NEW BRITISH BOMBER.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 22, 6 November 1940, Page 5

NEW BRITISH BOMBER.

MACHINE A “WIZARD.”

SPITFIRES UPSET NAZI PLAN,

LONDON, October 10,

“She’s a wizard,” said a Royal Air Force test pilot' after flying a new British bomber which is expected to revolutionise aerial warfare. This new bomber, which is now in production and will soon be operating, will have a great range. “Should the Axis make war on Turkey,” says Noel Monks, aviation correspondent of the “Daily Mail,” “the new bombers will he.able to make ‘out and home’ trips, using Turkish bases for refuelling and reloading.

“Their advent is heartening in view of the desperate measures the Germans are adopting in daylight raids on Britain by sending fighters, because of heavy bomber losses, to do the work of bombers, for. which they are far from suited.

“Probably the Germans have moved large numbers of bombers to Rumania, but it is an inglorious retreat, because they were moved only after every trick known in aerial strategy had been tried against Britain,- with disastrous results.”

The famous aeroplane designer, Major Alexander Seversky, writing in the “New York Herald-Tribune,” says the Spitfires’ 25 miles an hour margin of speed over the Messerschmitts has saved Bi’itain from disaster and provided an opportunity for Britain to undertake a full-scale aerial offensive against Germany. “Before the war I flew Spitfires in Britain and then visited Germany and flew Messerschmitts,” he says. “I told the Germans that -the Spitfires wore the bettor. They smiled knowingly, but they were mistaken when they relied on mass production to counterbalance quality. “The Germans regarded the invasion across the Channel as child’s play, due to their experience in the Skaggerak in the Norway invasion, when aerial superiority permitted a landing in the teeth of the Royal Navy. The speed cf the Spitfires, however, permitted Britain to take the aerial initiative over the Channel and upset the whole Nazi strategy.”