World War: Who Hurt Whom

The massed bugles of the German and Italian propaganda band last week played louder & louder their new tune: Britain would be hard to invade, the “new tactic” of the Axis was to bomb out its arteries, starve out its defenders.

To this, Winston Churchill’s office composed a precautionary reprise: “The Prime Minister wishes it known that the possibility of German attempts at an invasion by no means has passed away. The fact that the Germans now are putting out rumors that they do not intend an invasion should be regarded with the double dose of suspicion which attaches to all their utterances. Our sense of growing strength and preparedness must not lend to the slightest relaxation of vigilance or moral alertness.”

Same time, U. S. correspondents in Germany were encouraged to report the massing, by night and in large numbers, of German troops on the Continent facing England, and in Norway, where they were “practicing landings.” Pictures of Germans practicing rooftop exercises on a sort of huge “jungle gym” were released in the U. S. On the other side of the Channel the hand of General Sir Alan Francis Brooke, the British Army’s new Commander in Chief (who in his time speared a wolf from the saddle), was seen in a new land-defense move made by Britain. Ripped out of roads and highway crossings, where they had been planted to deter invading Nazi war machines, were pillars and posts and upended rails—lest they impede the mobility of Sir Alan’s defense forces.

London v. Hamburg. Whether or not Germany was feinting to study her foe’s reaction, as she did twice last winter before invading the Lowlands, last week the Battle of Britain stayed in the air and at sea. Bad weather reduced the fighting from the busy week prior, but a battle of words raged over results.

The Germans, echoing a story in the New York Daily News, claimed they had effectively “closed” the port of London, had stopped virtually all traffic in & out of Hull, Newcastle, Southampton. Great Britain replied that none of these ports was closed except momentarily, to sweep up mines. Minister of Shipping Ronald Cross admitted, however, that traffic at any port might be dislocated at any time by “war conditions,” for which

Britain has a series of emergency plans. Last week, whether because the Germans did not attack much or because shipping was at a minimum, little bombing of convoys off the east and south coasts was reported.

A checkup by Associated Press disclosed no “serious damage” at the ports of Folkestone, Plymouth, Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, Dover, Bristol, Portsmouth, Cardiff. But official British press releases took a line which suggested that bomb damage at home had reached a point where British morale needed an impressive summary of damage done to Germany by R. A. F. bombers. During the war to date, they said, R. A. F. had attacked 1,000 targets in 3.000 raids, inflicting damage on 100 German or German-held cities within a radius of 575 miles from England. In one month 33,431 British bombs had been dropped, as against 6,987 German bombs in Britain. The great port of Hamburg was “practically in ruins.” Kiel and Wil-helmshaven were smashed. Thirty-six major oil dumps had been blown up, including Kamen (near Hamm), which was the special target last week of General de Gaulle’s Free Frenchmen. Bombed dis astrously also (said the British) were the Krupp works at Essen, rail lines at Cologne, the Kiel naval base, freight yards at Hamm, and seven airfields used most by Nazi raiders: Querqueville (Cherbourg), Flushing, St. Inglevert (Calais), Glisy (Amiens), Duisburg, Courtrai, Antwerp.

THE BIGGEST LIE YET was the German headline riposte to the claim that Hamburg, the nation’s biggest port, was ruined. In Berlin the Propaganda Ministry reported that it had taken a party of “foreign correspondents” to Hamburg and that these inspected the city from stem to stern and discovered “no sign of destruction.” Indeed, nightclubs were booming “with holidaymakers thronging the streets and railway stations.” The British promptly specified 23 attacks on docks, factories, oil depots, called attention to the fact that the R. A. F. did not attack cities indiscriminately and noted that “it is obvious how easy it would be even if London were most seriously damaged to take a tour lasting several hours and yet see nothing at all.”

Heartening to Britons was an estimate by their outspoken weekly The Aeroplane that British aircraft factories had passed Germany’s current monthly production of 1,800 warplanes (exclusive of trainers). The Aeroplane gave Germany per day: ten new Messerschmitts, 15 Heinkels, 25 Junkers, ten Dorniers. German engine production was put at 2,500-per-month minimum. With U. S. production beginning to come fast, Britain might thus expect before long to match Germany’s operational strength of 16,000 warplanes (including troop carriers but not trainers). The Aeroplane tactfully refrained from saying how far short of that goal Britain was last week, but Britain claimed to have 200 secret airdromes not yet discovered (at least, not yet attacked) by the Germans and a large force of fighters strictly reserved for defense when It should come in a big way.

Conspicuous by their absence from air-battle dispatches were Britain’s Boulton Paul Defiant fighters, whose revolving fire turrets fooled not a few Germans and carried off top honors in the fighting over Dunkirk—one place where R. A. F. gained local command of the air. Report was that the Defiants were found wanting after all, their manufacture discontinued. Germany was reported to have a fast new Heinkel 113 single-motored one-seater ready for the finals, specially equipped for night work and with extra-wide under carriage designed for rough landings. Guba and Mercenaries. Busy little Lord Beaverbrook, Minister for Aircraft Production, kept his show in the headlines by buying .New York Oil Tycoon Richard Archbold’s 14-ton Consolidated flying boat, the Guba, fitted for tropical exploration, and engaging famed U. S. Pilot Clyde Pangborn to shuttle it back & forth across the Atlantic with three-and-a-half-ton loads of aluminum for British aircraft factories. Pilot Pangborn appeared last week at Oakland, Calif, to enlist other U. S. fliers (between 20 and 40, with 500 hours) as R. A. F. instructors in Canada and as ferry pilots between factories and R. A. F. bases in England. For overseas work the British offered in U. S. money $150 per week, plus $500 bonus at war’s end.