Interesting points on the utility of balloon barrages are first, they force enemy aircraft to fly high to avoid crashing by contact with the cables and by flying high to facilitate the anti-aircraft gunnery; second, the number of floating balloons practically prevents accurate aiming on the vert of the enemy planes flying above them.
Why, Professor Cullis went on to ask. was not a single enemy bomber seen over the many little harbours in England at which the BEF. were disembarked after the evacuation from Dunkirk—was it from German solicitude for the lives- of our people? No—it was because the Germans couldn't get there.
She ended her talk in the way in which she concludes every talk she gives, by solemnly assuring her listeners that the figures of profit and loss given by the Air Ministry are absolutely to be relied on. There are only two ways in which an RAF. pilot is allowed to score: he may produce the actual photograph of his bird being brought down (this is done by automatic photography through the gun-sight); or his claim must be attested to by an independent pilot seeing an enemy plane brought down at the actual spot claimed. Mr. Vernon Bartlett in a recent broadcast said, "The Air Ministry assert that their figures are correct. I say that they are not correct"—and went on to say that they were not correct because they should be doubled, Applause was enthusiastic at the end of the talk, and Mrs. V. Arnold Jones, chairman of the British Women's Association, thanked Professor Cullis for giving the talk.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.