Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1942. A TRUE TURNING POINT.
TN a war of which the remaining duration has yet to be measured and determined, it is necessary as a rule to be cautious about claiming that any turning point has been reached. No such reservation applies, however, to the Battle of Britain, the second anniversary of which has just been celebrated. In his message to the Royal Air Force on behalf of the American Army Air Force, which he commands, LieutenantGeneral Arnold used no language of hyperbole, but adhered closely to facts now historic when he said that the deeds of British airmen on September 15, 1940—the culminating day of the struggle in which they smashed and defeated the Luftwaffe onslaught on the United'Kingdom—“turned the tide of the war, ending for ever the Nazi hope of work! conquest, and made possible the final victory of the United Nations.”
These are- proud and far-reaching claims, but even by the Nazis they are denied today only in obviously lying propaganda. Against that feeble denial there is to be set the fact that Nazi Germany has been able to take little more than defensive action against far more terrible attacks from the air than she was ever able to make on Britain. It is now anticipated that with the coming of the. northern winter, Germany will withdraw bombing planes from Russia and resume her air blitz against Britain. Apart, however, from the fact that the measure of relief Germany is likely to gain in Russia is somewhat uncertain, two things are reasonably assured. One is that massed air attacks on Britain will now be more than ever costly to the force that makes them and the other is that these attacks will be dwarfed by the tremendous onslaught of British, American and other Allied air forces on Germany and German-occupied territories in Europe.
On all grounds and not least because of the rapid expansion of the air power of the United Nations, the German people have good reason to look with the gloomiest apprehension to the coming winter. The prospect of ultimate Allied victory has been opened by a wealth of valiant effort at sea, on hind and in the air, and in factories and workshops behind-the fighting lines, but none have contributed more definitely or decisively to the sum of this effort than the relative handful of airmen who stemmed and broke the apparently overwhelming onslaught of the Luftwaffe in the fateful days of 1940. Those of,that' heroic company who died are today being avenged in i a noble fashion. Those of them who have survived are seeing the balance of air power, and of total military power, turned in a degree that might have seemed incredible in the days when they strove so superbly against apparently overwhelming odds.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 September 1942, Page 2
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468Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1942. A TRUE TURNING POINT. Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 September 1942, Page 2
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