Saturday is the day that the new New Statesman and Nation comes out. (The Spectator comes out on Friday, but I missed that yesterday. Not to worry; there's always next week.) It's a 'week-end review', not a newspaper, but inevitably has much commentary on the war, generally from a left-wing perspective. Indeed, this week it opens (197) with an editorial comment (probably by Kingsley Martin) entitled 'The war in the air'. This war is evolving, from mass daylight raids to small night raids:
GERMAN tactics have changed once more. Blitzkrieg methods were no proving too costly in relation to the results achieved, and the Nazi High Command has decided to follow the example of our own raids on Germany, operating chiefly at night and using only small formations.
Martin admits that this change has been effective, mainly due to the 'wearisome length of the air-raid warnings'.
By our own experience we are beginning to have some experience of what the people of Germany have been enduring for many weeks. Even if we discount official optimism, there is no doubt the damage done by the Germans is small in comparison with that caused by our own airmen, with their far greater experience of night-flying. In this type of warfare it is we who took the initiative, and the Nazis are as yet but clumsy imitators.
(No comment.) He goes on to suggest that the present German tactics are more suited to 'a long war of attrition than to a campaign designed to finish off the enemy by a single decisive blow', though the danger of invasion won't pass until 'the equinoctial tides in the middle of September are over'.
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This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. See here for an introduction to the series.
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