NAZIS WHINING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 May 1942, Page 3

NAZIS WHINING

UNDER BLOWS OF BRITISH AIRCRAFT

REMINDERS BY HOME SECRETARY HEAVY ENEMY LOSSES. IN RECENT “REPRISAL” RAIDS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 2. The Home Secretary, Mr H. Morrison, said that the way the civil defence workers of London defied the heaviest and most sustained aerial bombardment ever directed against one city during 1940-41 had astonished not only Britain’s friends but also the enemy. Hitler and Goering had hoped to break Londoners’ hearts, but the defence broke their hearts instead, if only for the time being. They had admitted giving up the attacks as a bad job, claiming that they had stopped because mass bombing of British towns did not help to win the war. Now the Nazis were taking it,-'but not with the fortitude of the British people. They were whining like a bully given a taste of his own medicine. British aerial attacks were continuing on the heart of industrial Germany and the Nazis’. answer was to attack a gem of architecture for a U-boat base, ancient churches for shipyards, and old and beautiful monuments for a Heinkel works. These were not replies from a man with a carefully-planned campaign, but the frenzied blows of a mad lout who, stung by carefully-aimed blows, ran amok. What he failed, to do a year ago, he could not hope to'do now, with his resources scattered. One of the most striking features of the Luftwaffe’s reprisal raids in the past week is the extraordinary high percentage of the total attack force destroyed by British defences. The figures are the most impressive since the Luftwaffe’s targets were of no particular military importance and were therefore unlikely to be relatively very heavily defended. During the six nights up till Wednesday some 15.0 German bombers attacked a variety of targets in Britain. Of these, at least 17 are known to have been destroyed, with the virtual certainty that a number of others which were damaged failed to regain their bases. On the most conservative reckoning, more than 11 per cent of the attacking aircraft were destroyed. The past week has shown beyond doubt that the year virtually free from enemy air attack has been used to make even more formidable the antiaircraft defences of Britain. The casualty list in Bath as a result of the German air raids is mounting and is likely to be very heavy. The body of the Rector of Bath was found in the debris of the ruined rectory. Tire King and Queen made a complete tour - df Bath and talked with many people rendered homeless by the air attacks.