"I AM MASTER."

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 282, 27 November 1940, Page 6

"I AM MASTER."

GOERING'S BOAST. NAZI AIR RESERVES? STAGGERED BY R.A.F. What reserves lie behind the German losses ? Is Germany holding back part of her Air Force for future use, or is she doing all she can? asked G. Ward Price in the "Daily Mail" at the end of September. The Luftwaffe was the arm on which the Nazi leaders counted for the conquest of Britain. They expected it to bring about our almost instantaneous collapse. As war approached, their confidence in German air power grew steadily. On April 16, 1938—18 months before the war —I had a talk with Marshal Goering at his country house of Karinhall. The Fuehrer, he said, was "losing his patience" with the British Government. The German armaments industry was consequently being urged to greater efforts, and aircraft factories were working night and day. Then he made the following remark: "If it comes to a conflict between England and Germany, you have the bigger navy, we have the bigger army. The air force is a matter of question. Of one thing I am certain, however—that we are no weaker than you." His words surprised me. Knowing what vast aeroplane works had been built in Germany, I should have expected a more confident assertion of numerical superiority. This was to come five months later, at the time of the Munich crisis. Giving his views on the day the Munich agreement was made, as to what might have happened if the Sudeten crisis had led to war, the Marshal said that the British Fleet would have been useless, for it could not get at Germany; as for the British Army, it did not count. Then, with great emphasis, he exclaimed: "And in the air I am the master." He struck the table as he spoke the words: Und in der Luft, bin ich der Herr! I doubt whether the Marshal feels so sure about that now, when night after night the figures of his losses are laid before him; when German aeroplanes and airmen fall by hundreds in a single day on British soil, and many more vanish in the Channel and the North Sea as they struggle to reach home. The Boomerang. In what did Goering base the conviction that he expressed on September 29 1938? '

fortnight, before, at Godesberg, his thief of Staff, General Bodenschatz, had told me that Germany was buildinc 1000 machines a month. The number of machines in her jwssession last September had been estimated at 10.000. At the outset of the war she had much greater air strength than ourselves and the french combined.

] e ' that advantage is now proving a dangerous and delusive one. The man aircraft industry went into production too soon.

Those machines, turned out by the thousand in 1938 and 1939, are out of date to-day. One year's lag in aeroplane design is like 20 years in that of a, motor car. And to transform a iSSJYi, production of a new type takes many months. piis means that the Germans dare ° UF OWn m ° re mode ™ aircraft the superior numbers which IS • * hem ft ° make their bid for world dominion. They could only use y knocked out nearly all our fighters. Anno Domini is a secret p** tak ® B - continual toll of the , nnan air strength. British production may be equal to German, with losses far smaller. The hour-glass of air armaments shows the aand running fast into our end. Bt »Pui to think that Germany has not still ample reserves, but *ps£*F d zfsst 5? smarts nsrzgjr

Their Story. "V* t °- teU me that the an airman in war would yS f nd a half - Tbe ksn <l of conflict visualised was a short, sharp swoop leading to swift victory. th T fore ' 800(1 mmd s for rejecting the picture of the air situation presented by German propagandists. These want the world to believe that S^lim^

They try to represent the present costly air attacks as being merely of a preparatory reconnaissance, and training character.

■eS? Btatementa ***& not make

anyone believe that the German ff tw r w^V V ° Uld PU " their Pushes ? H l6 P° wer deliver ithem ? % sbuld wait—with British iiru output growing daily? Why if they have great reserves of strength, do they deal so lightly with J nan L J in u U8 J trial areas while London is bombed by day and night—though often, significantly enough, by only a few aircraft at a time?

Why should these pioneers of Blitzkrieg have made so partial a use of the perfect flying conditions of the past summer ? 1

There is but one explanation of these enigmas. The German air force is staggered by the formidable fi-ditin" power of the R.A.F., which has pulverised its presumptuous plans. Let it not be forgotten: This is the first time the Luftwaffe has met with real resistance.

I saw its first operation over foreign soil—/ 00 Junkers dropping pamphlets over Austria the day before the AnehlIIISB.

year later—more menacing—it threatened Czechoslovakia while the German army swooped on Prague Again, a bloodless victorv. 0

At the start of the war, it caught most of the Polish aircraft on the ground. In Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, opposition was quickly over. Now, for the first time, German airmen have met their match—and more. They set out to rob a beehive. They have fournd a hornets' nest.

Marshal Goering was right to call the comparative air strength of Britain and Germany a '"matter of question." It but the question is being answered in our favour.

The German Air Force can still do us savage and serious harm, but we have taken its measure now.

We know tihat we can hold on in this round that in the next we shall be stronger; and that, in the last, we shall see Germany vanquished, like her wrecked bombers that now lie strewn about our countryside.