Furious Week

Thousands of tons of German air bombs exploded in France and Great Britain all the last furious week at assorted hours and places. Censorship veiled a lot of the places but it was apparent that civilian centres were for the time being secondary to military objectives. The French ports of Dieppe, Le Havre and Cherbourg were harshly treated, as part of the Battle of France (see p. 20). So were R. A. F. bases on the southern British coasts.

Reciprocal tons of Allied bombs whistled down on Germany and most Allied air pilots were aloft daily for as long as men & machines could endure. Reported killed in an accident during the week was Flying Officer Edgar James ("Cobber Kain "D. F. C., 22, of New Zealand. Prime Allied targets included oil depots at Hamburg and Kiel, factories in the Ruhr. A French naval formation for the first time let go explosives instead of literature near Berlin, in retaliation for the hundreds killed & wounded around Paris.

At the fighting front, there was less German dive-bombing, due (the Allies thought) to a thinning out of the Stuka squadrons by machine-gun and massed rifle fire from Allied infantry. French pilots, meantime, discovered that their moteur cannon was a good weapon to puncture German tank turrets.

Lord Beaverbrook, the Napoleonic little publisher whom Prime Minister Churchill put in charge of airplane production and procurement, announced that since May 11, with workmen functioning in twelve-hour shifts seven days' a week, British warplanes were coming out 62% faster than before, that all equipment losses of the Flanders campaign were replaced, that his buyers were snapping up every bit of U. S. product available. Shortage' of air-power kept Allied expenditure of men & ships carefully calculated.

The U. S. Army & Navy Register came out and stated bluntly: ". . . The French were supposed to take care of the ground operations, while the Royal Air Force of Great Britain was to handle those pertaining to the air. The sudden threat against the Channel ports and the island itself has compelled the British to hold the bulk of her air power in reserve to stem the tide of invasion. ..." When this was written, it was not known for sure that Germany would try to crush France before invading Great Britain.

Last week the R. A. F., from its bases in Britain, arduously attacked German columns and concentrations from the rear as they smashed across the Somme-Aisne line toward Paris. More demonstrable than ever was a judgment passed coldly by the technical British trade paper, The Aeroplane:

"In each and every encounter the superiority of British aeroplanes and crews over those of the enemy has become more firmly established with each day's fighting. That superiority has not been confined to any one type of aeroplane. Spitfires. Hurricanes, Defiants and Blenheim fighters have all shot down vastly greater numbers of the enemy than they have lost themselves.

"There is definite evidence that the Germans are calling upon a second line of older and even less formidable aeroplanes to make good the casualties and maintain the pressure. In some measure this policy may have succeeded where the rapid advance of the Germans has forced us to evacuate advanced aerodromes and has locally made more difficult the maintenance of constant patrols by our fighters.

"Thus, there have been instances where relatively inferior German aeroplanes have been able to attack ground troops without interference from the air. But these instances have become rarer. In the main the Ju. 86, the Heinkel He. 51 and Arado 68 biplane fighters, and both versions of the Ju. 87, have been massacred by Allied aeroplanes. ..."

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