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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 1915.PDF
JULY 4, 1940 11 WAR IN THE AIR (CONTINUED FROM PACE 5) fighter shot down the machine in which he was flying, and he was killed. The war against Italy continues to take the form of a series of raids by air and by land. Up to Monday, June 24, Malta had experienced 39 air raids. The raid that day was made by a large force of bombers escorted by fighters, . the whole number amounting to some 60 aircraft. Yet it is Instated that only slight damage was done and five* civilians 7-v.were wounded. One of the Italian fighters, a Macchi 200, -.Vas shot down by one of our fighters. Two days later there were five raids in the day, and 23 civilians were killed and more injured, but no military objective was hit. Our fighters drove the raiders out to sea. Despite the number of raids, the Italians seem a long way off from fulfilling the prophecies that they would straightway bomb Malta out of existence. An American correspondent has reported an air raid on Naples, but our Air Ministry has not mentioned one. He also said that a quarter of a million pounds has been allotted to repair air-raid damage in Palermo, Sicily. We have heard nothing direct about that raid either. In North and East Africa, however, Sir Arthur Longmore has con- tinued to take the initiative, in conjunction with Army troops. His Blenheims have been especially active and ..effective, and raids have been directed against posts in: : Libya and aerodromes in Abyssinia, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Since Italy entered the war we have destroyed 50 of her aircraft in Africa, either in the air or on the ground. That must make an appreciable difference to her offensive power in that continent. The destruction of oil supplies must be even more crippling. Of late some ener- getic attacks on our bombers by Italian fighters in Africa have been reported, but our own machines have continued to have the best of it. . The Channel Isles "^IGHT raiding on Great Britain continued regularly. On -^ the night of Friday-Saturday, June 28-29, five civilians were injured and one enemy bomber was shot down. On : Saturday-Sunday two civilians were killed and eight in- jured. The following night the raiders visited N.E. England and N.E. Scotland. The Channel Islands suffered much more heavily. They had been declared "open" areas and all defences had been withdrawn, while the women and children and other civilians had been evacuated. The chance of killing without risk was too tempting for the Germans to resist, so on Friday, June 28, their bombers visited the islands and killed 33 in Jersey and Guernsey, besides injuring some 40-odd others. They came down quite low, and used machine-guns as well as bombs. . The Germans then landed troops on the islands, occupy- •••'; ing Guernsey on Sunday, June 30, and Jersey next day. •?- The German radio announced the fact as a " surprise cap- . • ture'' by units of the German Air Force. It was un- ; pleasant for us to have to part company, even for a time,; with the last remnant of the old Duchy of Normandy— the only part of that Duchy which was not lost to France .'by King John. Still, from a military point of view the '""• islands were of no value to us, and might well have been too expensive to defend. It is sound tactics to withdraw from places which cannot be held without weakening one's main system of defence. Our ultimate victory will restore -the islands to Britain. It is hard to see what use they can be to the Germans. There are aerodromes on them, ir is true, but those aerodromes will be far less convenient for the German raids on Great Britain than are the aero- dromes on the coast of France. Presumably all stores on those aerodromes were destroyed before the evacuation took place, and it could hardly pay the Germans to trans- port other stores and equipment to the islands. On June 29 the Italians tried to bomb Aden but did no damage. . On the last day of June Malta suffered its 5xst raid in twenty days. A sensation was caused by an Italian communique which said that on Friday, June 28, " while flying over Tobruk during an enemy bombardment an aircraft piloted by Marshal Italo Balbo fell in flames. Italo Balbo and the members of his crew perished." Official British statements have denied that any Italian aircraft was shot down by the R.A.F. that day, and so the death of the Governor of Libya remains an unsolved mystery. The Near and Far East A new development occurred when Russia, after remain- ing quiet for some time, suddenly demanded that Rumania should surrender to her the districts of Bess- arabia and part of the Bukovina, which had been given to Rumania after the last war. King Carol had no alterna- tive but to submit. When Hungary and Bulgaria showed signs of making similar demands, the King asked the Ger- man Government for advice. The effect of this develop- ment on the supplies of oil which Germany was previously getting from Rumania will be watched with interest. Its reactions in Italy are also a nice subject for speculation. Further East, Japan was encouraged by the collapse of the French Army to demand that arms should be no longer supplied to the forces of General Chiang Kai Chek through French Indo-China, and made a somewhat similar demand on Britain regarding the passage of arms through Burma to China. The Japanese Government also declared a sort of " Monroe Doctrine " for the Far East, with Japan as the autocratic Power. Japanese troops approached Hong Kong, and British women and children were evacuated from that Colony to Manila, with a view to being sent on to Australia. On the afternoon of Monday, July 1, a new chapter opened in the tale of German air attacks on Great Britain, in that the Luftwaffe made a daylight raid. A town in North-East Scotland suffered 12 deaths and injuries to 18 others, mostly women and children. Four of the children were killed while playing in the streets. The bombs, which seem to have been two in number, demolished a row of houses. The bombers did not get home without loss. Three Spitfires were returning from a patrol, flying at a great height, when they say a Heinkel 111 below them, at a height of two miles. They dived on to it, and it took cover in a cloud, but a few minutes later the A.A. guns caught sight of it and opened fire. The shell bursts put the fighters on the track again, and each in turn delivered an attack. The first one set the port engine of the Heinkel on fire and apparently knocked out the rear gunner. The second and -third completed the destruction, setting the second engine on fire and puncturing the oil tank. The third Spitfire pilot had his windscreen covered with oil, and had to look through his side window to land his machine. A second bomber was found at a height of five miles and was hunted down to sea level by formations of Spitfires and Hurricanes. Finally it crashed into the sea. Earlier in the day a German seaplane was also shot down off the North-East Coast, and its crew of four was taken prisoner. One of them was wounded. Just before midnight on the same day some bombers crossed the South-West Coast and dropped bombs, mostly in fields, on both sides of the Bristol Channel. They did little material damage. Other raiders came in some time before dawn. Since the newspapers have had to be economical of paper, reports of road accidents each week have not been reported; but although there are now fewer cars on the roads than in peacetime, it may be taken as certain that the deaths due to air raids are less numerous than those due to road accidents. We should not, however, assume that the Germans have yet done their worst. As yet they seem, as was mentioned above, to be experimenting and training their pilots to fly over Great Britain by night and by day. They may presently adopt more determined tactics.
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