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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 1631.PDF
AIRCRAFT ENGINEER \ . ,-•..-...-.-•• ^ FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD •• FOUNDED WOQ Editor C. M. POULSEN Managing Editor G. GEOFFREY SMITH Chief PhotographerJOHN YOXALL Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices : DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.I ; . . - '• Telegrams : Truditur, Sedist, London. Telephone: Waterloo 3333 (SO lines). 8-10, CORPORATION ST., COVENTRY. Telegrams : Autocar, Coventry. Telephone : Coventry 5210. SUBSCRIPTION : - . • • RATES: GUILDHALL BUILDINGS, NAVIGATION ST., BIRMINGHAM, 2. Telegrams: Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone: Midland 2971 (5 lines). 260, DEANSGATE, MANCHESTER, 3. Telegrams : Iliffe, Manchester. Telephone: Blackfriars 4412. ' 26B, RENFIELD ST., ."• GLASGOW, C.2. Telegrams : Iliffe, Glasgow. Telephone: Central 4857. Home and Canada: Other Countries: Year, £2 6 0. Year, £2 9 0. 6 months, £1 3 0. 6 months, £1 4 6. 3 months, I Is. 6d. 3 months, 12s. 3d. No. 1641. Vol XXXVII. JUNE 6, 1940 Thursdays, Price 9d, The Outlooks • L The R.A.F. in the Low CountriesT HE invasion of the Low Countries brought the R.A.F. the opening for which it had been anxiously waiting since the beginning of the war. All the lines of communication behind the advancing German Armies were packed with reinforcements and supplies, and on them the Bomber Command let loose its squadrons. The bomber appeared in these operations in its true role as a long-range gun, and the destruction which it wrought was great. It did not stop the advance -of the German hordes, but it took heavy toll in men and materiel. Everyone unites in a chorus of praise for the work of our bomber pilots. They were daring and they were clever. Admittedly, there were not enough of them. For this shortage the British authorities were not solely to blame. It must be remembered that for a period not long before the outbreak of war the French output of aircraft had sunk to almost microscopic proportions, and, though the recent recovery has been most credit- able, there was still need for the R.A.F. to do a great ideal of the work for the French and Belgian Armies. Still, it remains a question to be answered after the war, . when all details are known, whether any size of bomber force could have brought the German advance to a halt. The German Armies are immensely large, and their leaders are wantonly prodigal of life ; the roads and rail- ways which were used on the advance were very numerous, and, finally, bombing is less effective than shelling. Mechanised troops are not to be stopped for long by a crater in a road or by a vehicle overturned at the head of a column. . On the other hand, it is to be noted that the Luftwaffe, numerous as it is, has not been able to stop the embar- kation of our troops from the beaches at Dunkirk. Here, again, our shortage has been noticed and deplored ; .this time a shortage of fighters. Those fighters have • performed prodigies, and the numbers which they have shot down seem well nigh fantastic. We hope that ^we shall never again hear the cry that we do not need a strong force of fighters, and that three-quarters or more of our energies ought to be put into building up the Bomber Command. We need both, and pejhaps it will be concluded that the Fighter Command ought to receive most of our effort—it is too early as yet to speak with confidence about desirable proportions. Despite these great feats of our fighters, the German bombing of the Dunkirk beaches and of the vessels carrying our troops across the Channel has been inces- sant. According to the expectations of those who have most highly rated the powers of the bomber aeroplane, the embarkation of the B.E.F. should have been impos- sible. Yet it has gone on, and the great majority of our troops have been saved from what not long ago seemed likely to be a disaster of the first magnitude. The Low Countries campaign looks, like affording another example of the limitations of the bomber. The Value of Escorts . _ . _W E repeat it: the numbers shot down by our fighters make one gasp. We knew that our machines were much better than those of the Germans and we knew that the training of our men was infinitely better, but even so we never expected such wholesale slaughter of German aircraft. The figures made public are not easy to check, but it seems that a very large proportion of our victims have been German fighters of the two Messerschmitt categories. That is satisfactory as a proof of our fighter superiority; but it also implies that the German escorts have succeeded to a considerable extent in performing their function of drawing off our attention from the bombers which they were escorting, and so allowing the bombers to reach bombing position. That is not so satisfactory, and again shows that we need more fighters, and still more fighters.
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