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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 0221.PDF
^AIRCRAFT ENGINEER FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE W)RLD ; FOUNDED WOO Editor M. POULSEN Managing Editor GEOFFREY SMITH, M.B.E. Chief Photographer JOHN YOXALL m + ^*^ Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices Telegrams : Truditur, Sedist, London. COVENTRY : 8-10, CORPORATION ST., Telegrams : Autocar, Coventry. Telephone: Coventry 52 10. DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.1 Telephone: Waterloo 3333 (35 lines). 2 : MANCHESTER, 3 : GLASGOW, C.2 : 260, DEANSGATE, 26B, R E N FI E L D ST., BIRMINGHAM, GUILDHALL BUILDINGS, NAVIGATION ST. Telegrams : Autopress. Birmingham. Telegrams : lliffe. Manchester. Telegrams : lliffe, Glas£ow. Telephone: Midland 297 1 (5 lines). Telephone: Blackfriars 4412. Telephone: Central 4857. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Abroad : Year, £3 10. 6 months, Registered at the G.P.O. as a Newspaper. 0 10 6. 3 months, 15s. 3d. No. 1727. Vol. XLI. JANUARY 29th, 1942. Thursdays, One Shilling The Outlook. ) Japanese Bombers and Fighters SO far as can be judged from the official com muniques, Japanese bombing is not distinguished by great accuracy of aim. No doubt when the same bombers were raiding flimsy Chinese cities it did not matter very much where the bombs fell, and then there was little inducement to strive after precision and pin pointing. So the bomb-aimers lack experience. Japanese fighters, on the other hand,' whose experi ence cannot have been much more instructive (though many Chinese do take readily to the air), have met with some surprising successes in their encounters with British and Australian pilots. On a number of occasions lately the losses on each side have been roughly equal, and so far there has been no case in which our Buffaloes, or whatever other fighters we could then raise, have shot down Japanese fighters on anything like the scale to which we have become accustomed when meeting Germans or Italians in Europe or the Middle East. In a recent raid on Singapore, for example, when about co heavy Japanese bombers came over with a fighter escort, the enemy lost 13 machines, but nine of them fell to the A.A. guns and only four to our fighters. Again, in one raid on the island of Rabaul (which is an Australian Mandate) three Japanese machines fell to the fire of the A.A. guns, while the Australians lost five aircraft. There have been other similar cases. Everybody knows that the Japanese are a fanatically brave people, but Britons from the Far East have net reported that they very often make good air pilots. When brave but not highly skilled fighters meet British fighters from any part of the Empire, the usual result is a holocaust of the enemy. A likely explanation might be that hitherto the Japanese have enjoyed great superiority in numbers—but the Germans often enjoyed the same advantage in the Battle of Britain. So the mystery remains. However, Hurricanes have now appeared on the Malayan front, and as soon as the / 'got into action the enemy losses began to increase. Parallel Grooves THE debate in the House of Lords on January 20th was very interesting. In particular one noted how the minds of Service peers, even the most eminent, tend to work in channels. Admiral Lord Cork said that the cause of our disasters in the Far East was our loss of the command of the seas in that area. Lord Trenchard said that our continued withdrawals in Malaya were in large measure due to lack of local air superiority. The two statements are not contradictory; they are both correct up to a point, each in its own way, but the working of the two mind* is instructive. The moral may be drawn that the more we think about winning the war by the combined efforts of all three Services, and the less we pin our faith to one particular arm, the wiser we shall be. Lord Trenchard, in his weighty speech, insisted that the true defence of airfields was the responsibility of the short-range fighter. By day that is unquestionably true, but the former Chief of the Air Staff did not discuss the case of an air-borne invasion on a moonlight night. He may have reasons for confidence that even in such conditions fighters could defeat the attempt, but io the layman it seemed that the issue would at least be doubt-
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