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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0996.PDF
3io MAY IST, 1941. OFF THE RECORD : A few hints being handed out to German fighter pilots onthe joys of a forced landing in the Western Desert. Note the Me nos in the background. mans may try to use the place as apoint d'appui if ever they come to attack the Straits, but they have notcommand of the sea, and the troops landed there could certainly be cut offfrom the mainland and reduced by the Royal Navy, if such an operation wereever thought worth while. The conquest of Abyssinia continuesto go well. The last Italian force turned and offered battle outsideDessie, the last important place held in Ethiopia by the late conquerors.The defensive position is strong, but the Empire forces have the inestim-able advantage of command of the air. The air observers can map illthe detensive points, and the bombers . can attack them. There is good reasonto hope that the bomb-aiming of the South ' Africans and Rhodesians willprove more accurate than that cf the Germans in Greece, and certainly theItalian troops, many of them Africans, will not stand up to it so stoutly asthe Anzacs and British troops did. Success al Bresl SO, altei some weeks of wondering,we have at last been told officially that a direct hit with an extremelyheavy bomb has really been made on either the Scharnhorst or the Gneisenauin Bresl harbour. This very welcoi. j news was not given out by any ot thefighting Ministries or the Ministry of Information as a separate item,although its prompt publication would have cheered all British people, theirAllies, and their American helpers. They had begun to think that air-bombing ot a harbour was a rather futile affair, and to lose confidence inthe bomb, the only weapon which 'an be used to strike at an enemy whoholds most of the Continent. The news was allowed, so to speak, to leak out inthe citation in the London Gazette which announced that Pilot OfficerG. R. Ross and Sergt. K. I. Street Lad been respectively awarded the D.F.C.and the D.F.M. This will strike most people as a strange way of handlingwar propaganda. This bombing success must have anappreciable effect on the Battle of the Atlantic, for these two German war-ships have the power to do immense harm to shipping, and may have beenresponsible for some of the harm which has been done. Only powerfulunits of the Royal Navy could tackle them with success. Recently theyhave been described in broadcasts and in the London Gazette as "battle WAR IN THE AIR (Continued) cruisers." The last issue of Brassey's Annual gives them as "battleships/' Each has nine n4nch guns as well as secondary armament and is supposed to carry two aircraft. The top speed is given as 27 knots. The thickness cf -the armour is not given. These ships have succeeded to the names of the two German cruisers sunk by Admiral Sturdee's squadron in the Battle of \ie Falkland Islands—surely not a good augury. The present ships have had varied careers. The Gneisenau claimed by the Norwegians as having been sunk by them during the German invasion of their country. The Scharnhorst was shortly afterwards engaged by H.M.S. Renown off the coast of Norway and was said to have been hit at extreme range; but in the heavy weather she outsteamed the British battle cruiser (whose speed is supposed to be 29 knots) and ulti- mately got into Kiel dockyard for repairs. While there the R.A.F. tried hard to bomb her, but she must have escaped crippling damage. At last one of these two has been seriously damaged, and it is quite pos- sible that the other has also been hit. If they had been able to move out of such a bombed area as Brest harbour, they would surely have done so before now. But the number of harbours in which German warships can come in from the Atlantic for overhaul is cer- tainly limited. One of the two was in dry dock at Brest, which means that the overhaul needed was not in the THE JUNK SHOP : Unloading field equipment from a Junkers Ju 52 transport machine in North* Africa.
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