PORTS AS TARGETS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 227, 8 July 1941, Page 7

PORTS AS TARGETS.

GERMAN BOMBING RAI*DS. * ' RECENT CHANGE IN TACTICS. Germany has recently switched the main weight of her air attack on Britain from London and inland cities to ports, states the London correspondent of the “Sydney Sun.” From tills change in strategy it is evident that the German air force is now co-operating more closely than before in the blockade of Britain. In addition to intensified bombing of convoys in the Atlantic and elsewhere, the raiders have lately been attacking ships in port, also docks and waterfront warehouses.

These tactics are all part of Germany’s attempt to. starve out Britain, first, by trying to prevent vessels making port, second by bombing those that roach port, and third, by interfering with the distribution of food from ports. Apart from the air operations intended to supplement the blockade by submarines, mines, and surface raiders, the Germans arc trying to hinder R.A.F. bombing at its source by attacking aerodromes in East Anglia. These attacks are usually carried out by “cloud-snooping” single raiders, which dive suddenly on their target, and are the counterpart of some of the R.A.F.’s daylight visits to the enemy’s channel bases. The sireus are sometimes heard eight or nine times a day in East Anglia, when the weather favours the German tactics. Thus the lull that London has enjoyed for weeks, has not applied to the whole of England. Even in the heaviest of recent night

raids, however, the number of bombers employed was not comparable with the blitz of last autumn. The recent raids are regarded merely as a preliminary to the great offensive expected in the spring.

There is a renewed demand for the bombing of Germans inside Germany as the surest method of making Britain’s weight felt upon a nation which is gathering around her a protective layer of subjected lands, upon which most of the R.A.F.’s blows fall. Bad weather has recently restricted R.A.F. raids mainly to the invasion ports and other objectives in France, Belgium, and Holland.

It is obvious that while the invasion threat continues, and while Germany is using captured territory as bases for sea, land and air operations, the R.A.F. must continue to watch and -bomb these bases.

No objective in Germany is outside the range of the R.A.F.’s newest heavy bombers, now gradually coming into use, and more and moro writers are urging that the moral and material effects of severe bombing should be brought home to the German people bv heavy and continuous raids on Germany proper.