GERMAN AIR ATTACKS

Evening Star, Issue 23726, 6 November 1940, Page 5

GERMAN AIR ATTACKS

REASONS FOR RECENT LULL MAY BE REORGANISING SYSTEM The violence of German air attacks on England has markedly abated in recent weeks, and there has been much speculation as to the causes {writes tne military correspondent of the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald ’). .Nothing could he more misleading, however, tnan to assume that such a lull will be permanent or that the German air force has struck its greatest blow. Such wisnful thinking may be dispelled by several more practical explanations of the temporary respite. First, weather conditions have been bad. To those who retort that the weather has not prevented the British Bomber Command from continuing its activities, it may be answered that the R.A.F. has had a much longer training in night flying than has the Luftwaffe, and that its machines and pilots are at an advantage over the Germans in bad weather.

Secondly, Germany may be reorganising her system of attack. This may take the form of a regrouping preparatory to an assault on a scale larger than anything hitherto experienced by Great Britain; or it may be more fundamental Recent reports from neutral countries have repeatedly hinted at a good deal of dissatisfaction with the extremely standardised methods of Marshal Erhard Milch, who leads the German air force under Goering. Such methods, which are in the full tradition of the German military machine, succeeded over Poland and France; but it is claimed that some members of the Air General Staff in Berlin insist that the Battle for Britain demands more resilent tactics and even different methods of framing air cyews. A third possible explanation of the lull is more disquieting. The Germans, using their interior lines of communication, may he diverting large numbers of their machines to other theatres of war. It is not at all unlikely that the Germans may he organising aerial offensives from Libya and Rumania-. Unpleasant as this possibility is, it is to some extent counteracted by the optimistic but" reasoned survey of the British air situation made by AirMarshal Joubert two days ago. He stressed the fact that the R.A.F. was rapidly achieving a new and greater symmetry and was daily coming to be in a position where its offensive powers, in particular, could he enlarged. This may well limit the number of planes, and more particularly pilots. Germany is able to divert to more distant fields.