Evening star., 1940-09-01

lasting three hours. British planes
crossed and recrossed the heart of the
city as they dropped laundering charges
only miles from Adolf Hitler's chan
celery. Over other sectors of the enemy
territory, British bombed an airplane
factory at Leipzig, the Junkers air works
at Dessau, oil plants at Reisholz, Dort-
mund and Nordenhan, north of Bremen,
and several enemy airdromes. The CEN
ter Of British attack the following night
was the Krupp munitions works at Essen.
In their raids of the week, both Ger
many and England had something new
to offer.
The Germans instituted a new tech
nique. For the wave raids that proved
so costly to them during recent weeks
In lost planes. the Germans substituted
a method of attack which employs
planes singly or in small groups. The
wave tactics enabled the r. A. F. to
concentrate its defenses, and q burst
from British fighters guns fired into
the thick of Nazi formation was sure
to damage if not bring down at least
oAAS Va "Aio1 VIC ~ a. + pllOJo Cdll SlL-
ting birds"
Apparently, the new technique is aimed
entirely at saving war materiel and not
at all at improving morale For the
Germans seem already to have evolved
morale-protector. The crews of the
Nazi bomber planes are kept in ignorance
of the general course of the war. A neu-
tral air attache told the Associated Press
in London that this ignorance is insured
thus:
THE bomber crews are assembled at
an airdrome to which they have been
brought by train; the
Germon pilot comes from Ham
Technique burg. the bombardier from
Reims, the machine gun
ner from Brussels, the navigator from
Lille. They are given plane, told where
to go and what to do, and take off from
an airport on the French coast. When
the job is done, they fly to Norway,
landing among ground crews who don't
know the number OF planes which set
out. The force is so scattered it is i'm
possible for the pilots to make contact
with each other or the ground crews to
estimate the extent of damage"
The British novelty is a paint which
lessons the visibility of the British attack
plane. The planes visit Germany at
night, and, according to Berlin, are
smeared with something resembling
rough, black soot." The war paint abb
serbs the rays Of German searchlights.
German chemists are analyzing the paint
taken from British planes which were
not so invisible that they could escape
being shot down.
1t was a quiet week for Italy, Ger
manys partner in the war against Brit
ain. italian planes did little besides
drop bombs near the British fleet in
Alexandria Harbor and around Port Said,
'the wickedest city in the world" at the
northern end of the Suez Canal. British
prospects in Africa frightened. This Is
important for London, for Africa hes
across the crow-flight from England to
Englands empire in the East.
Gen. Charles de Gaulle, head of the
French government in exile, announced
in London that the French African ter
ritories of Tchad and the Cameroons as
well as the Congo, Belgian possession,
are supporting Britain, which recently
lost its own African colony of ,Somaliland
to Italy. This area includes more than
100000 square miles, opening a vast
corridor from the South Atlantic to Ital-
ian Libya and furnishing England with