THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, September 10, 1940. WAR IN THE AIR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24399, 10 September 1940, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, September 10, 1940. WAR IN THE AIR

Experience in the air battles tought over London and the Thames estuary during Saturday and the early hours of Sunday morning must have again demonstrated to the Nazis that if they are to sustain the pressure of assault on Great Britain they must be prepared to accept losses so disproportionately heavy as sooner or later to be exhausting to themselves. The German claim is that 500 machines were sent over in the raids which were concentrated on London. The official report of the British Air Ministry, in which we may place implicit reliance, is that one-fifth of these were shot down, either by fighter patrols;, or by the ground defences at, apart from other material damage, . a cost of 22 British machines missing. The British losses of planes were confined entirely to types carrying a pilot only, whereas the enemy machines carried crews of from two to four men, according to type. The German losses in personnel' must therefore , have doubled, even .trebled, themselves in ratio to the number of planes definitely, recorded by the British authorities as having been shot down. On this basis, it is a reasonable conclusion that some 250 enemy airmen -were accounted for in this massed onslaught ,on London, as compared with 14 of the 22 British airmen who, at the last count, had failed to return. There were other figures supplied in yesterday's news which may be classed as distinctly heartening. Between August 30 and September 5 no fewer than 371 raiders were brought down during attacks on Great Britain, and the official estimate of the enemy losses in personnel since June 17 is more than 4000 airmen—a figure which, in all probability, does not allow in full for losses sustained in the week-end activities. Thus, in attempting to pave the way for invasion of England by large-scale attack from the air, Herr Hitler is seen to have undertaken a stupendous task. Against the staunch breakwater of British resistance he will. doubtless continue to hurl his formidable forces. Yet, if experience has proved anything at all so far, the- strength of the vaunted Luftwaffe will be spent in vain.

Considering the devices that might be employed by Herr Hitler as a preiude to invasion, The Times last month said that although, he might judge it impossible at a single blow to cripple the Royal Air Force-—"the linchpin of our system of defence"—the Fuhrer might nevertheless flatter himself that it was hot beyond his gigantic resources to do so by means of a series of deliberate attacks of a strength and violence far transcend' ing any yet witnessed. The fierce assault last Saturday on the metropolis was perhaps, then, only the beginning of drama on an olympian scale. " Let it be said at once," The Times went on, -" that we are as ready for one method of attack as for the other, and, while fully conscious that Germany never strikes unless she strikes hard, quietly confident that we can repel either." Those brave words have already stood the test of trial. London has endured her worst week-end of the war, but fire has not robbed the steel of her spirit of any of its temper. The enemy, moreover, himself paused after .the'furious effort of Saturday's night hours, whereas he might have been expected to maintain his pressure without any time lag, if he possessed the reserves of men and machines at hand to enable that deadly strategy to be employed. If we look for a moment at figures in relation to aircraft production it may be possible to appreciate the magnitude of the undertaking to which the Fuhrer has set his hand and see the direction from which his doom is approaching. At the beginning of August the journal Aeroplane—and there is none that is better informed in England—did not hesitate to credit Germany with a definite advantage in numbers of machines possessed. Having that present advantage, said the Aeroplane, the Nazis would be almost certain to.make an effort to win the war before the winter. If they failed in that—and we have now some right confidently to anticipate failure—the real contest, argued the Aeroplane, would be between the combined aircraft industries of Great Britain, the Empire and the United States on the one hand and Germany, with such help as she could force out of conquered nations, on the other. The Aeroplane gives Germany a production rate of 1800 planes of all types a month, and sets against that fact the certain knowledge—lately again emphasised by Lord Beaverbrook—that our own rate of production has already been' expanded to a figure in excess of Germany's. On top of that we have the steadily increasing flow of machines from the United States and Canada, and the growth of output in Australia. We have also the vast Empire training scheme by which pilots, gunners, navigators and ground units will continue to be turned out in their thousands —a fact impressively illustrated in the report that in the past two months the number of airmen in training in Canada has increased by 79 per cent. The Dominion—and the Americanbases of manufacture are free from the threat of interference, while in England the enemy has clearly had surprisingly little success in his efforts to impede industrial production and damage vital airports. On the other hand, we know that night

after night, week after week, the bomber squadrons of the R.A.F. are harassing the enemy on his own ground, attacking shipping, barges, advanced oil stores, aerodromes, aircraft factories, electric installations, synthetic benzine refineries, railway marshalling yards and scores of other concentrations and" establishments of critical importance to a nation at war and already feeling the relentless squeeze of the blockade. It is a cheering and indisputable fact that we are fully prepared to give the Fuhrer the long war which he dreads. It is another fact that the strength of British purpose has never been so great as at this very moment, when the cacophony of war is at its most hideous pitch over the normally peaceful fields and towns of England. They will be peaceful again, when Hitlerism and all that it connotes have been swept into the-abyss that even now may be opening to receive them.