Evening star., 1940-11-18

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warnings and the cables referred
only to constant alarms" But the
real thing had still not begun.
Flying in Close Formation.
At o'clock in the afternoon Of
the 7th it happened. 1t was fine
late summer day. The air was
clear. There had been a lull. Then
suddenly out Of nowhere they came
by the hundreds, flying close to-
gether in formations SO tight that
the English pilots tell me they
marveled at the technique. One
pilot who had brought down four
German planes told me he would
never have the nerve to fly in such
close formation. Sure to bump into
somebody, YOU know"
There were hundreds and hun
dredS and hundreds of them, layer
upon layer A moving picture taken
from behind the machine guns of
an English plane diving into such
a formation is nightmariSh. The
screen Is a solid black of planes
flying so evenly that they look as if
they were running on rails. They
filled the English fighters range
finder because he was diving smack
into the middle of them at 400 miles
an hour His eight streams of tracer
bullets literally sprayed them and
they went flying on past as if on
parade In another film I saw Of
such an attack the formation was
Just beginning TO break up when the
pilot released his trigger and shut
off the film He could not have
been more than 100 yards away
from the German formation.
On Saturday. September 7, these
fleets came in over London in such
steady succession that the diving
British pilots emptied their maga-
zines and their gas tanks and went
down TO refueI and reload and came
up to fight again. 1t was during
these successive days of fighting
that the General in PM began to
worry about R. A. F. pilot fatigue.
He was quite right to worry. Six
weeks later I was in a squadron,
but when an R. A. F. pilot read
newspaper account praising the
commands heroism for attacking
against odds of three and four to
one. He read 1t out loud and every
one laughed.
Odds 20 to l.
Wouldn't it have been fun in
September" he said. "if we'd ever
had a chance to fight with only
three or four planes to one Of ours"
The odds in individual battles over
London at that time were more
nearly 10 to 20 to /. AND the
English were shooting them down
in the air just the way the English
and the French used to NOV down
German mass infantry attacks in
the last war. And Just as on the
ground in the last war, in the air in
this the waves KEEP coming on
until September Is.
On the first day, the day when
1t began about 3 in the afternoon,
the city by dusk was on fire with
100 flames to guide the bombers that
came in continuing waves through
the night-through the black night
in which the Spitfres and the Hur-
riCanes cannot fight, when the game
of bombing a 25 mile square city
stops being a battle and becomes
target practice with the barn door
for a target.
London From a HaystaCk.
This September 7th was the day
that PMS London correspondent,
Ben Robertson, happened to choose
to ride out OF the city with Edward
o. MurrOW Of Columbia Broadcast
ing System and Vincent Sheean. to
sit on a hayStaCk on a hill looking
over the city. A few miles from
their hilltop they stopped for drink
at a pub. When they came back
/ they thought they'd stop for an
other. There wasn't any pub. With
the bombs still dropping around
/ him in London on that terrible night
/ he wrote the story that appeared
in PM on September 9th. No re-
/ construction of that day and night
can match his account on the field.
After I had been in London a