THE CHINA MAIL, MAY 14, 1941.
CHINA MAIL
WINDSOR HOUSE
THE AMAZING TALE
OF RUDOLF HESS
The sensational deser-! tion of Rudolf Hess, No. 3 in the Nazi hierarchy, first in succession to the Fuehrerdom after the gargantuan Goering, comes. as SO breath- taking a surprise as to leave nothing but complete bewilderment as to its underlying signi- ficance. The German version of this remarkable event can be taken for what it is worth. Truthful Joe, with his customary tireless efficiency, reached] the ether quickest and sought to explain the lapse with the admission that, "sad to relate," i well-trained Nazi chief- tain, long hardened in the school of villainy and chicane, had proved the victim of mental disorders and hallucinations, and had soared into the skies intending suicide.
If Herr Hess, at any time in the tortures of making his decision, was contemplating suicide,
he was curiously careful to take a parachute with him, and sufficiently compos mentis to use it at the appropriate moment.
Fath
DEMOCRATISCHE
HESS VON
STANKEN
STUNKEN
GIANTISCHE
THE BREAK
Torpedo Pilots Of The Navy
Cone aboard H.M.S. Somewhere
Britam, a school shore station.
he
has airman's wings. He bas qualified as a pilut before joined the School.
Here, he graduates as a special- ist torpedo pilot and he does it in five intensive stages.
First
bacore
-
++2
By
John Cashel
eliminuting tests. He begins exer- cises that are the last stage to the real thing, firing actual torpedoes with dummy heads at more and more difficult targets, stationary and moving,
Having flown various training alreraft he now flies the type he will use in actual torpedo operations, probably a Fairey Al-
perhaps
He perfects that split-second Fairey a swordfish. These are the torpedo. "touch" when, at the bottom of his bombers generally used by the
dive the man matters more than the machine.
No inefficient
Moreover, the German fairy-tale factory, while making much of the note he left behind him to
The young man we are watch- justify accusations ing aged somewhere between against the mental eighteen and twenty-four, already stability of Rudolf Hess, wisely omitted to provide quotations from the fare- well document. True, it may not have been polite about Hitler. It is not dif-. ficult to conceive for that matter, that an honest and bitter indictment of the Nazi terror in Europe, a gloomy prediction of the catastrophe towards which Hitler is leading Germany, would be in- in a steel
classified stantly
by Hess's astounded ex-col- leagues as clear evidence
Third He learns team lactics of mental aberration. -attack from all angles and by That to free peoples, out-many methods. He smiles sardon. ically when he sometimes reads side the grip of Nazi that an enemy ship zig-zagged lo mumbo-jumbo, it could be evade attack. interpreted as the first sign of sanity would cer- tainly never occur them.
Fleet Air Arm.
Second - Master of his ma-
formation flying] chine, he does
cradle
carrying a dummy torpedo slug beneath the fuselage of his aircraft. He gets thoroughly used to the "feel" of that up-to-a-ten extra load.
Four-
Used to the "feel" of
through the net,
Arm
Well, only the Fleet Air knows the explanation. There are torpedoes and torpedoes.
Sometime, during the five stages at the Torpedo School, the trainee! has tried landing on boards that represent the deck of an aircraft- carrier. He practises on one set; placed on the runway to repre- sent the "round-down" of a car- rier, on another denoting the spot where he should touch down on the deck.
he
Final Touches At Sea
Now, his Afth stage over, leaves the School behind him, and goes aboard an aircraft-carrier for real deck-landing practice. There he becomes a fully-made torpedoj pilot, ready for appointment to an] aspirant passes operational squadron.
some-
Torpedoes cost money, thing like £3,000 each. The F.A.A. cannot afford an avoidable miss costing, perhaps, half as much as a plane, nor the loss of a chance that has meant so much planning
as
He was born as an airman many months
and before
has gone through all the stages that are Air for every Flect necessary Arm pilot, before he arrived at! the Torpedo School,
lives a naval life, preparatory to Aboard land ship H.M.S.-. he
his fulure at sea. He "comes Torpedo-ring is an art as aboard" every time he enters the much as a science. Torpedo | station, and "goes ashore" when~ "sights" are not as definite
ever he steps out of it. those of a bomber or gunner. his dummy, he practices firing it at a target. He experiences for Accuracy depends enormously on to the first time the alarming sensa-superb man-skill, backed by cool tion as his aircraft leaps anything and unsurpassed courage in the
feet upwards face of armed opposition. the moment it loses its load.
from ten to forty
It is an interesting fact in itself, also, that the im- He has pressed the release but mediate instinct of a Nazi ton at the split-second when, after a breath-taking dive, maybe from wrenching himself free 10,000 feet, his aircraft is on an from claustrophobic con- even keel before it climbs steeply
hellish out of the finement, seeking clean imaginary enemy fire. air instead of the dark!
Five Now our pilot is one of cavern of Hitlerian philo- the first who have survived the sophy in action, should be
stream
of
His room is a "cabin" His mess the "wardroom." He talks in terms of port and starboard, of knots instead of miles. He hears the Quartermaster pipe the daily rou-i No torpedo pilot can find his tine over a broadcasting system mark without being within close of loud-speakers much like that sight and easy range of every in a ship. weapon in the enemy's anti-air- craft armoury.
He is piped up in the morning with "Heave, ho! Heave, hot Lash Before the split-second, his brain up and stow!" (Though there are works at lightning speed. The no hammocks to stow away.) He precise height at which he must hears "Stand Easy!" for the ten- his dizzy dive, the minutes mid-morning and mid- pull out of
a moving
and "Out target afternoon `breaks, speed of and its probable course of Pipes!" for duties to be resumed: evasion, the setting of his torpedo "Hands to Dinner!" for the mid- for speed and running depth are day meal.
flash through his brain.
to make for Britain. AP-thought, still gleamed but a few of the calculations that
parently even in a Ger-
man mind, impregnated through.
by close contact for What lies behind the| years with the most male-dramatic flight, remains
volent mentality in to be disclosed. But it is
Europe, the vision of Bri- crystal clear, without that tain as a safe refuge, as information, that "there the bastion of liberty, the is something rotten in the home of freedom of state of Denmark.”
Time is too short for "nerves."
14,
"Really," a pilot told me, "it's just like shooting at Jubbit. You cont fire dead at but ahead,"
And those baffling and confus ing heights from which, we are
told, torpedoes, are released? Some say 18 foot, Some 150. Some 500
He calls the cookhouse the gal- ley, and lives in a hut named after an admiral, Sailor, as well as air- man is the torpeda-pilot.
perhaps the most}
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