MAKING WAR NEWS

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXII, Issue 17, 4 March 1941, Page 5

MAKING WAR NEWS

-■ ■' HOW THE NAZIS DO IT UNSUBSTANTIAL CLAIMS USED LONDON, February 26. y "Hier 1 St. Deutschlandsender" (this is the German Home Radio). A bomber pilot is speaking. He is describing a raid over Britain, and this is what he says: "There was no searchlight activity as we circled the aerodrome. Then we dropped our bombs. Several fires started with a reddish yellow colour, and we heard seven explosions—^-seven machines destroyed. ■ This cock-and-bull story is soon translated upon arrival in Berlin into the clipped language of a High Command announcement: "Tota! losses of the enemy yesterday and last night, therefore, amounted to thirty three aircraft." (German High Command communique, February ,11, iy*l). In fact the British lost six machines on the day in question. But this and similar enemy exaggerations are not to be wondered at if Berlin is prepared to score every lhasty assumption as a substantial result. All At Sea Claims as to the tonnage of British shipping sunk seem to bs made on the same unsubstantial basis. The Nazi bomb—or torpedo-aimer —claims as victim the ship whose ' fate his aeroplane or submarine cannot possibly have waited to see. The classic case is that of Aircraftman Francke, who was award,ed a commission for the first sink-

in£ of the ArK Royal, because his comrades "clearly saw her decks awash." On the same scanty type of evidence the German High Command communique of November 8 claimed to have "completely destroyed" 86,000 tons of shipping, being "the whole of the British convoy," which was escorted by the ======================^^

Jervis Bay. As is well-known, only four out of the 38 ships in that convoy were sunk by the raider.

To take yet another example, ,the German High Command claimed (February 12) that fourteen out of fifteen ships had been sunk in an Atlantic convoy a few days earlier. A German home wireless commentator (February 15) added the embellishment that "it would have been an easy matter to sink the fifteenth vessel as well, but the German commander left her to pick up the crews of the fourteen other ships." It is already known that ten out of the nineteen ships in the convoy in question are safe at their respective destinations and that four more are not yet overdue.

Lastly, Herr Hitler's famous 215,----000 tons in two days—conveniently reported just in time for (his annual speech of February 24—are as far removed from the truth as such enemy assertions invariably prove to be. Flying -High; Light is thrown on the higher

mathematics of the Nazi Air Command by an article in "Der Adler," the Nazi flying paper. Writing in the issue of October 29, Tauptmann Schramm, who commands a Press Reporter Company, says that one of the rules governing the recognition of an airman's claim to be credited with a feat is that: "Victories are not credited to a single pilot, but to his unit. Should more than one unit have taken part in jthe air battle during which the enemy machine was shot down, all these units are credited with this victory." The rule is evidently open to variation, for German broadcasts joften announce that "Sergeant Schmidt has shot down so-and-so many machines.'/ It is easy to register a big score if, as happens, his flight, squadron, wing, and group are all credited with the success. The total is swelled still further whenever other units are engaged in the action, and their flights, ! squadrons, wings, and groups chalk