Evening star., 1940-12-14
R. A. F. Ace
Continued From First Page.)

Spitflres in q Jacobs ladder
the skies are torn wide open by the
single unbroken crash of their guns
in that initial attack. Some of those
machines are power diving at close
on miles a minute!
The dog-fight that follows is toe
swift to tell. Here and there a
fighter rolls helpless down toward
the sea; there are countless deafen-
ing bursts of fire ragged and ter
rible; but the British bombers, with
nearly every gun nest splitting Its
deathly hail into the main battle
pillow irresistibly on, shake off the
attackers and reach "the place"
Bombs Blast Camouflage.
There is no textbook maneuvering
or positioning in this broad daylight
attack. 1t is every machine for itself
and down with "the doings." We
have not practiced these wholesale
affairs for nothing, and I believe
that not one bomb is wasted. The
first of them-some are half -tonners
blow Jerry's camoufage all to
ruins, send swarming antlike men
running in mobs, and tear and rip
the great nets and puff the grass
flying and knock down the sawed
off trees like ninepins. They neve,
expected this!
Imagine them, down there, stoop-
Ing over plans and maps, carrying
out a full-scale attack on a mode
factory in one part of the ground
scores Of them jumping off a high
wall, with officer observers cynically
commenting in another field, mer
forming redoubts and destroying
model bridges elsewhere-and sud-
denly they have the roof torn of
them.
As the nickel-noSed bullets from
the pouring machine guns Of the
British bombers add to the confusion
caused by ton after ton Of bombs
men on the ground are blown up by
their own grenades, that they were
preparing to bring over to England
Over there, where a huge net and
tons of grass camouf1age have been
blown aside, are gliders and troop
carrying aircraft, on the ground. Sc
down go the raiders, roaring past
one after another, and as cash passes
the machines on the ground, bombs
the size of armchalrs 60 down
woomp!-and scatter wings and en-
gines and bits of men wholesale to
the four winds,
Gliders for Silent Surprise.
These big aerial transports each
carry 20 or 80 parachutistS, and
each machine can tow train of five
or six gliders, the gliders contain
ing three men apiece with full equip
ment. The idea was to tow these
glider trains between 10000 and
10000 feet and cast them loose or
8 miles from the objective, so they
could approach those last miles in
absolute silence, undetected by any
listening apparatus, and make real
surprise landing.
But gliders and transports alike
have got a surprise packet them
selves instead, and they won't carry
parachutists or anything else now.
Round our machines go, home.
ward bound. But there are still
bombs left, and where there is &
concentration of parachutists ane
gliders and transports, there will be
not far away, others of Hitler's "se.
cret weapons" And there they are
to Judge by the noise that stick o.
bombs made-a cunningly-camou
faged swarm Of very light, tin!
tanks, to be used to assist the ali
invasion. And not far away, big.
ger tanks drawn up on the slopine
shore.
Those tiny tanks-they are new
Atom babies" with three ma
chine guns and very light armor-
are intended to be slung bodily be.
tween the landing wheels of junk
ers transport. The Russians uSet
these flying tanks in their occupa.
ton of Rumania, and the German!
used them just at the end OF France
but nothing much came to ligh1
about them. None the less, they are
serious weapons; a few score oI
them, landed in the quiet English
countryside, to assist parachutists
would cause q big stir. But thes.
are blown up and smashed now.