Evening star., 1941-01-08

Decentralization an Aid.
Before the war, the great COM
plant of British industry was that
it was too decentralized. 1t Is that
same decentralization that today is
making it possible for Britain to
carry ON.
Factories grouped in Birmingham.
for example, have been hit and
badly hit. The day after the worst
blitz on Birmingham, I drove slowly
through the city, got out at factory
after factory and saw only black
ened walls guarding twisted masses
of machinery.
My immediate reaction was that
the Germans must be delivering
heavy blows to British war industry.
Then I drove on out through the
sprawling mass of blast furnaces and
steel mills that stretch for miles and
miles to the north and west of
Birmingham through West Brom-
wich, Walsall and Wolverhampton.
No real damage had been done
anywhere in the whole vast area.
In some of the most important fac
tory towns, workers told me the
sirens hadn't even been sounded for
weeks.
1t is the same story as you ap-
proach Liverpool through the great
shipyardS that line the Mersey
River. make the circle through the
port city that is carrying three quar-
ters Of Britains ocean-borne traff1c
and swing back along the northern
bank of the Mersey to Manchester.
While British industry generally
is thought of as being concentrated
in these areas, actually factories dot
the countryside in sue ha way that
to knock any one specific plant out
of action would take raid ap-
preaching the intensity of those
which laid waste the concentrated
centers of Coventry and South
ampton.
1t is this decentralization that
makes the work of the night bomber
so difficult.
Nazis ely the Beam"
Picture TO you. self a factory cover
ing, say, quarter of square mile.
During the day its camouflage meltS
it into the surrounding fields or rows
of workers houses At night it is
blacked out so that even on the
brightest moonlight nights it is only
another blob of black on a black
landscape.
High above. flying at around $4,000
feet-more than 2 miles highs
the Nazi bomber. He has come in
flying the beam" on course which
has been plotted previously to put
him as nearly AS possible over the
factory objective when he hits the
| cross beam.
These beams are radio waves sent
out from two points along the occu-
pied French coast to intersect on the
objective. They work much like the
radio beam which keeps American
commercial airline pilots on their
course. A radio signal reaches its
maximum intensity when the plane
is on the course and fades as it turns
to one side or the other.
When the German pilot reaches
the bombing point he hears a new
note from the intersecting beam and
Immediately signals the bombardier
to let go his load.
This first stick will be "Goering
! breadbasket" of combined high ex-
plosives and fire bombs designed to
start a blaze near enough to the
target to make it visible. If it falls
anywhere within mile of the tar
get, it will serve its purpose.
High Level Bombing Difficult.
Then comes the really tough Job
for the bomber. He must use his
bomb sight-and the British admit
the Germans have fairly good"
bomb sight-to rain high explosives
on the factory itself.
From miles up in the air that is
no easy task, as the bomb at that
altitude must be released some 2
miles in advance of the target. And
at miles up, if. the bombardier
even so much as sneezes as he pulls
the trigger, it may throw the bomb
quarter of mile off its objective.
That is operating under ideal
conditions.
But. as rule, Nazi bombers have
found conditions far from ideal
from their point of view. Anti-air-
craft guns are blazing up at them
from below, drawing a screen of
bursting shells around the factory.
I was at an aircraft factory one
night when a Nazi bomber got in
so close we thought our number was
up. He dropped his first bomb about
500 yards away and spaced the next
three up to within 40 yards of the
main building.
TIE next one had to be a direct
hit. But it never came.
The anti-aircraft guns ringing the
factory had put up such tremen-
dous barrage that the Nazi had to
bank and run to save his own skin
before he had a chance IN LET that