NOTES ON THE WAR

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3267, 24 May 1943, Page 7

NOTES ON THE WAR

DESTRUCTION OF DAMS A SOLAR PLEXUS BLOW SINKING OF HOSPITAL SHIP The destruction of the great Ruhr dams by the R.A.F., first announced on Tuesday, remains the most important item of news. It is the heaviest single blow yet dealt by the R.A.F. to the Axis war machine. Evidence accumulates that the blasting of the three big dams in the Ruhr is among the greatest achievements of the R.A.F. Bomber Command and the heaviest blow struck against Germany’s -war machine. No one night of bombing has produced such a wide and- heavy effect. However successful direct bombing of individual factories may be, the results are limited to the section of industry attacked. But the cutting off of the main water supply to the whole Ruhr district means that industry is crippled, if not completely stopped. Water is the life of industry. The wrecked dams ' impounded water which was used for the generation of electric power; but the loss of this power is not fatal, for the German electricity system is only partly hydraulic; there is a great supply of current from steam plants located- in the brown coal ai’eas. But the water was absolutely essential for other industrial purposes. Every steam plant requires, for the. condensation of the steam, far more water than g-oes into the boilers, and to cut off the condenser water is as effective in crippling the plant as to put out the fires. Great quantities of water are used, in other ways in heavy industries and especially in chemical works. On top of this are the normal needs of the civil population. Long-Term Crippling The Mohne and Eder dams are of concrete and the destruction of such dams by explosives is recognised to be difficult and chancy; but enough damage was done to release the water behind them. The other dam, at Sorpe, was built of earth, and, being 200 feet high, was an unusually big one of its type. -Such a dam ismore easily destroyed, because once a breach is made in the top the. escaping- water soon completes the work, and the Sorpe dam is probably more completely ruined than the others, and far less rapidly restorable. In any case, it is stated, the prompt reconstruction of the dams would still leave the district without water till next year, because of the time required for the streams to fill the storage space above them. .

The raid on the dams is a new style of bombing operations, and the deadliness of the attacks indicates the skill with which they were planned as well as the gallantry of the men who carried them out. It is a fresh contribution to the policy of strategic bombing—the crippling, one after another, of the enemy’s principal means of producing war material. Carried to an extreme, which, of course, is impossible, the policy means reducing Germany to a disarmed nation. If that is impossible, it is still theoretically possible to bring Germany into such a condition that it cannot replace losses and expenditure that heavy fighting entails.

The seriousness of the loss of the Ruhr reservoirs to Germany may be realised from the fact that in Southeast Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, Britain’s, greatest single industrial area, almost every valley in the Pennine Watershed-, on both sides, and in' the Peak -District of Derbyshire, is dammed, and huge areas of water impounded, mainly for industrial purposes. In addition, disused mine-workings are used in many places as underground reservoirs. Hospital Ship Sunk

So far as recollection' goes, the Centaur, torpedoed' with great loss of life off the Queensland coast by a Japanese submarine, is the first hospital ship to be sunk deliberately by ■enemy action in this war. The immunity of hospital ships, properly dis inguished by being painted white outside, with a horizontal band of green and red cross markings, from attack or capture, is covered by a convention of in'ernational law, signed by leading Powers at the Hague Conference, 1899. It •. extended to mari ime warfare the principles of the Geneva Convention of 1864. In the Great War of 1914-18 several Allied ships were sunk in defiance of the Convention. Here are some: 191C—PortrJgal, in' the Black Sea (March 30); Britannia, in the Aegean (November 20);. Braemar, in the, Aegean (November 24). 1917—Asturias, torpedoed (Marjh 20-21). 1918—Llandovery Castle, sunk i,y

submarine, June (announ c'd July 1). The Marquette, torpedoed in the Aegean (October 26, 1915), with the loss of New Zealand personnel, including nurses, was describe<l as a British transport and was therefore not exempt from attack. On November 17 of the same year the hospital snip Anglia was by a m.ne.