IN THE AIR: To Keep Afloat

• Share

Clearing skies over the North Sea last week droned anew with battle planes, and rattled with machine-gun fire. German bombers revived their attacks on Great Britain's trawler and fishing fleets. German reconnaissance planes celebrated Air Marshal Hermann Göring's 47th birthday by appearing over British east-coast headlands, estuaries and cities in numbers that suggested they were preparing the long-awaited mass bombing of British naval bases and supply docks.

Meantime the German Air Force exacted an involuntary tribute from the British. The magnetic-mine-laying campaign of Nazi planes in early December obliged Britain to organize, at great effort and expense, a mine-sweeping fleet large enough to clear hundreds of square miles of coastal channels. By laying occasional mines since the original barrage, Nazi planes have obliged the sweepers to keep up their interminable precautionary labor. By attacking the sweepers with bombs and machine guns, and also attacking fishing boats (eyes for the fleet) and lightships, Nazi planes forced Britain to establish further naval and aerial coast patrols, may eventually compel Britain to arm even her fishing smacks. In all these ways the Nazi air fleet with little difficulty has put Great Britain to great trouble, expense and danger. A little German effort has forced Britain to much greater efforts just to keep afloat.

Britain's tribute to the effectiveness of this campaign has been her effort to retaliate by sending bombers across the North Sea to Helgoland and Sylt, the aerial mine layers' bases. In December, big British Blenheims and Wellingtons encountered repelling squadrons of the fast new Messerschmitt 110s, flown out from Helgoland by Germany's ablest young pilots under Lieut. Colonel Karl Schumacher. Later Schumacher and his men (see cut) appeared before neutral correspondents in Berlin and asserted they had shot down 35 ships out of some 50 allegedly sent over by Britain. Britain listed her losses as seven out of perhaps 36.

Because its red sandstone ramparts rise 200 ft. above the tide line, in contrast to the sandy flatness of all other islands off Germany's northeast coast, the roost of Lieut. Colonel Schumacher and his merry men was called Hillige ("Holy") Land by the ancient Frisians. Britain took it from Denmark and later traded it to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar. In 1914-18 Helgoland, as an advanced fleet base, fortified and protected by mine fields, gave Britain so much trouble that she afterwards insisted upon dismantling it. Her engineers spent three years blowing up its forts and moles. Britain suggested that the island, inhabited by 2,000 fisher folk, be turned into a bird sanctuary. By 1936, British complaints that Adolf Hitler was refortifying Helgoland, rebuilding its moles, were audible but ineffective. Sand suckers re-dredged the anchorage to accommodate warcraft. Near the southeast foot of the headland was built an air base. Lieut. Colonel Schumacher claimed that his Messerschmitt 110s last week prevented British planes from bombing Helgoland. Britain claimed to have bombed Helgoland as well as Sylt.