GERMAN LOSSES IN FIGHTERS

Southland Times, Issue 24230, 13 September 1940, Page 5

GERMAN LOSSES IN FIGHTERS

“When I said in the House of Commons the other day that I thought it improbable that the enemy’s air attack in September could be more than three times as great as in August I was not, of course, referring to the barbarous attacks on the civil population, but to the great air battle which was being fought out between our fighters and the German Air Force,” said Mr Churchill. “You will understand that whenever the weather is favourable waves of German bombers, protected by fighters, often 300 -or 400 at a time, surge over this island, especially the promontory of Kent, in the hope of attacking military and other objectives in daylight. They are met by our fighter squadrons and are nearly always broken up. Their losses average three to one in machines and six to one in pilots.

dodging along from port to port under the protection of the new batteries the Germans have built on the French coast. There are now considerable gatherings of shipping in German, Dutch, Belgian and French harbours all the way from Hamburg to Brest. “Finally, some preparations have been made for ships to carry an invading force from Norwegian harbours. Behind these clusters of ships or barges there stand very large numbers of German troops awaiting the order to set out on a very dangerous and uncertain voyage across the seas. “We cannot tell when they will try to come. We cannot be sure that they will try at all. But no one should blind himself to the fact that a heavy, full-scale invasion of this island is being prepared with all the usual German thoroughness and method and that it may be launched at any time now upon England, upon Scotland, upon Ireland, or upon all three. LONG DELAY NOT EXPECTED

“This effort of the Germans to secure daylight mastery of the air over England is, of course, the crux of the whole war. So far it has failed conspicuously. It has cost them very dear, and we have felt stronger and are actually relatively a good deal stronger than when the hard fighting began in July.

“If this invasion is going to be tried at all it does not seem that it can be long delayed. The weather may break at any time,” he continued. “Besides this it is difficult for the .enemy to keep gatherings of ships waiting about indefinitely while they are bombed "every night by our bombers and very often shelled by our warships which are waiting for them outside. Therefore, we must regard the next week or so as very important weeks in our history. “They rank with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel and Drake was finishing his game of bowls or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon’s Grande Armee at Boulogne. We have read about all this in our history books. But what is happening now is on a far greater scale and of far more consequence to the life and future of the world and its civilization than those brave' old days. Every man and woman will therefore prepare himself to do his duty, whatever it may be, with special pride and care.

“There is no doubt that Hitler is using up his fighter force at a very high rate and that if he goes on for many more weeks he will wear down and ruin this vital part of his air force. That will give us a very great advantage. On the other hand, for him to try to invade this country without having secured mastery in the air would be a very hazardous undertaking.” GERMAN PREPARATIONS

“Nevertheless all his preparations for an invasion on a great scale are steadily going forward. Several hundred self-propelled barges are moving down the coasts of Europe from German and Dutch harbours to the ports of Northern France, from Dunkirk to Brest, and beyond Brest to the French harbours in the Bay of Biscay. Besides this convoys of merchant ships in tens and dozens are being moved, through the Straits of Dover into the Channel,