HITLER’S WAR FLEET

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23702, 9 January 1939, Page 14

HITLER’S WAR FLEET

STRENGTH IN PLANES MORE FIGURES GIVEN For the first time the secrecy shrouding the strength of the German Air Force was lifted in the Essener National Zeitung. cables Sigrid Schultz from- Berlin to the Chicago Tribune. The paper is the official organ of Field-marshal Hermann Wilhelm Goering, Minister for Aviation. It revealed that Germany had at the time of the Munich Four-Power Conference, 3000 front-line fighting planes—not counting reserve planes and training machines. By 1940, Goering’s paper declared, the German front-line air fleet would be increased to 6000 planes, “ whereas the combined air fleets of England and France —according to their own estimates—will not exceed the German Air Force in 1940.” The front-line aerial strength of other Powers is estimated as follows: Soviet Russia 4700 planes, the United States 2300, Great Britain 2031, France. 1400, Italy 1400, and Japan 1300, says the Chicago Tribune.

Even more striking is German supremacy in airports, the Essener Zeitung said. Stressing that the strategical value of the fleets depends largely on their air bases, it disclosed that Germany has now three times as many airports as either England or France. Against England’s 260 and France’s 250 airports, the number of German air bases is given at 750, “an enormous figure even considering that Germany has to defend herself on two frontiers.”

Goering’s paper, in emphasising Germany’s “ industrial supremacy ” in regard to air armaments, declared: “ This supremacy now must be maintained, and will be maintained.” Reichsfuhrer Hitler is working overtime consolidating his country’s position as the leading Power on the European continent. Hitler Visits Border

He visited German Austria and inspected his new strategic eastward bulwark, the bridgehead of Engerau nn the Danube River near the junction of the Austrian, German, and Czechoslovak borders. Later he visited Vienna.

Hitler also despatched Joachim von Ribbentrop, German Foreign Minister, to Rome to confer with Premier Mussolini on the steps “ the authoritarian States must take to protect themselves in view of the military preparations of the Western democracies.” Hitler and Mussolini in recent private conversations expressed alarm about the “ military spirit displayed in England and France.” The idea of denouncing the British-German Naval Pact is being considered seriously.