BRITAIN READY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1941, Page 6

BRITAIN READY

PREPARATIONS FOR GERMAN RAIDERS GOOD USE MADE OF LULL. NEW DEVICES PERFECTED. LONDON, October 19. In Britain the sirens. have not sounded so often since Hitler turned on Russia, but no one in the British Isles is deluded into thinking he has heard the last of their disagreeable wail. We know they'will wake us 'y again before we are done with Hitler, I but we know, too, that their same old note will sound differently this year. They will sound different because we have not wasted our lull. We have used it to prepare, some sharp answers to night bombers. Here are three of those answers, or, as the Air Ministry prefers to call them, new devices: One is the heavier armament of our night-fighters. These are now equipped with cannon which is an answer to armour and incidentally to the selfsealing fuel tank. In future fewer raiders will limp home with just enough petrol. Further our nightfighter forces have increased not only in armament but in numbers. Defiams, Hurricanes, American Havocs and Beau-fighters, all of them are now lined up to meet the night intruder. Another new device is the improved quantity and quality of our antiaircraft fire. Compared with this time last, year we have hundreds per cent more guns arid more men to fire them. Londonders are warned to expect more noise and far more shell splinters than before. Marksmanship too has vastly improved. For instance, our gunners can now put out at once by shellfire flares dropped by the leading enemy pilots and statistics give an average of one aircraft shot down by gunfire for every 2.75 destroyed by fighters. And thanks to better instruments they are achieving these results on a decreasing expenditure of ammunition. A comparison between the number of rounds fired and the number of machines shot down reveals that in the last few months their aim.at night has become as good as was that by day a year ago. “If’ we represent the number of rounds required to bring down a plane last September by a token figure of 30,” recently said the Com-mander-in-Chief of the Anti-Aircraft Command,” that figure had fallen by November, 1940, to 18 and in recent heavy raids on a north-east town has been brought down to less than 1.”, Among many nevz devices aiding interception, radio location is the most far-reaching and fundamental. This radio echo device is capable of standing sentinel not only all over the country but beyond our shores. By day its task is to detect bombers and fighters on their way to this counter and to follow their course till thjgy come within range of the visual observers. By night its duties are heavier. It must not only warn of the approach but must check and track the raider throughout its course, thus enabling the ground stations to keep the pilot of the night-fighter informed of the enemy’s position. Hitler abandoned the daylight Battle of Britain when he had lost about a third of his attacking forces. His night losses during his last great raid on London (May 10) reached the peak level—so far—of 10 per cent of bombers engaged. Lined up behind their important new equipment is out’ hurrian elemerit pilots, gunners, radio locaters —each awaiting its chance to raise this percentage to breaking point. We have made good use of the breathing space which the Soviet’s magnificent resistance has allowed us. But this is no excuse for complacency. We need a greater drive for war production, and an ever-increasing flow of armaments. The issue lies with the people of Britain and the Commonwealth and people of the United States.