AIRMAN’S PICTURE OF WAR

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20586, 27 November 1936, Page 14

AIRMAN’S PICTURE OF WAR

“RAID” ON LONDON WHEN BRITAIN SUES FOR PEACE LONDON, October 24. A sensational piece of pro-Air Force propaganda on the horrors of a surprise air attack on Great Britain comes this week from the pen of Air-Com-modore L. E. O. Charlton, former British Air Attache at Washington, in “War Over England.” He speculates on what might happen in a German raid on well-chosen objectives in London and other cities. As a background he builds up an international situation similar to the present—with the addition that Italy has started to divert the Abyssinian waters of Lake Tsana from Egypt and the Sudan. Britain threatens to close the Suez Canal and sends her fleet to the Mediterranean.

The author pictures a cloudless day in June with a crowd of 150.000 watching the R.A.F. pageant at Hendon. Leading representatives of the Navy and Army, the Air Council, and many Cabinet Ministers are present, with the entire Air Force disorganised for the display. Without warning eighteen German bombing aeroplanes flying at 700 ft, arrive to scatter high explosive, gas. and incendiary bombs on aircraft and crowd. Thousands, including most of the Air Council, Cabinet Ministers, and the Secretary for War, are killed or injured. Lots Road Power Station, which supplies electricity for the underground, is bombed and 250,000 passengers are trapped in the tubes. “Inefficient Defences” While the R.A.F. is getting ready to retaliate and “completely inefficient” ground defences are preparing to operate. London’s dockland is destroyed by bombs. More unpleasantness comes from poison-gas sprayers.

The Mediterranean fleet is sunk at Alexandria in a surprise attack by the Italian air force—the writer having no faith in the fleet’s anti-aircraft defences.

In less than a week both Britain and France —treated in like fashion sue for peace. Germany gets her colonies back and Italy takes British Somaliland and Aden. But in the phraseology of the film caption: “England rises again.” The sum total of it all is that AirCommodore Charlton thinks that in war ruthless dictators must vanquish countries under democratic rule and that the only safe guard is a super air force. Happily it is all “fiction.”