NAZI AIR RAID TACTICS

Southland Times, Issue 24239, 24 September 1940, Page 6

NAZI AIR RAID TACTICS

Failure Of Crushing Mass Attacks (British Official Wireless) (Received September 23, 5.5 p.m.) RUGBY, September 22. The Nazi method of carrying out aerial bombardments over a wide area by single machines, or small formations. undoubtedly imposes a severe strain on the civil population and necessarily causes damage, but, by its very nature, military gains are small. In a large area such as London, which, as a centre of population, has grown up gradually and absorbed what once were satelite towns and villages, “military targets,” in the broadest sense of the term, are .inevitably scattered throughout. residential and commercial areas. Consequently, of the number of bombs indiscriminately dropped some are bound to land on such places as gasworks and factories as well as hospitals and railway stations. The greatest number have burst on what forms the highest proportion of target surface —roads and streets—and these, of course, cause damage of varying degree to surrounding buildings, the vast majority of which, when hit, sustain damage, which, from a military point of view, is not commensurate with the cost incurred in hitting them. GERMAN TECHNIQUE

It is probably for this reason that the German High Command—knowing its pilots are unlikely to reach that high degree of individual efficiency and courage which distinguishes Royal Air Force pilots and crews and enables them to deliver, one after another, suc-

cessful attackson genuine military ob- , jectives—regarded, and probably still regards, night air operations as militarily ineffective. The German technique fe a crushing blow delivered by mass formations, and the German High Command has shown by its two efforts that it would, if it could, apply tHis method to mass daylight attacks. Both these endeavours, however, have been signally defeated by the Royal

be regarded as cheap—so far as losses are concerned—harassing and alternative.

• The attack on civilian morale is, however, a well tried weapon in the political armoury of the Nazi. Hitherto disruption from within has been found to be sufficiently effective, especially if accompanied by some measure of physical brutality, the latter being increased proportionately to the inability of “idealogical” subversion to bring about a requisite state of internal confusion. In applying their methods to Britain the Nazis found but poor soil for their seeds of discord.