BLOCKADE OF BRITAIN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4428, 21 May 1941, Page 7

BLOCKADE OF BRITAIN

TWO MAIN OBJECTIVES. “The German plan for ‘blockade’ of Britain is not confined to the destruction of merchant shipping. It has, as a secondary and complementary objective, the dislocation of our port and transport systems. It is a well-known fact that the ports in the southern half of England are the most fully-equipp-ed group in the country and that the railway systems are particularly designed to serve that group. The enemy’s aim is to nullify these ports and to throw on the lesser resources of the more distant docks the whole burden of handling such proportion of imports and exports as escaped attack at sea. It was clearly a weakness of Britain’s protective measures that a determined enemy might succeed in reducing, if not completely cancelling, the usefulness of the big southern port systems. That possibility the Germans have seen, and it is in large measure for the protection and continued use of ports like Southampton and London that the Battle of the Atlantic is being waged. The recent rise in British ship losses provides a partial success for the enemy and one that is visible to all the world. What cannot be shown is the total of entries on the other side of the ledger —the total loss to the enemy of submarines and aircraft. Only the faintest hints reach us of this side of the battle. But .even the incomplete figures go some way to show that our hunting flotillas and our escort vessels are having their successes, too. The battle is not one-sided.” —“Nine-