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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 1623.PDF
AIRCRAFT ENGINEER FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD •• FOUNDED WO9 Editor C. M. POULSEN Managing Editor G. GEOFFREY SMITH, M.B.E. Chief Photographer JOHN YOXALL *T> Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices: DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.1 Telegrams : Truditur, Sedist, London. Telephone: Waterloo 3333 (3S lines). COVENTRY: BIRMINGHAM, 2 : MANCHESTER, 3 : GLASGOW, C.2 : 8-10, CORPORATION ST. £ U' H/D|H£4" -r6,"^ S ' N«G|' 260^ DEANSGATE. 26B,. R E N Fl E LD ST. - NAVIGATIONS!. _, „.„ . •• ' • Telegrams: Autocar, Coventry. Telegrams: Autopress, Birmingham. Telegrams : lliffe, Manchester. Telegrams : lliffe, Glasgow. Telephone: Coventry 52 10. Telephone: Midland 2971 (5 lines). 260, Telegrams: lliffe, Manchester. Telephone : Blackfriars +412. Telephone: Central 4857. Registered at the C*.P*0. at a Newspaper. No. 1859. Vol. XLVI. August 10th, 1944 Thursdays, One Shilling. "We Outlook The Official Mind E VER since September, 1939, we have endeavoured to follow the workings of the Official Mind. There have been times when we thought that we were making some headway, and that we could detect glim merings of logic behind apparently futile regulations and obstructions. But usually these periods were short lived, and some new aspect of censorial sensitivity made •^ us realise that'we were as far as ever from understanding the Official Mind. In recent weeks one of our chief pre-occupations has been the air torpedo, flying bomb, doodle-bug, or which ever Fleet Street name is finally going to stick to Goring's Ersatz Luftwaffe. We were not a little sur prised when, almost as soon as the attacks had started, the Air Ministry rushed into print with a hand-out drawing which, quick frankly, we found unconvincing in several details. Since that time we have endeavoured, so far without success, to obtain official permission to inspect one of these missiles with a view to publishing a detailed illus trated description by men who thoroughly understand the subject of jet propulsion. We have been held off with vague statements about " Our (M.A.P.) experts are hard at work studying them." People in the aircraft industry ha\jg seen them. Their secrets are quite well known, but officialdom cannot be moved. If the reason had been that it is not desired to let the enemy know how much British authorities know, we should have sensed some sort of logic in the Official Mind, even if we could not share it. But the drawing . originally issued seems to have disposed of that argu ment. Then along comes the Ministry of Home Security with a statement about how the flying bombs behave. To our simple mind it seems that there could be little harm in describing one of his weapons and giving details which the enemy already knows. What he does not know, and what he would obviously very much like io know, is how the air torpedoes behave when they get here. And the Ministry of Home Security obliges by telling him quite a bit about that. Truly the workings of the Official Mind are obscure. Air Power in the Offensive W HEN August opened its account with a true summer day of the sort for which all Britons have been longing since the fading away of spring, it was noticeable that the heavy bombers of General Carl Spaatz's 8th Air Force devoted most of their attention to enemy airfields in France. The Luftwaffe has shown up so little since the Allied landings in Normandy that this may have caused some surprise. The lesson was learnt, at the time when the bombing offensive was the only major activity which the Allies were able to undertake against the Reich, that it is not enough to destroy a target such as a fac tory. Watch has to be kept on the repair activities of the persistent Germans; and after a certain amount of repair work has been done it is necessary to send bombers over the same place again to reduce it to the desired degree of inutility. Of late the Luftwaffe has borne every appearance of being a product which has been reduced to uselessness for all practical purposes; nevertheless the Germans may attempt to revive it, and therefore occasional bombing visits to their airfields are desirable. It is hard to believe that all the effort which not long ago was put into the manufacture of aircraft has lately been diverted to the production of air torpedoes and
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