WAR SURVEY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1940, Page 8

WAR SURVEY

LESSONS OF LOW COUNTRIES CAMPAIGN

AIR MARSHAL’S BROADCAST. COURAGE OF THE DUTCH AND BELGIANS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 23. Air Marshal Joubert de la Ferte. broadcasting, said the great lesson of the attack on Holland was that we should be prepared against surprise attacks by troops parachuted and landed in troop-carrying aircraft. In Holland the Germans used up these aircraft and crews in a lavish way. As long as soldiers were landed successfully the Germans apparently did not care what happened afterward. Leases to thepe troop-carriers were very heavy, not only from air attack and by sea bombardment as they lay on the Dutcn beaches, but also from crashes in landing.

The Dutch fought most gallantly, but they were prevented from making successful resistance by a swift heavy blow dealt at the heart of their country, and we could not go to help them till they asked for our assistance. The Allied line east of Brussels was threatened by the events in Holland. Allied air forces did their utmost to arrest the German thrust, and made most determined and gallant attacks, which made possible the orderly withdrawal of the French and Belgian forces.

This movement toward the French frontier, which was still going on, had been supported in every way by the Allied air forces. Indeed the small Belgian air force had shown prodigious courage, of which the Air-Marshal gave an instance.

A Belgian major was taking off from an aerodrome when he was attacked by a German fighter. Very serious damage was inflicted on his aircraft. It was obvious that the crash was only a question of seconds, so, without a moment’s hesitation, he swung the aircraft straight at the German fighter and collided with it. A tangled mass of wreckage fell to the ground. Out of it alone stepped the Belgian major, limping from a sprained ankle. FRONTAL ATTACKS REPELLED. The withdrawal in Belgium was not forced on the Allies by the German troops before them. French light tank forces had most successfully fought with heavy German mechanised columns, and, whenever an encounter was made, the Germans got the worst of it. Unfortunately the situation in the south had become more threatening. The river front, believed to be very strong, was penetrated by Germans. The rate of withdrawal there forced us to attempt to perform that most difficult of evolutions—a flank march in the face of the enemy.

Speaking of the effect of the air force’s attack on enemy communications, Air-Marshal de la Ferte said prisoners captured within the last two days were very exhausted. They had been three days without food because of dislocation of their supply system. THE HUMAN FACTOR.

That the situation was most serious none could deny. The history of the last 12 days in the air, however, was one of small, highly trained and courageous forces taking on with the utmost enthusiasm immense masses of the enemy, both in the air and on the ground. Whenever tne R.A.F. met Germans in a fair fight, that was to say, one British aeroplane to three or four Germans, victory had been on our side. We had been rather obsessed by Germany’s industrial power and ability to turn out an immense number of aircraft. What neither she, nor any other nation could do was go on producing trained crews at the rate which they had been lost by her in recent fighting. Our bomber losses had been successfully made up, and though we had lost a number of fighter aircraft, losses in trained pilots had not been severe, and also had been made up. Above all the spirit had been made up. Above all they would take on Germans on the same terms as before.