Higher & Fewer

The hunter's moon swelled to full over Europe last week and Adolf Hitler's manhunting Huns made the most of it. In the fighter-bombers and fast, light bombers (Junkers 88) to which they resorted when their bigger death crates proved too easy meat for the R. A. F.'s fighter defense, they swarmed in over London. They also visited Liverpool, Manchester and other inland towns, to whose inhabitants the bombing of London is only horrid hearsay. Most of them stayed at great altitude because their converted Messerschmitts, with a red line painted on the windscreen for a "bomb sight," were no good for precision work and, anyway, the purpose of their "total" war was indiscriminate damage and terror among London's civilian populace.

Their fastest ships were fitted to carry only 440-lb. bombs; the Ju-88 top load was 3,960 lb. (against 10,000 Ib. for a Flying Fortress). But these types could come & go in such numbers that the psychological effect of heavy mass raiding was achieved. Also, they introduced the Goering "breadbasket"--a big bundle of mixed incendiaries and explosives. For bass notes a few larger Nazi planes unloaded devastating 4,000-lb land mines, lowered by parachute to make their descent slow and silent, give no warning. One of their delayed-action bombs damaged the U. S. Embassy.

It was a weary week for London. Due to the attackers' speed and to the nighttime, the British defenders' score of kills fell to parity with the Germans'. In one 24-hour period only one Nazi was reported downed. Yet even as the scores fell, so did serious damage decrease. And though London was ragged-nerved, on the verge of getting gloomy, the British felt they had in a big sense disarmed the Luftwaffe. Its real bombers were kept at home, or sent elsewhere.

Same time that the Germans were driven to wild night bombing, the British intensified their own night work. Last week they smashed repeatedly at Berlin and set gas works, rail yards, factories on fire. They reported the Berlin Central Post Office entirely gutted. Still not yielding to popular pressure for "total" attacks on German civilians, the R. A. F. continued to concentrate its bombs on selected military targets. At the same time, the British canceled their order to pilots to bring all bombs home if the specified target could not be found. For the first time since September, the R. A. F. reminded Italy that she was vulnerable from the north by dropping big bomb loads on industrial Milan, Turin, Aosta, Verona.

Suffering Londoners were promised eventual tit for tat on Berliners and the Air Ministry talked about new & better aircraft with which it would step up the mighty sky war this winter. At last standardized were U. S. and British production.

Henceforth, U. S. models will have built into them at the factory, instead of after delivery abroad, the power-driven rear-gun turrets which gave the R. A. F. such a jump on the Luftwaffe when the heavy fighting began. Recognized and corrected was a fatal blind spot in its belly which made the swift Boulton Paul Defiant a flop when the Germans got on to it after Dunkirk. On the heels of the Lockheed Hudson general reconnaissance bombers, handy Brewster Buffalo fighters and sturdy Douglas Boston* long-range, light, all-metal bombers gained favor with their R. A. F. test pilots.

*In honor of U. S. Ambassador Joe Kennedy's home town.

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