Waiting

Except on the high seas, where the counter-blockade went full-out, and along the Mediterranean, where each side air-raided the other's bases (see col.3), the war's 76th week was comparatively quiet.

By last week the Lullablitz had lasted nearly a month. More jittery in their breathing spell than they had been under their worst postering, the British tried to guess what was cooking.

Everyone had a new theory on invasion tactics. One developed out of stories that German bombers were practicing towing 14-man gliders. Some 28,000 of them were reported under construction, to be sent soaring silently in from the Channel with troops detailed to snarl Communications in advance of massed seaborne detachments. London's Aeroplane described a new secret weapon: a 390-mile-an-hour bomber, with wings and fuselage of transparent plastics, invisible at altitudes above 2,500 feet. In the U. S., ex-Assistant Secretary of War Louis Arthur Johnson said Germany was making British uniforms for 700,000 invaders.

Whatever was up, the R. A. F.'s growing invasion-busting offensive was out to stop it before it got started. Escorted by fast, hard-hitting Hurricanes and Spitfires, Blenheims of the Bomber Command struck in broad daylight at docks and shipping in Flushing, Antwerp, Dunkirk, Boulogne, Calais. At night even stronger formations coventrized Hanover two nights in a row, pouring explosives and incendiaries into factories and oil stores. More patrols swept the coast constantly from Scandinavia to southern France, looking for trouble. Berlin obliquely if mendaciously admitted the weight of the raids by claiming a bag of 33 British planes in 24 hours.

The Home Fleet joined the party in the mists of an early dawn off Ostend. In a sector buzzing with Nazi bombing squadrons, in waters too narrow for maneuvering heavy ships, light cruisers and destroyers paraded past, leisurely shot up Ostend's docks and harbor works, made off for home unscarred.

Not till week's end did the Luftwaffe break the tension. Then, after a day of swirling dogfights over the Channel, the German bombers came back to London. It was the longest and heaviest raid Britain had had in four weeks. But to the straining British it was not long enough or heavy enough to account for the month's layoff.

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