Ready in the Air
statement to the House of Commons last week that the Air Force sees before it, "now clearly attainable, the glittering prize of air supremacy," may or may not mean that the invasion of Europe’ is at hand. But it does mean that the Air Force has stood the strain of its bombing offensives, and will not now fail. It will just go on giving and taking these stupendous blows until the skyroad to Berlin is clear. But let us not forget the price. Already, Mr. Churchill told us, it has lost fifty thousand men-forty thousand killed, ten thousand missing. What percentage that is of the number of men engaged we do not know; but we know that it is very high by comparison with land and sea forces; and we know too that the great majority of those men were at school or just away from school when the war started. They went into the Air Force knowing that many of them would live a few weeks after the completion of their training, that the lucky ones would last months, and only the supremely lucky count their service in years. Because they had that knowledge they left us as men leave who go on high and dangerous missions, with personal ambitions all laid aside and the selfishness that weighs the rest of us down all purged away; fifty thousand boys became suddenly men, and as suddenly, and for ever, the creators ofalegend. It isa bitter price, and we know that only half of it has yet heen paid. It is bitter for our enemies too, whose airmen, like ours, are boys, innocent of the follies and devilries of their rulers, but neither able nor anxious to desert them; bitter for the whole world, but a cup that the whole world must now drink to the dregs. Our airmen are ready to clear the way to Berlin. If the rest of us are not busy clearing other ways when they return, the "visible, measurable, and progressive" results the Air Minister says they are now achieving will either mock them when peace comes or will be used by them to make whited sepulchres of us. S* ARCHIBALD SINCLAIR’S
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 246, 10 March 1944, Page 7
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370Ready in the Air New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 246, 10 March 1944, Page 7
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