AIR WARFARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 November 1941, Page 6

AIR WARFARE

REFUSAL TO ACCEPT LIMITATIONS. BRITISH COMMENTATOR’S VIEW. “In aviation nothing is impossible; that seems to me to be the outstanding lesson which every big action of this war has had to teach,” said Major Oliver Stewart in a recent broadcast talk. “From Poland to Crete every official and unofficial explanation of German successes has had some reference to the German use of aviation. Dive-bombing, parachutists, supply carrying by air, reconnaissance, troopcarrying gliders, low-flying attacks and so on. You can be practically certain

; that aeroplanes are always going to , play a big part and occasionally a de- . cisive part in every German offensive. The enemy’s successes have been achieved partly because he has taken for his theme that statement: in aviation nothing is impossible. And it is partly because we have been too eager to see the limitations of aviation and too slow to see its potentialities that' our men have so often had to rely upon their own personal courage to stand up against all kinds of aerial attack. So it is a useful tonic to look fairly frequently at the aeronautical possibilities in war and to try and see as far ahead as possible. After all, the history of new developments in machinery nearly always show that things

are started by some purely imaginative idea and that that sinks in and gradually leads to the practical realisation. Crete, there is no doubt about it, does show for the first time what can be done by air-carrying on an immense scale. It does show how the Germans squeeze all the possibilities out of aviation and by so doing steal a march on us. Henceforth we must refuse to accept any limitations to flying. We must push flying ahead until we are using it more boldly and more extensively than the enemy. We must make it carry not only military supplies of all kinds, but also food and men and fuel. If the Germans can short-circuit the sea and carry a division by air to Crete, we can use the air to supplement our shipping and to play a part in military transport.”