Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1941. AIRMAN'S HEROIC ROLE IN MASS WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1941, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1941. AIRMAN'S HEROIC ROLE IN MASS WAR

♦ ; The modern conception of mas war may not have been invalidatec by what has happened since Septem ber, 1939, but some illuminating searchlights have been thrown upoi it, and perhaps the most powerful o these is found in the story of thi Empire's epic of the air, the Battli of Britain. Mass war implies the vie i tory of superior numbers in the fina .. test of strength, assuming equipmen and opportunity to be equal. Fo: instance, by the year 1919 the balanci - of numbers and also of equipmen 3 would have been heavily against th< t Germans in France, owing to thi arrival of the Americans; and it wa; for a 1919 victory on these lines tha the Allied Governments were mathe » matically preparing when the Germai s machine suddenly cracked in 191J under Ludendorff's heavy hand, giv ing an earlier victory. The mass wai conception thus evolved seemed t< have robbed war of its Thermopylaes c No longer did it seem likely tha 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians, oi an equivalent thousand of moden warriors, would by their own deeds accomplish something so heroic anc mighty that it would stand ou sublime and strategic against the hug< background of the war of millions I Amid that mighty throng of trend I warriors, no Thermopylae of ' i \ thousand fighters seemed to count * Nothing seemed to be big enough tc count in the enormous scale of mass Avar except a Verdun, where th< Germans lost over 250,000 men, anc ; where the French} employing 66 divi 7 sions, lost over 400,000. But now the world knows tha while the eventual winning of the wai 3 may yet be dictated by masses, j victory of transcendent brilliance and of far-reaching effect upon th( - still deferred decision, may be wor by a handful of men not greatly ir excess of those that died at Ther mopylae. The Battle of Britain was indeed a Thermopylae of the air. The front-line work was done, at speeds x of three hundred miles or more ar hour, by a few thousand young mer who interposed their youthful valoui between forty-odd millions of people I 1 and Goering's angels of death. Th( I disparity in numbers between the ' devoted few and the huge popula tion to whom they constituted swore and shield immediately struck the * imagination of Mr. Churchill, whe . thereupon, from the world-wide comings and goings of mass war sifted out this pearl of truth: • Never in the field of human conflict was so. much owed by so many to sc few. Thus, side by side with the epocl: of mass war, is an epochal aii i battle which places the powei - and glory of individuals^ more than ever on a pedestal. In the general camaraderie born of the " fact that every man, woman, anc c child is now in the firing-line, there | remains room yet for appreciation oi • the debt which all Britain owes ir i special degree to its corps d'elite, the - Royal Air Force. "The gratitude oJ j every home," says the Prime Minister "goes out to the British airmen, who j undaunted by odds, unwearied ir I their, constant challenge and mortal i danger, are turning the tide of worla 1 war by their prowess and their devo' 3 tion." The more minutely their per ' formance is examined against the j background of the forces of evil, in 3 eluding all Germany's embattl.ee : strength, the more astonishing does il seem, symbolising as it does that mass is not everything and that hope die ■ not die from the world when Hitlei i entered it. * War on the French front a genera^ I tion ago meant many men in a small • space. Air war over England means 1 a few men ranging over a wide space 2 at speeds unheard of by their grand- , sires. Admiral Cunningham can stil] 3 call his victory the Battle of Cape | Matapan. But there is a huge differI ence between 300 miles an hour and J 30 knots. Air-war speeds have made j place-names almost meaningless, for I the act of chasing German aircraft I from Maidstone to Calais cannot be > labelled with either name. In a pur- - suit from London to the French coast i the locality sense becomes minor, and - distance-conquerors like the R.A.F, l find place-names unhelpful as clues to nomenclature. The three-dimen--3 sional battle^ of Sunday, September ' 15,1939, j took place roughly in a cube about 80 , miles long, 38 miles broad, and from f five to six miles high. It was in ihis I space, between noon and half-past, that , between 150 and 200 individual comf bats took place. Many of these ; developed into stern chases which were f broken off within a mile or two of the French coast. f The old infantryman gasps at the i idea of a battlefield measured in cubic miles which the fighters i traverse between noon and half-past, l and which may witness recurrences s of the same performance every hour r as new waves of attackers break I upon the aggressive defence. "The Battle of Britain," the Air

Ministry's "best-seller," just arrived by mail from England, from which - the above quotation is taken, records that day after day last summer, while s the German attackers were suffering terrific losses, the men and "women of England went about their business with very little idea of what was happening three, four, five, or six miles S above their heads. It may be, say the authors, that this war, like the last one, may yet be won by slow- - moving infantry. But the fact is that a so far the only decisive battle, in a series of battles, has been won in c the air; and this loss has. deprived c Hitler of an opportunity of com- '" plete victory which, for him, may never recur. A gap of no less than 1 ten years separated Trafalgar and r Waterloo, yet from the Battle of E Trafalgar Napoleon's power never wholly recovered. Is it not reasone able to compare the Battle of Britain c with the Battle of Trafalgar, and to s see in the Royal Air Force, cruising fc in the airy blue, the direct descendants of Nelson's hearts of oak? 1 mm! mm! mm7rZl^^