ROLE IN THE WAR

Evening Star, Issue 23724, 4 November 1940, Page 2

ROLE IN THE WAR

GERMANY'S AIRMEN BEST WITH GRODNO FORGES WORK IK FLANDERS There is no air force in Germany in our sense of the term, wrote Major F. A. de V. Robertson in the ‘Manchester Guardian ’ on June 10. The Luftwaffe is a branch of the army, not a separate service, and Goering is a field marshal, not an air marshal. The Luftwaffe has been trained to work with the army, chiefly with the mechanised troops, and in the present war it has only appeared to be thoroughly happy when employed in that way. It was at its best in the campaigns in Poland, to a lesser extent in Norway, and in the break-through into Northern France. In all those campaigns it harried and upset the defences, thus preparing the_ way for the onrush of the tank divisions. The essence of the tactics was the speed with which the ground troops followed up, before the defences could make good the dislocation!! caused by the bombing. Without this follow-up by the tanks the German bombers_ have not shown themselves to be a highly-effec-tive arm. Certainly they prevented us from establishing ourselves permanently at Namsos, where the conditions were exceptional, but they did not prevent the re-embarkation of our troops.

THE ESCAPE FROM DUNKIRK. They have not prevented the escape of the personnel of the B.E.F. from Northern France, though on the beaches round Dunkirk and on the Channel everything seemed, to favour the chances of the bombers. In the marine campaign they proved quite unable to prevent our Navy from doing its work, and even in their attacks on our shipping the results must have been highly disappointing to the German High Command. The German fighting man is not usually considered a highly-adaptable person. When he has been carefully trained for one sort of operation he cannot easily bo diverted to an operation of a totally different description.. Crossing the; seas was a novelty for which the German pilots, had not been trained 1 , and consequently little determination was shown in the attacks on the Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow. When Heinkels were told off to attack fishing vessels, one can hardly blame them for hugging the cloud banks and bolting into their coyer wherever a British fighter was sighted, for the Heinkel could not hold its own if attacked by a Hurricane, and it could not escape from the fighter in a clear sky. But it was surprising to hoar how easily the bombers were driven off by the fire of a single machine-gun on a fishing smack.

OF MUSHROOM GROWTH. It must be remembered that the Luftwaffe is a mushroom growth. It had its beginnings in 1932 when Hitler appointed Goering as commissioner in charge of all German Hying. The German air arm of the last war ceased to exist at the armistice, and there was a complete breach of all tradition and development for 13 or 14 years. That must mean that the Luftwaffe is not rich in trained staff officers and instructors. The casualties in the flying schools are believed to have been heavy, and the need to economise petrol has meant that the pilots are for the most part inferior in flying skill to British and Trench pilots. The knowledge that their machines are also inferior in performuance to those of their opponents must take a good deal of heart out of the German pilots. In one big air battle over the Heligoland Bight our bombers inflicted more casualties on a strong force of Messerschmitts than they suffered themselves. A Sunderland flying-boat has repelled an attack by Messerschmitt 110’s and shot some of them down, while only the other day three Ansons shot down or damaged four out of nine Messerschmitt 11.0’s which attacked them. If the situation had been reversed in those three fights the R.A.F. would have been bitterly ashamed of the failure of its fighters. VOLUNTEERS, There has been no lack of volunteers for the flying side of the Luftwaffe. The air crews are composed of enthusiastic young men, carefully nursed in the Nazi doctrines. Probably they have been taught to believe themselves invincible. Failures and casualties are kept as dark as possible—but in an air force news will get round. Great numbers of German pilots have flown over Dunkirk and the survivors must now have concrete ideas on the merits of tho Spitfire, Hurricane, and Defiant. But one must do this justice to the Gorman fighter pilots. When escorting their bombers they have engaged the British fighters and have suffered heavy casualties themselves in order to let their bombers get on to their objective. Certainly the German fighters have usually been in greatly superior numbers, but by now tho pilots must know that a numerical advantage will not save them from suffering heavy josses from the Browning guns of the British. CONFUSING FIGURES. It has not been easy to sort out the various reports of Gorman aircraft losses during the battle in the Low Countries. Some of the figures seem to include machines destroyed by jiombing as they stood on aerodromes. It is not known how many aircraft the Germans had in reserve when war broke out, or how many tho factories are turning out every month (the American estimate of 2,000 a month is certainly an exaggex-ationl, but probably now and for .some time to come the loss of a machine will moan comparatively little to the Luftwaffe. The loss of a trained pilot and a trained

air crew is a much more serious matter* Pilots cannot be turned out by th» thousand a month, and, each pilot trained, even exiguously trained, uses up an amount of petrol which is not to bo despised by a country whose supplies of oil are so strictly limited as are those of Germany.