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TAYLOR'S LONDON OLD TOM & DRY GIN
"BLOCKADE”
(By A NAVAL CORRESPONDENT)
· A BATTLE HAS BEEN RAGING FOR MORE THAN HALF A YEAR OF WHICH WE HAVE HEARD LITTLE OR NOTHING, APART FROM THE BARE TOTAL OF LOSSES THAT WE OUR-
·SELVES HAVE SUFFERED,
It is an odd position, but this one-sided view of the naval struggle in the Atlantic is all but inevit- able. So much of what we would like to say about our own strokes of good. fortune and of the good work done by our men out there would be helpful to the enemy, if he could but get hold of the informa- tion.
The battle of the Atlantic is Hitler's desperate effort to enforce | his "total blockade" of Britain. Heavily defeated in his lightning stroke with the U-boat attack on our seaborne trade at the outset of the war, he had to abandon the campaign for several months.while the utterly unexpected losses in his submarine flotillas were made good.
The Menace From
The Air
sented by a weekly average of sinkings of 88,000 tons,
The table, however, throws an interesting light on the ebb and flow of the battle of the Allantie. It will be seen that in every
month there is one outstanding week and at least one (occasion- ally two) when the total fails to about half the general average.
"JERRY IS
FOXY"
"Why the go-and-so don't you answer?” bawl- ed the bomber pilot to his. radio operator.
the
He forgot the microphone, which carried his curse to operations room behind,
They were checking over the equipment before taking off for a night raid- Cologne,
In the operations room every- body taughed at the pilot's language including the King, who, as Marshal of the R.A.F., had come to take part in the night's work at the station,
Arriving early on the airfield the King, it was revealed, stayed to cross-examine the pilots as they came home minus their bombs,
This fluctuation was also a characteristic of the 1917 attacks, and the meaning of it, as we dis- covered then, is that only a pro- portion of the U-boat captains are
Throughout his visit work went really competent, and that
He walked into the the on normally. by back in harbour, resting and re-intelligence
periods when these few men are "briefing"
the room and heard
officer giving
the
Attempts during last winter to make mines. an alternative and equally effective element in the blockade were also defeated us, and he quickly realised how atting, are comparatively quies- crews their instructions. hollow were Gooring's pre-war cent.
boasts that the Luftwaffe would speedily stop all traffle to British ports.
Neither on the sea nor in the
ports has the German Air Force seriously affected the naval elde
of the war.
آدمی
1 In 10 Dangerous
Not So Hot Now
"Your target is not an easy one
50
Then the King walked into the crews' room, where the men change into flying kil, and heard them being given last minute in- structions.
The official German history of to find," said the officer, giving the last U-boat campaign listed details of cloud conditions and of twenty "aces" and some twenty- the German defences, Ave "next best" among the com- manding officers, Allowing for} "Cologne used to be considered Accordingly, Tast May. when men killed on service and replaced a very hot sput, but it is not new U-bouls began to come into by promoted first officers, there bad now." service. Hitler reverted to the were about 450 captains engaged Tirpitz methods unrestricted throughout the war. One in ten of submarine war. He had the luck, them was really dangerous to our i which the Kaiser's Navy never shipping.
had, to seize naval bases inuch nearer to the Atlantic traffic lanes. And, as further evidence of their He broke out of the "Wet Trian-skill, it may be pointed out that gle" of the Heligoland Bight. Eves since then the weekly totals of tonnage sunk have been serious. They have fluctuated for reasons to be discussed later, but the aver- age of the six months is a big figure.
Those who only see the indivi- dual weekly returns may not have realised just the size of the
inroads made on the world's sea-
carrying capacity, so it may be well to give a tabulation, correct- ed by Admiralty figures, of the
losses for six months.
Weekly Losses
only three of the twenty "aces" were eliminated-one by an ac- cident at sea, one by the destruc- lun of his boat, and one by cap- ture. The "dog-fox" in submar- ine warfare well deserved the nickname given to him by our hunting flotillas.
The solution of the problem, now as then, is multiplication of the number of hunting craft. It
runs
"Make two
over your target. You'll have to decide for yourselves what height you will bomb from, and what type of attack you'll make."
The crews went out to the big Wellingtons waiting on the tarmac while the King went to "Ops" and heard the pilots get their "fixes" (a check of position and course),
in
is true that modern detector-ap- While the bombers were over paratus has to some extent eased Germany he dined in the officers' - the work of locating the sub-mess, took a whisky and soda merged vessel, but against that the the sergeants' mess, studied the area in which the Germans can maps and charts. work is far more extensive now, owing to the fact that they can start their operations from the occupied ports on the Bay of Biscay, and so save the 3,000 mile trek round the North of Scotland from the German bases.
At midnight the first bomber"} came in, and the young? squa- dron leader gave his report, while his crew crowned round.?
"Were you able to drop your bombs on the target?" asked the King.
"Yes, sir.
The weather wasn't nine-tenths
It is not yet permissible to dis- good, and we had close the scene of all their attacks, cloud...
was
but indications of some localities have been given, since the in-1 formation
already known publicly in neutral countries. And it is evident that our hunting has to be done over a much wider fleld than in 1917.
S
tone
Q
June 2
85,614
June 1 to December 1, 1940 Week
British Total World ending
tons 110,195
9
45,905
82,908
16
53,115
23
91,370
P
U
30
30,377
July
7
75,833
115,199 174,775 51,339 114,137
--A Comforting Estimate
14
40,469
72,649
21
37,577
58,368
E
28
85,601
72,091
A
Aug.
4
73,185
88,251
11
R
82,257
46,639
18
41,175
55,388
20
108,404
117,814
L
TAYLORS London Dry GIN
L
Sept. 1
62,921
94,898
8
44,975
77,289
15
55,153
75,107
22
145,036
172,487
20
..36,006
I
Oct. .0
*30,086
13
*20
52,668 154,279
· 40,315 83,563
205,781
27
T
I
Nov. 3 10 '17 24
9,986. *65,609
18,443 71,012
Dec.
_MENREY LA-
E
. Obtainable, at all Clubs," "Hotels S&%
Sule
Y
GANDE, PRICE & CO., HAD.
St. George's Building. 2. lee House Street," Tel.-20185
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72,506
***74,076
02,841 52,229
69,110 **87,963 57,977 80,426 #41,360
“Better Than In 1917.
This gives.us.in round figures a total world loss of some 2,378,000 tons for the six months. The figure for the first six months of the un- restricted campaign in 1917 was 3,304,000, approximately a million more tons than the Nazi effort has achieved.
Have we had any success?
:
"But I managed to pick up a band in the Rhine which gave me my direction, and made my two runs ́ ́over" the target, unloading on the railway mar shalling-yards.” ---
"Was there múch opposition?”
Only two Admiralty bulletins “Well, sir, Jerry is still playing have referred to this side of the foxy. There were no searchlights, battle in the past six months. From them we know of nine Then fourteen
no. flak until I dropped my bombs. German submarines sunk in the came on making a cone in the sky, or fifteen lights Atlantic; of some Italians we and Jerry chucked, everything up have Inklings in the issue of from the A.A. guns to the apex of ...names of prisoners of war. But the cone."
that is nothing like the whole. of the story.
~To Berlin, Too
"When tha squadron-leador #told the King that he had made:
twenty-three flights overs Gør-det many, the King asked: "Havo "you bean" to Berlin?" de
On yes, sir, I know that place quite well."
The average monthly destruc tion of enemy craft avas between five and six in 1917-1918. In the autumn of last year it was higher than that, for Mr. Churchill add mitted that the rate bt sinking was batween two and four a week. I we have doubled our 1917 rate in these past months we have, as calculate it, removed seven-tenths of "the additional U-boats: that Hitler threw into the battle be The Prime Minister's "word | tween May and August.: A for the losses in hla:apoach to If we keep up that rate of the Commons: was "disquieting," destruction, we are equal to his The King chatted to several of and no one will attempt to probable rate of replacement. That these men-makco-learns," who zminimisa Hithe drain on the is a comforting thought-even had just made their first opera- 'world's shipping that I repre- though it is entirely, unofficial. tional flight over enemy territory,
The crews of two other bomb- era whilch hád, been over enemy invasion ports were having coffee and smoking cigarettes willle their comrades made their report: