AIR RAID CASUALTIES

Evening Star, Issue 23726, 6 November 1940, Page 7

AIR RAID CASUALTIES

" SHARP DIMINUTION NOT ENTIRELY DUE TO WEATHER " OTHER THINGS GOING ON " (British Official Wireless.) Press' Association—By Telegraph—Copyright November 5. (Received November 6, at 10.5 a.m.) “The weekly scale of casualties (killed and seriously wounded) was for September 4,500, and for October 3,500,” Prime Minister. “In the, first week of intensive bombardment in September there were 6,000 casualties, and in the last week of October 2,000. This diminution in the scale of attack was not entirely due to the weather. The weather no doubt has a lot to do with it, but there are other things going on besides which play their part, and which, I believe, will play a greater part as the months pass by. The House will not wish me to go into technical details.” Putting the proportion of enemy losses to the British at three machines to one aud six pilots to one, Mr Churchill observed: “Obviously this process, combined with our own rapidly increasing production and production in the Empire' and the United States of aircraft and airmen—obviously this process is much the quickest road to our reaching that parity in the air which has always been considered the minimum for our safety and thereafter the superiority in the air which is the indispensable precursor to victory.” Mr Churchill concluded this part of his statement with the characteristic words: “Surveying the whole scene alike in its splendour and devastation, I see no reason to regret that Hitler tried to break the British spirit by the brutal bombing of our cities and countryside.”