NAZI AIR STRATEGY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 239, 6 September 1940, Page 6

NAZI AIR STRATEGY.

Them; are several deductions to be made from the changes in air strategy employed by the Nazis in the unrestricted attacks on Britain to which observers have drawn attention in the past week, and chief of these may well'be the fact that a long threatened plan of lightning devastation has badly miscarried. It would be unwise to disregard the advice of competent authorities that greater attacks may yet come, but there is unmistakable evidence that changes in the Nazi plans have become necessary — and this has been proved at enormous cost to them. It may be many years ere the world learns what have been the innermost conceptions of the • air war on Britain held by Hitler and Goering up till now, but whatever their beliefs one fact stands out, and that is the misjudging by the enemy of the character of the British people as a whole and the amazing intrepidity and daring of the Royal Air Eorce. For weeks past the realisation has been steadily forced upon the enemy that Britain is just as powerful in assuming the offensive in the air as she is in her defence tff her own territory—and Hitler and those around him nowhave the task of explaining; to their people, if any explanations are ever given, why it is that night after night many military objectives in Germany, occupied France, and elsewhere are devastated by the Royal Air Force when they were led to believe that after the downfall of France wtmld come the lightning thrust by the Nazi air force that would render the British airmen incapable of venturing beyond their own shores. The turn of the tide lias come, and, no matter what the scale of further Nazi attacks : may be, the Mother Country stands ready for them, sure in the knowledge that she is steadily attaining numerical equality, even superiority, in the air, while her airmen have proved beyond all doubt that theirs is a spirit that no enemy strategy, however well conceived or how ruthless, can ever extinguish.