One-Sided Lull

Last week London got its first and only bombing during July. After 32 peaceful nights the 2 a.m. alert signal--567th since the war began--so startled many Londoners that they turned on their lights before pulling their blackout curtains and got a dressing down from the air-raid wardens.

It was a haphazard, seemingly crazy raid by only a few bombers, blasting a number of private homes, killing many citizens with a direct hit on a shelter holding 120. Wags suggested that the Nazis put on the show for excitable, visiting Columnist Dorothy Thompson, who attended it from her fifth-floor windows in the Savoy Hotel (see p. 21). But it was a poor show and after it Columnist Thompson snorted: "It was . . . not nearly so noisy as a New York thunderstorm!"

That night only 20,000 people slept in London's underground, where 100,000 often huddled in mid-Blitz. Most of the 20,000 were "regulars" who go every night in order to keep their places and because they got to like company.

This week the R.A.F. reciprocated London's raid by sending over 200 to 300 planes to bomb Berlin and give Berliners a night underground.

The Score. The summer's lull in bombing has been all on one side, for the R.A.F. has conducted a steady crescendo in raids over Germany. Yet British plane losses in all theaters are still substantially less than those of the Axis. The figures compiled by the British for 1941:

Axis British

January 229 34

February 265 74

March 275 70

April 405 170

May 505 150

June 474 227

July 433 308

These figures include only Axis planes accounted for by the British (not by the Russians). The losses for July breakdown as follows:

Axis British

Over Britain 47 1

Over the Continent 229 256

Middle East 138 29

Naval 19 22

New Methods. Last week the British let newsmen see how the R.A.F. is steeling itself against Blitz resumption. For the first time reporters were taken up in R.A.F. night bomber-fighters (American-built Douglas Havocs).

From the 19-and 20-year-old fighter pilots they learned that it has been standard R.A.F. practice to "stooge around" the French and Low Country airports when the tired Nazi bombers return to base, wait for them to slow down and flash their recognition lights, then pounce on them and "brown them off when the Nazi pilot is thinking 'Now for a beer!' ''

Night fighting over Britain, once a dark, lonely search for enemies, is now helped by constant radio instructions from ground control rooms where new radio detectors trace in detail the movements of both R.A.F. and enemy planes on sky charts. Other new devices prevent R.A.F. planes from being betrayed in the dark by exhaust flames or red-hot, glowing exhaust pipes.

To help the R.A.F. carry the war to the invasion coast with greater safety the British have anchored in deep, southeastern Channel waters a fleet of 50-foot "Air Sea Rescue" floats. These crewless havens for fliers who have plunged into the Channel are painted with the Red Cross, are available to Nazi as well as R.A.F. pilots in distress. At each end are ramps to make it easier for wounded men to climb aboard. Below decks are bunks, cookstoves, canned food, medicines, bandages, checkerboards, paper-covered libraries ranging from Shakespeare to whodunits, wireless telephones to call for aid, framed instructions on how to use the equipment. Says the placard: "Air Sea Rescue Service hopes you will be comfortable and that your stay will be short." Navy launches visit the floats to pick up shipwrecked airmen.

Pilot Lost. Last week by all odds the most dashing American-born ornament of the R.A.F. got into trouble too close to the French shore to get out to the floats. He is rich, wavy-haired Wing Commander Whitney Willard Straight, 28, son of the late Major Willard D. Straight, unorthodox Morgan banker who founded and funded the New Republic. Wing Commander Straight is a grandson of the late traction tycoon William C. Whitney, cousin of Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney and John Hay ("Jock") Whitney.

After taking a Moral Science Tripos at Cambridge University, Wing Commander Straight turned professional automobile racer, won many contests at England's famed Brooklands speedway, became a director of 21 British aviation companies, married sightly Lady Daphne Finch-Hatton, daughter of the 14th Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham, and in 1936 became a British subject.

Last April, Wing Commander Straight got the Military Cross for valor at Dunkirk. Last week he led his squadron of Hurricane fighters in an attack on Nazi Channel shipping. As he suddenly pulled out of a dive, his motor streaming smoke, he radioed: "I have been hit and am going to force-land in France. . . . Squadron to return to its base." He was last seen gliding toward the Nazi shore.

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