AIR ACTION
BRITISH ONSLAUGHT ON GERMANY
COMPARED WITH NAZI EFFORT A YEAR AGO.
AIR COMMODORE'S SURVEY. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. August 21. A comparison of the ILA.I* 1 , offensive this August with last August, when Britain was attacked by the whole Luftwaffe, was Ihe subject of a war commentary broadcast bv Air Commodore Goddard.
Air Commodore Goddard, who was giving his farewell broadcast —Group Captain Belmore will give the future air commentaries —said the Luftwaffe in the first three weeks of last August made 4009 Hights over Britain in daylight- . British air action over occupied territory and enemy shipping from Britain this August exceeded 4000 flights, wheras the British losses had been only a tenth of the German losses last year.
The British night effort, despite bad weather, had been more than double the enemy night effort last August. This did not mean that Britain had been attacking Germany itself as hard in daylight as the Luftwaffe hit England last August, since Britain had not had to re-learn the lessons of mass bombing in daylight, but these operations were helping to reduce Germany's capacity for the war against Russia and Britain.
Nevertheless, "though air action is swift, its effects are gradual," he said. "We don’t know what's going to happen next —nor does Hitler —but we do know that our prospects are very much better. We can look at the war more objectively—offensively from our point of view.”
Air Commodore Goddard said making people anxious was one of the main objects of aerial warfare, in which lie included bombing propaganda and gossip.
"Fortunately Hitler lias got his people to believe that Germany in 1918 went rotten inside under the stress of war with Britain before her armies were defeated." he continued. "They know he feared to fight us again. So there is plenty of reason for anxiety in Germany, and the seeds are sown. Air war succeeds by making people change their minds. The ideas which our bombs have got to hammer into the heads of the ’Goebbelised’ Germans are the ideas in the RooseveltChurchill declaration. If I am not much mistaken it will become the gospel of the German nation —and other nations, too, before the war is done. “Without the declaration our bombers were acting destructively; with it they act constructively. Maybe it will take a long time. But it has given us an aim which we must follow objectively with an offensive spirit. Meanwhile the Nazis are being constrained to face the music—a concerto in ’V’ sharp—performed by the band of brothers of the R.A.F."
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1941, Page 5
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428AIR ACTION Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1941, Page 5
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