New Phase of Fury

Last week was the first of Adolf Hitler's vaunted intensification of the counter-blockade. It was too early to tell how the great air-sea battle would lean, but it took only a few hours and a few claims to tell that the battle was for keeps.

Berlin declared within 72 hours that a speedboat had sunk a British destroyer; "newly unleashed submarines commanded by virtual novices" had destroyed 192,300 tons of merchant shipping; airplanes had sunk and disabled 16 ships of 102,000 tons west of Ireland and five others of 23,500 tons off the east coast of England and Scotland.

All week long the R. A. F. answered this new fury with fury, by hitting out at U-boat bases and airfields along the French and Lowlands coast. In a two-hour raid on Brest they caught an Admiral Hipper class heavy cruiser repairing in dock. But though concentrating on submarine bases, the R. A. F. showed that it was still taking the long view. It was officially stated that the Short Stirling bomber, for which the British claim the best speed-range-load performance yet, was in service. It was unofficially guessed that the plane which flew to Cracow, Poland and back (TIME, March 3) was a Stirling shaking down.

While the toll at sea went up, the lull on land continued. Last week casualty figures were released which showed that the lull was also a definite downward curve. In January, 1,502 Britons had been killed by bombs* ; in December, 3,793; in November, 4,588; in October, 6,334; in September, 6,954. But the curve of losses at sea--of supplies to keep millions alive--looked as if it were on the way up after its wintry low. And in any case, the casualty lull was only relative. Said the magazine Flight: "The Germans have brought the world to a pretty pass when we congratulate ourselves because only 1,500 people were killed in a month."

* Almost twice as many are killed in automobile accidents in the U. S. each month.

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