WAR IN THE AIR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 December 1939, Page 7

WAR IN THE AIR

SIR KINGSLEY WOOD’S SURVEY RESULTS OF EXTENDED TEST ENCOURAGING. MORE STRENUOUS CHAPTER ANTICIPATED. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.55 a.m.) RUGBY. December 12. The Air Minister. Sir Kingsley Wood, in his first statement on the war in the air since October 10, noted the new phase in air warfare which began on October 16, with a raid on warships in the Firth of Forth by enemy aircraft. Since that date, though there have been no great air battles, there has been steadily increasing activity Sir Kingsley Wood said: “We have had to deal with a series of reconnaissances and raids, some by single aircraft and some in force, and we have thus been able to test out the strength of our defences and the efficiency of our organisation. We also have been able to try out. both in Britain and in France, our aircraft in combat with the enemy. The results and the conclusions which we have been able to draw from them, though of necessity- provisional, are certainly encouraging. We have been able to satisfy ourselves by actual operations that the various elements of our air defence—anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, fighter squadrons, balloon barrages for close defences and units of the observer corps—have been successfully welded into an efficient and adaptable system under the operational control and command of one commander-in-chief." Sir Kingsley Wood expressed great satisfaction with the results 'of this system of unified control and added. “This phase of the war in the air may be drawing to a close and we must be prepared to face, perhaps soon, perhaps in the spring, another and more strenuous and difficult chaptet.