NEW phase in the work of the R.A.F. coastal commands has been opened now that British shipping is exposed to attack by Nazi medium and long-range bombers from aerodrome bases in occupied France.
Squadrons guarding channel and north-western approaches have been strengthened, Over these areas men of the coastal command keep watch, bomb and fight.
Day after day coastal command pilots are out hunting down Foleke Wulf Condors, which working from Bordeaux, are able to fly far out on British trade routes and the north-west coast of Ireland, This new chal~
Jenge is only the last of a series had to take up.
'Attack now makes up for a large part of the work of the command. Night after night mine-laying aircraft }go out to make estuaries and' ports dangerous for enemy shipping. Another form of hitting back are the torpedo attacks on' enemy" ships coastal command torpedoes have sunk jabour $0,000 tons of enemy shipping. All in all, pilots and crews of the coastal command are doing one of Britain's biggest war jobs, often in the teeth of wicked weather. They maintain unceasing photographic and reconnaissance patrols to keep an eye: Jon the invasion thermometer from Trondhjem and Bordeaux. They help the British Navy to guard convoys: bringing food and other sinews of war.. They attack enemy submarines Jwhenever periscopes are seen, They Jbomb enemy coastal bases and attack Jenemy shipping.
The coastal command ce-operates! very closely with the Navg. Each service knows exactly what the other is doing. Throughout each day new information is transmitted to coastal command headquarters ahd to outly. jing stations and naval controllers work alongside the operation officers of the RAF. Now after seventeen Jmonths of war the coastal command has built up an impressive record, During the frst twelve months of the war coastal command aircraft flew [34 and half million miles—more than fa thousand times the circumference fof the world. From the beginning of the war and from the middle of January onward the command pr vided "air escort for 4,700 convoys. The work' meant 16,800. separate fights by aircraft, During the past six months the average monthly time Jof fights on convoy duties has been Spproximately $300 hours. On anti submarine duties as distinct from factual escorts with convoys the monthly average has been in the [gion of 1,500 hours.
Despite this enormous amount of] ]work command pilots in the past six Jmonths have put in a monthly aver-Jage of 3200 hours on reconnaissance work. Old enemy submarines of the command have been hunted without respite since the war began. Up to South Africa organized by General [Smuts striking northward along the whole Eritrean frontier,'
Continuing, the Prime Minister said we must expect Hitler to do his utmost to prey upon our shipping jand reduce the volume of American supplies entering Great Britain, Mr, [Churchill had never underrated this Jdanger, but he had complete confidlence in the ability of the Royal Navy, laided by the coastal command alf force, to meet every changing phase fof this truly martial struggle, "and supported by the courage of our merchant seamen and dockers and workers of all our ports we should outlast [whatever the enemy's malice and ingenuity could contrive,"—Reuter,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.