A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
UTITH air-raid fatalities on Merseyside and Clydeside alone on three nights this month totalling more than those for the whole country in the twenty-eight days of February (789), it is clear that the problem of the night-bomber still remains to be solved. Yet I am still assured that there are good grounds for confidence. Last week's successes were apparently not due to bright moonlight alone, though that undoubtedly helped. Quite apart from the unspecified " other devices," about which some- thing may in due course be heard, methods of bringing the fighter into contact with the unseen bomber do exist, and as the number of fighters capable of achieving that contact increases so will casualties to night-bombers mount up. That, at any rate, is the official expectation, and tolls of nine and thirteen a night seem to justify it. But the bag this week has by comparison been thoroughly disappointing, and the hope that a steady level of destruction could be counted on is dispelled for the present. There are no doubt explanations. The weather was not so good, and we have not yet enough fully-equipped night-fighters to be able to deal with concentrated raids everywhere. But there has been rather too much optimism in the past. I have to con- fess to being misled by it, particularly by such statements as Sir Cyril Newall made in Canada and Sir Hugh Dowding in the United States, and, I am afraid, to having misled some readers. But it would be equally inaccurate to suggest for a moment that the problem defies solution, or that progress is not being made.
Previous page
