GERMAN AIR WARFARE

Patea Mail, 13 November 1939, Page 2

GERMAN AIR WARFARE

MASSED RAIDS PROBABLE •Tl'.c possibility is being considered that the recent, scries of German air raids over Britain was designed to test the British defences, in preparation for mass attacks, writes a war correspondent. Following Field-Mar-shall Grering’a throat that the time would come for the showering of bombs on Britain, the newspaper Berliner Boersen-Zoitung attacks the British blockade. 1 "If England,” it says, "Enforces such measures against us, we have the right to employ all the means at our disposal against England. "'That is why Germany will use all her air fleet against England, because there is no difference between a civilian killed as a result of a; blockade and 51 civilian killed by an air bomb,” There is a growing impression in Britain that German activity against Britain on probably a spectacular scale will not much longer be delayed, after the results of the nibbling air raids on the Scottish coast by small forces nave been reviewed and the weather permits. German air tactics are at present puzzling observers. % BADLY CONCEIVED In the first place, the Scottish raid was bauiy conceived and executed 1 wrong formations bombed from wrong Heights at the wrong time. The new tactics of raiding with single planes are incomprehensible. A reconnaissance flight composed of a dozen machine affords the chance of the successful return of one or two of the planes. A single plane, however, of the type of the Hcinkel 111, such as that brought down at Dalkeith in the Scottish raid, and carrying three machine-guns, at a speed of 240 miles an ’.our, has no chance against even a single eight-gun fighter capable of travelling at 340 miles an hour. “Nuisance value,” whereby districts are approached and temporarily disorganised may be a possible explanation of these ladies, but even this result has pot boon achieved so fpi-