Eastland v. Westland

Great Britain, in accord with Anthony Eden's dictum to act tough, has lately adopted the Fascist strategy of muscle-making. Most effective display of bulging biceps was the dispatch of hundreds of bombers on nonstop trips to distant French destinations, flights which more than equaled the mileage to Berlin--as British newspapers were careful to point out. Responsible for the flights to France was Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Rainey Ludlow-Hewitt, head of the Bomber Command. Tall, spare, methodical, he is a practiced muscle flexer, for he has commanded the R. A. F. in Iraq and India, where it is the function of antique planes to scare the baggy pants off bearded tribesmen. Last week Sir Edward's up-to-date bombers did a little job of scaring right at home.

An Air Ministry bulletin one day last week announced that relations were "very tense" between "Westland" (Great Britain) and "Eastland" (Germany). "It is rumored," citizens were warned, "that Eastland bombers are already taking up strategic positions for a sudden attack on Westland territory." Early that evening the first squadrons of 500 Eastland bombers swept in from the Channel and North Sea and made eleven mock raids in 40 minutes.

Volunteer spotters, eyes & ears straining for the sight or sound of high-flying "invaders," flashed word of the enemy approach to the fields where pilots stood ready to gun the 1,000-h.p. engines of 800 quick-climbing Spitfire and Hurricane fighters. The Territorial Army probed cloudbanks with searchlights, traced the paths of the invading bombers with the long snouts of their anti-aircraft guns. In London balloon barrage crews, on the alert 24 hours a day, inflated their tricky sausages and let them up 700 feet--far lower than would be needed to entangle a real enemy. Defending fighters signaled contact with the raiders by flashing lights, which were checked by staff observers. Effectiveness of the bombers and antiaircraft was recorded photographically. That night Eastland bombers made 100 raids, 500 in the three-day maneuvers, and the Air Ministry reported that, despite poor visibility, the spotters in every case gave defenders advance warning.

Climax of the maneuvers was an experimental blackout of all southeast England including London, prime objective of the Eastland raiders. As "Big Ben" struck 12:30, the lights that illuminate its face faded out. Most householders and shopkeepers had already voluntarily followed the Government's request by extinguishing outside lights, curtaining windows, painting over skylights. Angry crowds smashed the signs and windows of two nonconformist shops. Police in white raincoats and civilian air wardens halted cars, asked drivers to dim down to parking lights. Crowds out to see the fun bumped their shins on dark sidestreets and flocked into Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park, where spectators alternately cheered and groaned at the efforts of the searchlight crews.

Next day, while the nation mourned four crashes and the death of nine aviators, the Air Ministry announced that from the air the 700 square miles of metropolitan London had "looked like a few small scattered villages." Eastland aviators, it was said, were unable to see bombing objectives which by their reckonings were directly beneath them. From this optimistic opinion individual pilots and independent observers sharply dissented. They declared that the lights of cars, the glare of blast furnaces, lanterns on bridges and Thames barges, the blaze of signals in switchyards, and the lights of trains made the blackout a complete failure. Major Edwin Colston Shepherd, editor-elect of The Aeroplane, an interested passenger in an Eastland bomber, reported that his plane twice flew directly to its objectives, eluding searchlights and four times passing unseen near defending fighters. "The experience," he concluded, "of these early hours seems too ominous to be true." The answer will probably be to make blackouts compulsory. But even on a dark night nothing can hide the sheen of the Thames, winding into London's heart.

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