NAZI CONFIDENCE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 December 1939, Page 7

NAZI CONFIDENCE.

SHAKEN BY RECENT SEA LOSSES SIGNIFICANCE OF AIR BATTLES. EFFORT TO SAVE DIMINISHED FLEET. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, December 19. Informed circles in London regard the strenuous resistance made by the German fighters to the Royal Air Force reconnaissance yesterday as indicating an increas-; ed desire by the German High Command to preserve their diminished fleet. The Royal Air Force expedition had as its object the seeking out and destruction of enemy ships at sea, but the Germans had withdrawn their naval forces in an endeavour to protect them from discovery, leaving the passage of the Royal Air Force aircraft to be disputed by their fighters. In the severe fighting which followed, the determination and skill of the Royal Air Force personnel, resulting in the destruction of 12 enemy fighters for the loss of seven Royal Air Force bombers, demonstrated, as did last Thursday’s engagement, when five out of 20 Messerschmitts were destroyed at a cost of three Royal Air Force machines in a 40 minutes fight, the superiority at present held by the Royal Air Force. It is recognised, however, that no accurate conclusion on the comparative strengths of the fighters and bombers can be obtain until large-scale operations have taken place, though the success so far attending Royal Air Force fighters, when driving off enemy bomb raids, may prove in the future to be a link in a chair of evidence favourable to the Royal Air Force. That the recent loss of German warships has shaken German confidence is to be expected, and authoritative London circles believe that the grosslyexaggerated claims made by the German Government represent an attempt to counteract the impression made on the German public by the loss of the Admiral Graf Spee. The news of this could not be suppressed or minimised, as was the case in less universally known German defeats. The same interpretation is put on a German story of an air battle of Sylt yesterday. which, in fact, never took place, though it is true that unmolested Royal Air Force patrols over that and the south Friesian Islands were almost continuously carried out on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday of last week. These patrols, it seems, had the effect of keeping German seaplanes fixed to their base, because since they began no enemy seaplane has approached the British coast. . Whatever the future may hold, it is beyond dispute that British sea patrols are gaining valuable experience, which will be put to good use.