Spell of Quiet

Londoners could scarcely believe their ears last week. For the second time in more than three months, the city was so quiet they could not sleep. Elsewhere through Britain the case was the same, except at steelmaking Sheffield where the Luftwaffe returned in force to follow up heavy night raids of the week before, and at Liverpool, which got three heavy doses at the week's end. By day, the only hostile activity was occasional swoops by lone marauders to machine-gun trains, busses, even schoolchildren on bicycles. Nazi air squadrons approaching the south coasts turned back readily when intercepted, as though under no definite orders to go places and do things.

Observers ascribed the lull to bad weather (airfields too soggy to land on safely); to German preoccupations elsewhere; or to German preparation for an almighty blast at Britain in the near future. Prime Minister Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook, Minister for Aircraft Production, both spoke as though they inclined to this third view. Both warned against overconfidence and Lord Beaverbrook--in a speech of which the key line was, "Roll out the bombers!"--openly warned against "an invasion by land and sea and principally by air ... even before springtime comes." He cited advertisements for skilled workers in the German press as sure signs of feverish production activity, pointing for a push.

His Lordship was due for a report on the progress of Britain's plane production, which he gave in optimistic but vague terms. He said that output for August, September, October and November alone doubled 1939's entire output. In every month from May through October, the British aircraft factories exceeded quotas projected for them last January (but November's "coventrizing" raids broke this curve). As his buyers got the go-ahead in Washington to place new orders, buoyant Beaverbrook promised 3,000 planes per month from the U. S. some time in 1942.*

Of one thing the British could be sure: even with total U. S. and British production now at perhaps 2,000 planes per month, Germany is still far in the lead, with well over 3,000 per month. Only way for the R. A. F. to work against the expected big spring smash at Britain was to keep whanging away at Nazi air and submarine bases along the Continent's edge; at Nazi transport lines from the interior to those bases; and at Nazi industrial production and morale. Last week, through fog and storm scud, the R. A. F. got through to Berlin, put a subway and an elevated line temporarily out of commission. It cracked at Bordeaux, Le Touquet, Lorient and other coastal key points. And, having wrecked the freight artery at Hamm, the shipyards at Hamburg, it now hammered repeatedly at Mannheim, key junction for Ruhr steel and Saar coal. With satisfaction the British learned that 850,000 children had been evacuated from Berlin and Hamburg to get them out of the R. A. F.'s way.

* Arriving at a British port, tired, hungry, unshaven and clad in a motley assortment of garments after a torpedoing, Canada's Massachusetts-born Minister of Munitions and Supply Clarence Decatur Howe reported last week: "It's a good thing to get cleaned out occasionally." Weakest spot in the entire Canadian armaments program is aircraft production because Canadian factories must depend upon the U. S. or England for engines. Unsinkable Mr. Howe was looking for British capital and cooperation to shore up that situation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.