NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16290, 14 August 1918, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The Gorman submarines oh the American coast continue to achieve glorious { victories over unarmed fishing schooners j and similar craft. It iB now rather ! more than two months since the U-boats j thus carried the war to the shores of tho United States. In the intervening period they have sunk a-number of vessels, mostly of the kind we have described, have set some hundreds or sailors adrift' in small boats at the mercy of the'sea, .have been the cause of^a-number of people being drowned, and have, of course, inflicted a certain amount of material damage on the Allies and on some neutral countries,by the destruction of ships and their cargoes. Against.these successes have to he put the loss of one or two cruisersubmarines, and the fact that by bringing America into the actual war zone the pirates have aroused the fighting spirit of the States as probably nothing' but an air raid on New York would have done. That is a great price to , pay for a barren gain. In sending submarines across the Atlantic the Germans had a twofold object. They hoped to be able to sink • some of -the transports, and with this J purpose in view the submarine com- j mandere sank all the vessels they at-1 tacked by bombs and shellfire. They . were reserving their torpedoes for the ; bigger game, which, as it has turned j out, they have never been able to in-, jure. Their second purpose was to hamper and restrict the despatch of troops to France. In that they have also failed signally. The of transportation was checked for a day or so. while the means of defence were being organised, and then moved on again with its former rapidity and smoothness. There was some natural anxiety on the part of the relatives of the soldiers who had to cross tho Atlantic, but there was nothing like a scare, and such alarm as was felt was to some extent allayed by the naval officials, who pointed, out that if American warships could convoy transports through the danger zono on the other side without the loss of a man, there was gocd reason to believe that they would "ba equally successful nearer home. The admission in the diary of a captured German officer pf the Allies' air supremacy bears out recent statements by of the war correspondents, and finds, of course, its strongest confirmation in the official returns of the number'of Allied and enemy machines that are destroyed. German aircraft production is suffering, it is said, from persistent standardisation and the dis- I couragement of new designs of motors. The output for various reasons is also insufficient for requirements, and tho enemy suffers from lack of machines fot every purpose equal in efficiency to the British machines. An even more serious cause of Germany's present air inferiority is the scarcity of good airmen. The quality of the enemy pilotj this year is notably poorer than in the past, and not infrequently German aii-men land in the British lines with an inadequate excuse for doing so. The scarcity of competent pilots is due in large measure to the B.itish airmen's partiality for in-fighting. Many combats are said to occur when the opposing machines are. only fifty feet apart, and in these duels the British prove themselves the better marksmen. Some weeks ago two British air officers had the unutterable joy of seeing two squadrons of Germans fall into a trap which had been prepared for themselves. They were lead.ng an air patrol when they sighted a German two-seater which immediately fired a green signal light. While the British waited to see what this performance meant, six German scouts flew down to join, their comrade, while almost at tho same moment six others also dived down out of the upper sky. They had mistaken the signal for one of distress, and-took thd first German squadron for British machines: No. 2 squadron thereupon began a furious attack on No. 1, while the British leaders guided their patrol into the fight, and took an active part in the melee. Before it had been in progress more than a few moments the British had sent three enemy machines down, while the Germans, fighting among themselves, shot down several of their own machines before the remainder drew off. TBe first German machine had been a decoy, intended to lead the British into a trap, but the trick did not work out according to plan.