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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 2234.PDF
• io5 AUGUST 8, 1940 AIR BLOCKADE (CONTINUED) to fall into the '' losing-face '' predicament of the arrested Britons, while Japan has sent out pourparlers to Aus- tralia. In the Mediterranean and Middle East we have conducted a kind of hide-and-seek war with Italy at sea, on land and in the air. In Western Europe we have concentrated, against Germany, our main defences in these islands, which are the heart of the Empire. As the Prime Minister said in his last broadcast, '' Never in our history have we been so strong, here, in Britain." And daily and nightly the Royal Air Force takes toll of German strength by attacks against harbours, oil storage depots, oil refineries, synthetic oil plants, rail- ways, canals, factories and all the manilold targets which to-day are military targets in the fullest sense of the word. Qermany the Foe There is no doubt, no doubt at all, that we regard Germany as the fountain head of the miseries which have to-day descended upon the Western World, however much Japan may be the transgressor in the Far East. And it is obvious that the Western World must be made clean before the process can go farther. So Germany is our foe. And all our strength must, and will, certainly be directed against her. All other issues are side issues. It seems that there were many who missed Mr. Churchill's last broadcast, in which he said, quite baldly, that it would be 1942 before we were ready to take the offensive. That is at the least 17 months. But as offen- sives are not usually begun in winter, it is more likely to be 21 months. That statement apparently envisages the offensive as a campaign in which troops will be landed upon the soil of the Continent of Europe to grapple with the German armies once again on historic battlefields. If that be the interpretation to put correctly upon the words of the Prime Minister, then his words can be gauged as weighted with the sagacity in which his utter- ances, are couched. But if that was what he meant, then, I, with all circumspection for his greater sources of information, do not agree with what he said. For what he said applies only to the Army. It does not apply to the Navy, still less to the Royal Air Force. It is true that the Army is on the defensive. But that is not so either at sea or in the air. The toll oi German aircraft in the first eleven months of the war is greater than the combined first-line strengths of all the Allied air forces which have been arrayed against Germany since Poland was attacked. Is that an offensive or a defensive war in the air? The Navy is now stronger vis-a-vis Germany than it was when war began; the entry of Italy into the war has but clarified a formerly smoke-screened position. It has not seriously altered the naval preponderance against Germany. It has not affected Britain's ability' to blockade by sea the whole of Europe; rather has it strengthened Britain's power in this respect; there is now no need for scruple over the niceties of the " we-are-not-at-wars." Italy may have stuck her knife into France, but already she must have begun to rue that feeble conquest. There is an Italian saying, "Dolce far niente," which, being very freely interpreted, may be transcribed as "It's sweet to do nothing." Well, the barley sugar that Italy sucked over France will turn to bitter aloes before this war is done. What Britain needs to-day is range in bombers. And more range. Those we have are good. Or, rather, should I say some of them? I don't think some of our bomber classes are all they might be. For example, those pri- marily designed for work in close co-operation with the Army. What we principally require to-day are fast, long-range heavy bombers whose bomb and fuel loads are largely interchangeable. To be one hundred per cent, efficient an air force must be able to reach all its targets. When it can reach only some targets it gives the enemy the opportunity to with- draw important elements of national defence into safe areas. Good as the aircraft of the Royal Air Force are to- day, they are not good enough. Greater range is needed. For, now, we have no advanced landing grounds on the mainland of Europe. The targets we desire to attack must be attacked from bases within Great Britain, or from British aerodromes in and about the Mediterranean, or from aircraft carriers. And, be it noted that the air- craft carrier method does not help us much in the present situation. The distance Fleet Air Arm aircraft can save by operating from their floating aerodromes does not enable them to attack major targets outside the range of shore-based bombers, but only minor targets. And by the major targets I mean the great industrial hinter- lands of Germany and Italy. Strategical Targets - So, while we are maintaining an air offensive against the German air force, and against targets in the western half of Germany, there are targets in Germany against which we are not directing attacks as we ought to be directing them. One such target is the great cloth- producing belt of Germany. It must help to reduce the fighting power of an enemy to cut down his output of uniforms, civilian clothing and stores of fuel, all of which (like food) produce warmth to the body. Yet the Silesian coalfields have not been attacked. Nor has the great centralised clothing manufacturing area which lies to the eastward of Berlin. One is apt to take certain things in one's own coun- try for granted, and forget that in all probability a similar situation exists in other countries. We asso- ciate Lancashire with cotton and Northampton with boots automatically, Bradford with woollens and Shef- field with steel. But we forget that Germany must have a similar geographical delimitation. Or more probably it is not a case of forgetting at all, but simply because we never had to bother, we don't know. Now soldiers (and by soldiers I mean the generic term which embraces all professional fighting men of land, sea and air) in my experience know mighty little about the commercial side of anything. It's not their job. Their job is to run their ships, their tanks, their guns, their platoons, their squadrons efficiently in the light of the eyes of the chief under whom they serve for the time being (and ten to one he, like all of us, is a crank in some respect) ; they must, by the very nature of their calling, live up to the notions of the chief they serve. And in war, soldiers (again the generic, please) get the upper hand. They move about in uni- form, a thing which is considered wrong in peace- time, and everyone looks up to them as the saviours of their country, all conveniently forgetting what terrific taxes we have to pay to keep them. Well, now, I'm going to commit a heresy. There isn't a soldier who knows how to win a war except by the bow and arrow method—which is that the chieftain who commands the most bows and arrows wins. And that is true of
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