SUPREME NEED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1942, Page 4

SUPREME NEED

OF ADDITIONAL PLANES FOR DEFENCE OF BRITAIN AND OVERSEAS. NEW MINISTER’S APPEAL. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.15 a.m.) RUGBY, February 23. A warning that the second Battle of Britain might start at any moment and on an even greater scale, was given by Colonel J. J. Llewellin, the new Minister of Aircraft Production, in a message to all men and women in the aircraft factories. Colonel Liewellin was urging that the production of efficient aeroplanes in large numbers was even more necessary this year than in the summer and autumn of 1940. “We now have more fronts to man,” he said. “Our own homes and factories must still be defended. The Royal Navy needs a larger air arm to work with the fleet, and the seas around our shores still have to be patrolled. Our Russian allies must have every aeroplane we can give them if they are successfully to carry on and complete their wonderful victory. The Dutch East Indies, Australia, New Zealand, India and Burma in their new peril plead for the products of your plants. The need for trainers is as insistent as it ever was, and the only way in which, for the time being, we can strike back from Britain at the heart of the enemy is by masses of bombers and masses of bombs. There are pilots waiting for planes to carry them on their great crusade. I know these pilots can rely upon you to deliver the goods, and that the country can count on each one to put forth his uttermost effort in its hour of need.”