FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1942
1942 - 0169.PDF
AIRCRAFT ENGINEER FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD .• FOUNDED IQO9 Editor C. M. POULSEN Managing Editor G. GEOFFREY SMITH, M.B.E. Chief Photographer JOHN YOXALL V Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices i Telegrams : Truditur, Sedist, London. DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.I Telephone: Waterloo 3333 (35 lines). COVENTRY : 8-10. CORPORATION ST., Telegrams: Autocar, Coventry. Telephone : Coventry S 2 1 0 . BIRMINGHAM, 2 : GUILDHALL BUILDINGS, NAVIGATION ST. Telegrams: Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone: Midland 297 1 (5 lines). MANCHESTER, 3 : 260, DEANSGATE, Telegrams : lliffe, Manchester. Telephone : Blackfriars +412. GLASGOW. C.2 : 26B, RENFIELD ST., Tefegramj: lliffe, Glasgow. Telephone: Central 4857. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Abroad : Year, £3 10. 6 months, Registered at the G.P.O. as a Newspaper. £1 10 6. 3 months, 15s. 3d. No. 1726. Vol. XLI. JANUARY 22nd, 1942i Thursdays, One Shilling. The Outlook- Carriers in the Pacific T HE war in the Pacific depends on sea power, and sea power includes a due proportion of air power. That ocean is an ideal part of the world for the operations of aircraft carriers, and Japan opened her attack on the United States by a clever use of her carriers, while shortly afterwards she used shore-based torpedo-bombers to sink the two British capital ships which should have been the core of the strength of Singapore. At present it must be admitted that the * -Japanese hold command of the Western portion of the -I* seas between the continents of Asia and America. The other day Col. Knox was asked what the Ameri can Fleet was doing, and, naturally, he declined to make a definite answer, putting the questioner off by a general statement that Germany was the chief enemy and that the Battle of the Atlantic was the most crucial struggle now going on. While nobody will quarrel with that remark, everybody is still wondering what the American battle fleet is really doing. Singapore is too valuable to all the Allies for it to be abandoned without a great effort, and Australia is emphatically urging that the Pacific must not be treated as a mere sideshow. If Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt had regarded it in that way, they would hardly have given Gen. Wavell his new and unprecedented command. It is obvious that the best way to relieve Singapore, the Philippines, Borneo, and to recover Hong Kong would be to engage and defeat the Japanese battle fleet. g It is impossible to avoid the assumption that the Ameri- f» can fleet (probably with British support) is seeking to iind and engage the Japanese. When a fleet is busy on such a task the public never hears any news from it, and questioners are apt to be put off by such generalities as Col. Knox uttered. The search must be largely, or even entirely, a matter for the aircraft off carriers. The U.S. carrier Lexington, which operates about 80 air craft, must be in the Pacific, for the Japanese have made several claims to have sunk her. We do not know where her sister ship the Saratoga is, or the other Ameri can carriers, pictures of some of which we publish this week. The Japanese strength in carriers is also not known, but before the war they went in largely for sea plane carriers, which are of limited use. But we may be sure that all available carriers are very busy just now in the Pacific Ocean. Malta W HEN the history of this war comes to be written, few chapters will be more astonishing than the one which tells how Malta was gradually trans formed from a precariously held defensive post into a pivot of air aggression in the Mediterranean. From the first it was recognised that it could not continue as the headquarters of the Mediterranean Fleet when Italy was our foe, for a fleet in harbour is a tempting bait for enterprising enemy raiders. The Italians learnt that lesson at Taranto, though the expensive failure of the Luftwaffe to sink H.M.S. Illustrious when she was re ceiving first aid in the Malta dockyard seems almost to invalidate that general maxim. At any rate, Malta was first regarded as a sort of liability to the British Empire, certainly to be held as long as possible, but rather as a heroic patient than as a vigorous surgeon. The staff officer at Cairo who last week reviewed the work of the Middle East R.A.F.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
