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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 2408.PDF
250 FLIGHT OCTOBER I6TH, 1941. in the last war when they pushed forward to the Marne, when they assailed Ypres, when they tried to capture Verdun, and in the final effort against Gough's Fifth Army. The question always is, Low far the impetus will carry the Germans. The records of the last war should help us not to give way to pessimism. Reports from Berlin say that the Germans have massed on their fighting front the greatest number of fighters and bombers which they have dared to bring from elsewhere, and that they hope for decisive success mainly as a result of superiority in the air. The argu- ment is reasonable, for in the past two years the Luft- waffe has served the German Army well. In conse- quence there has been a distinct easing off of the pressure on Leningrad. That city, it appears, has not been heavily bombed up to date, as the Germans want to capture it as intact as possible. The lifting of pressure has been rather in the fighting outside the city, where the men of Marshal Voroshilov have been practising what (apt. Liddell Hart calls " dynamic defence." In recent communiques the Russians have not made ' much mention of their own Air Force. Before the Ger- mans invaded Russia, nobody professed to have any clear idea of the strength of the Russians in the air, and it is fairly obvious that the Germans under-estimated what they would find opposed to them. Naturally, the Soviet spokesmen have tried to mislead the enemy about the extent of Russian air losses, and likewise have shed no light on what reserves they have. They have many air bases far behind the battle front, but the actual air position of our Ally can be known only to the members of the British-American-Russian conference which has just returned from Moscow. All that has been revealed is that two new secret types made their success- ful appearance recently, the M.I.G.3 fighter and the Stormovik dive-bomber. We may, at the very least, feel confident that the Germans will lose very heavily in the air and on the ground during this great offensive, and that their losses will react on their capacity to threaten the Allied fronts elsewhere during the winter. British successes in the Middle East during the coming months will, in turn, help the Russians next spring. Our New FightersA RUSSIAN publication translated by the R.T.P. section of the Ministry of Aircraft Production, dated last January, stated that "the only new tactical development in the present war is the use by the Germans of the two-seater fighter-bomber for the attack on industrial targets." The use of radiolocation might be called a form of tactical development, but not in the sense which the Russian writer had in mind. Now, certainly, another development may be chronicled, namely, the latest British fighters with four cannons. Originally the short-range fighter was a defensive weapon, perhaps the only weapon which could be so described. But these new fighters are weapons of attack. They have been extremely busy of late in damaging aerodrome hangars in France, E-boats, and above all in attacking supply vessels and their escorts of flak ships. The cannon shells have been most effective in setting ships on fire, and often in sinking them. Sir Archibald Sinclair remarked in a speech the other day that the Army, when the .time came, would carry the war into the enemy's own territory. When that time comes we can imagine these latest Hurricanes work- ing havoc with the enemy's mechanical vehicles. They are not dive-bombers, but they may well achieve better results than the Stukas were able to do. If they can cry "halt" to the Panzer divisions, much of the sting will be taken out of the great German Army. THE RIGHT ANGLE : A vivid impression of what it feels like to have a cannon-armed Spitfire V on one's tail.
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