the Channel to Dungeness. Then came another raid over the Lincolnshire coast. The raids varied from “saturation” to single aircraft intrusion. At times the whole of the exercise area was dotted with Southland bombers and Northland fighters. If SUPERFORTRESS CRASHES One of the American Superfortresses has already become a genuine casualty. Ten of its crew are known to 1 have survived.- One man is still missing. The bomber was one of the first wave of “Southland” raiders. It got into difficulties over Holland and nine members of the crew baled out, leaving the captain and the wireless operator to make an attempt to save the aircraft. Fire broke out in both wings and, when a propeller flew off, the two men also parachuted. The plane crashed in the Western Scheldt estuary, near The Hague. Some of the first nine men to jump were rescued from the Scheldt River. One of the survivors is in a critical condition. Weather experts forecast that operations to-night might have to be limited because of bad weather. A R.A.F. spokesman said that the AntiAircraft Command was successfully testing new methods of an early warning system, and engaging targets, necessitated by the great speed of modern aircraft. The Defence Minister, Mr A. V. Alexander, when visiting the Fighter Command headquarters at Stanmore, Middlesex, said:. “It is obvious that our communications, and the working of the early warning ‘raider’ system are in good trim”. Mr Alexander would neither confirm nor deny reports that American Superfortresses were coming to Britain in incieasing numbers, and probably remaining for a long time. ' . The Peace Pledge Union issued a protest that the “dreadful implication in the practice of the Battle of Britain is that our country is to be used as a base, and the battleground for World War Three. It is immoral to deceive people into believing there is any defence against saturation bombing, or any safety in the use of the atom”.