AIR "TERROR."

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 305, 27 December 1939, Page 8

AIR "TERROR."

GERMAN FIGHTERS.

Messerschmitt's Triumph Over

Gestapo.

FORGE BEHIND GOERING

LONDON, December 22.

WaltJior MesHei'schmitt, designer of ftormany'rt standard fighter 'plane, is living in Batavia. He has taken out Dutch citizenship.

A few years ago, a short, thick-set, jolly man watt working in the aeroplane department of Krupps for a few pounds a month.

He was recognised as the most brilliant 'plane designer in the Reich. But hie anti-Nazi sentiments were so virulent that soon Uio Gestapo was on his track.

Soon after Herman Qoering began to build his terror air force in secret he choso a fighter designed by this antiHitl<T workman for mass production. Ooering ordered Heinrich Himmler to rail hie Qcetapo .bloodhounds off the man.

Messerschmitt answered the charges against him by throwing a handful of nuts and bolts in the faces of his questioners, shouting: "Leave me alone! I'm working t"

One day S.S. men entered Kruppe and began an,investigation which was aimed directly at the aeroplane designer, \sked to wcur the swastika brassard as an outward mark of respect for the Nasi regime, he ref ural.

Finally, Himtuler protested to Hitler that Goering was protecting and encouraging an enemy of the State, in Kruppe of all places. Hitler took the matter up with Goering, who said Mcsserschmitt was indispensable.

Goering built him a special aeroplane works at Stuttgart. But the inventor would not ease up on his bitter private attacks on the Nazis.

Soon hie Stuttgart factory became a regular anti-Hitler cell.

It became otrvlou* that something would have to be done about it. Himmled wanted to throw the man into a concentration camp. But again Goering intervened and persuaded Hitler to let him leave Germany, in view of his great •orvices to th<j State.

So the short, pipe- smoking, inventor took a Dutch K.llM. 'plane to Batavia, in the Dutch E««t Indie*. After a time, ii« applied for Dutch citizenship, got it, mid settled down. In Batavia lie is working on aeroplane design*, which he offers to the Dutch Government.