The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1940 Contrast in Tactics

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21816, 20 November 1940, Page 6

The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1940 Contrast in Tactics

THE persistent, indiscriminate bombing of London and of oilier British centres, which reached a climax in the, ruthless assault on Coventry, throws into relief a vital difference in the tactics adopted by the Nazi and the Royal Air Forces. If the Nazi raids on Britain, taking capricious toll of life and property and gathering into the sickle of war gems of architecture which are part of the heritage of Europe, may be described as spectacular, then it is true that the British bombing of Germany and of German occupied territory cannot claim the same invidious distinction. On the other hand, if the desideratum of aerial warfare is the crippling of the enemy war machine, the destruction of factories and the disruption of communications, then it can confidently be claimed that the concentration of the Royal Air Force on strategically selected targets is signally more effective in serving the ends of victory. Nazi frightfulness has designedly brought the civil population of Great Britain into the front line of battle, but the plan to undermine fighting morale has reckoned without the magnificent spirit of the British people among whom the rain of explosives has served only to sow an even greater determination to see the struggle through to the end. With, the threat of invasion held at bay, the only method by which Britain has been able to strike at the sources of Germany’s military strength has been through the air, and the methodical toll which British bombers have taken of German and Italian resources in continued attacks on factories, shipping and communications has done relatively more damage than what has been inflicted on England by the enemy air fleets. This has been due to the quality of British machines and the skill and daring of British pilots, to whom the nation’s tribute was paid in the words of Mr Churchill, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Yet it is not only to the calibre of men and machines that so much success has been due. It was no accident that the canal which links the industrial valleys of the Ruhr and the Rhine with the rest of Germany was selected for a special target, or that incendiary bombs were dropped on the Black Forest, or that British bombers have been directed against oil refineries and armament works. This capacity to strike at the heart of tilings is the result of an inner knowledge of Germany’s economic resources, of cold methodical calculation towards the achievement, in Mr Churchill’s words, of the shattering and pulverising at home of the entire economic and scientific apparatus of German power. Behind every British raid there is an expert knowledge of Germany’s economic structure, the fruit of extended research by men who have mapped out German economy in detail and followed every modification of the ways and means of German production and distribution. The same finesse appears to be lacking in the air arm of the Nazis, who possibly gain some sadistic satisfaction from their blanket bombing but comparatively little military advantage.