STRIKING POWER

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 110, 3 February 1941, Page 8

STRIKING POWER

British Analysis Of Luftwaffe 6000 EFFECTIVES AT MOST New Planes Equal Losses (By Telegraph.—Press Ascsn. —Copyright.) (Received February 2, 8.10 p.m.) LONDON. February L Describing as nonsensical the Americans’ estimates of a German air strength amounting to 70,000 military aircraft, the “Sunday Times’ ” aeronautical correspondent analyses the Luftwaffe s likely striking power and concludes that even if the German waiplanes todav total 40,000 only about 9000 could be comb: • machines capable of operating at any given moment. This number, of which half would be bombers, could be used against Britain only if Germany were free from all other commitments and able to concentrate her entitle force for a single blow, but she dare not risk withdrawing planes from Italy and Ute Balkans. Therefore, the writer states, she will be lucky if she can launch an attack with 6000 planes.

The correspondent estimates the Luftwaffe’s total strength at 24,000 first-line planes, behind which lie a reserve pool and unfinished machines and also about uOOO training machines making an absolute grand total of 40,000, against which must be set the likely total of losses since the outbreak of the war, 24,000—6000 confirmed victories plus accidents, unrecorded victories and training losses. Germany was now estimated to be building 1400 to 1000 first-line planes a month, and she had thus constructed about tlie same number as she had lost. Therefore, the Luftwaffe bad not expanded, a conclusion supported by the fa-et that Germany Ims not used more than 2500 planes on any one day, even during the worst periods of the blitz.