Show Military Observers Believe Britian Is Holding Her Own In Air Battles Over England England Given Far Better Chance to Win Now Than Three Months Ago The average following the official war from the belligerent goes around in something of a They simply don't make The for will claim the destruction of 50 British war planes with losses of out 15 of their own while the on the same reverse the And dispatches of the war correspondents are not a great deal more helpful for the most These correspondents are able and honest but they are subjected to an iron censorship and must necessarily couch their comment in vague And the warring governments make sure that the correspondents see only what they want them to British Reports More Accurate Thus the confused reader must look largely to other sources of information if he seeks an approximation of the And such other sources exist in this The War and Navy departments have channels of information which have proven extremely They maintain naval and military attaches in countries with which we have diplomatic whose job it is to coldly discern the unaffected by sentiment according to late these observers are convinced that the British reports of give and take in the great war now going on in the air are far more accurate than the That comes as good news to most of the American who believe that the defeat of England would gravely endanger Apparently it is true that British pilots and planes are better than the it is believed in some official circles that the British claim that Empire plane production has at least caught up with is pretty close to the And some also believe that British production is now ahead of while German production of first-line fight- ing aircraft is less than The English have one very definite advantage in this air Only a handful of British planes are sent over the hundreds of German planes are sent over England the Nazis an on the and Britain's raids on Germany are largely of a retaliatory That means that when a German pilot out of a destroyed ship and lands safely he goes to a prison camp-while a British pilot who saves himself with his parachute lives to fight for the Crown German planes crashing on the little arc oi salvage value to the as are their own Britain Up This doesn't mean that Germany has lost the balance of air so far as the statistics are Best estimates place the German first-line force at as against for And Germany probably has more trained But it docs mean that Britain is catching And it is reported that some recently captured German pilots had only half the training that is given English pilots before are sent into Whether is the result of a shortage of pilots in or a policy of holding her best men in reserve for a future attack of unprecedented is a matter of American military experts give Britain a far better chance of surviving now than they gave her two or three months Some cataclysm of the near future may prove them nor cent but they feel that Hitler has little chance of mak ing his time-table click this time that of subduing England before October comes with its fogs and All through fall and winter and early spring the British Isles are blanketed in a dripping It is significant that an Italian newspaper which often speaks for Mussolini recently said that the war may last two more That is a very different tune than the Axis leaders were singing after the collapse of Still in Danger of is still In grave If fog prevents it also provides a screen for an invasion over Hitler is known to have constructed armadas of shallow draft equipped to carry tanks and field pieces as well as That is one reason why Great Britain needed the 50 over-age destroyers wc recently traded her for leases on naval and air bases in British possessions in this With tho destroyers she has the number in drydock for and those which must be kept she probably had only 50 or 60 of these ships of her own for Island And destroyers are far more effective in the narrow Channel than are slower and less easily maneuvered At any the experts are becoming more hopeful Britain's chances And they are also becoming convinced that air attacks cannot produce nearly the damage and the terror the proponents of ruthless air warfare |