“BASIC MILITARY MISTAKE”

Southland Times, Issue 24419, 26 April 1941, Page 7

“BASIC MILITARY MISTAKE”

Division Of British

Forces

NEW YORK, April 23.

An aviation expert, Major Alexander de Seversky, writes that it was a basic military mistake to divide the limited British forces in the Near East into three weakened segments in Ethiopia, North Africa and Greece. That the division of the forces may have been unavoidable for political considerations does not alter the tactical facts. “Instinctively, everyone felt the necessity of splitting the German strength, but it is the Nazi Air Force, rather than the Nazi armies, which must be divided if Hitler’s stranglehold is to be broken,” he states. The Balkans was the sole front for the Nazi armies and one of several fronts for Britain. In effect, the British, in forming. a Balkan front, divided their own limited air power while engaging idle Nazi aviation.

From the angle of aerial warfare it would have been far more desirable to constitute a real “second front” for Hitler’s principal aircraft types. The British had a superb opportunity to do this in Africa after driving the Italians almost to Tripoli, if it only had not been necessary to scatter their forces. They might have concentrated all their available strength to anchor British air power permanently on the long stretch of North Africa as a genuine rampart and a real base for offensive operations. From here swift Spitfires could readily have denied the Sicilian straits to Axis aviation. ENCIRCLING OF CONTINENT “In the long run,” he said, “Britain’s hope of reversing relations with the enemy and taking the offensive depends on her success in encircling the continent with British air power. Until the enlargement of the aviation range permits bombardment from more distant points, North Africa presents the best chance of forming that ring of _ air power. The establishment of an African line of aviation based on a vis-a-vis in Europe is of such primary value to Britain that one hopes it will be the first object of Near East strategy when the once formidable force can be reassembled. Given sufficient planes, the Royal Air Force may be expected _ to outpoint the in the African skies as they have done in the English skies.”