"WINGED PEOPLE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 221, 19 September 1938, Page 7

"WINGED PEOPLE."

CLAIM BY SOVIET.

AIR DISPLAY THRILLS.

JUMPS FROM BOMBERS.

(Special.—By Air Man.)

MOSCOW, September 3.

Except for one six-seater passenger' monoplane, rather like the American Lockheed machine, no new types, either military or commercial, were shown at the air display at the Tushino aerodrome. The programme was an exact repetition of last year's.

As usual, the mass parachute jump, from three big bombers by 72 young] experts was perfectly executed, all land- ] ing together in a compact group. This is an essential point in training for effective raids over enemy aerodromes, railway junctions or munition dumps. Again, as usual, the glider work was , first rate. Nine gliders, which had been towed up by one twin-engined 'plane, came down slowly, lightly and elegantly on the closest wheel or vertical round--1 about formation. 1 The lightness and ease of these aerial ballet dancers could be felt when one compared them with five of Russia's best aerobat:c pilots. With engines roaring, ' they faultlessly performed the same s evolution in their single-seater 116 i monoplane fighters. Soviet a lHTtaefbility.»' These five pilots were well np to good foreign standards. On the whole, how- ' ever, this year's display was less inter--1 esting and taut than last year's, and far : less interesting than, for instance, the Hendon displays. The Soviet Press boasts of air invincibility. "We are a winged people and f citizens of a great air Power," 'says the "Pravda." "Soviet 'planes fly like proud * birds, rejoicing our friends and terrify- * ing our enemies. Stalin is the banner of our heroic aviation.*

Writing in the "Pravda," Air Force Brigadier Richagoff claims that the Soviet Force created an entirely new technique for mass bombing when attacking the Japanese positions in the Changkufeng sector in the Far East.

"Let tacticians from foreign air academies give up trying to prove the impossibility of close formation bombing work against a target," says this officer. "The battles round Lake Hassan upset all such theories.

"The . Soviet Air Force proved itself capable of bombing an intensely narrow strip of ground without missing its aim. Soviet airmen demonstrated that from any height they could distinguish enemy positions from those held by the Redn."

This confirms the supposition that the Russians used bombers flying in close formation at a great height to disperse concentrations of Japanese troops. Since Russian aviation was virtually nonexistent during the Great War, the air fighting round the hill at Changkufeng is the first large-scale air work ever undertaken by Russians in open war.