"Harassing Fire"

Despite the cloud of censorship, the reassurances of British officialdom, the casual gibes of high hearted correspondents and the absurdity of German propaganda claims, the robot bomb attack on southern England showed plain signs that it might grow from a major nuisance into a minor menace.

From the deck of a ship named the John E. Ward, standing off the English coast, Correspondent Gene Currivan of the New York Times saw 28 of the aerial torpedoes winging toward England. Twenty-seven were of the sort which made their disagreeable debut last fortnight (TIME, June 26); one was not.

It was bigger and faster. It seemed to have a wingspread of about 25 feet and to be about 40 feet long, and seasoned R.A.F. observers on the Ward estimated its speed at no less than 600 miles an hour. Spitfires trying for a shot at it fell behind like bulldogs chasing a whippet. More of these might follow.

Hard Game for Fighters. Meanwhile the ordinary missiles made trouble enough. A new type, with swept-back wings, began coming over at 390 m.p.h., which was 40 m.p.h. faster than the square-winged model and painfully close to the top speeds of the fastest fighters. One fighter had to chase his robot for 20 miles before he knocked it down.

By bombing, the Allies did their best to knock down the robot-launching platforms around Calais. When the invasion troops closing on Cherbourg captured two platforms almost intact, British experts moved in at once to study them. However, the platforms were heavily camouflaged, often tucked away in the corners of woods. Others may have been dug into cliffs in bombproof positions.

Addressing the House of Commons on the robot problem, Home Security Minister Herbert S. Morrison took a cautious line. He admitted that public utilities had been damaged, but only "slightly," and said that civilian casualties were running lower than in the "little blitz" of last February.

Hard Knocks for Civilians. The number of civilians hurt and killed might have been even less, said Minister Morrison, if people had not been gawping at the sky during day attacks when they ought to have sought shelter.

It was true that many Britons, especially belligerent beldames of 70 and up, reacted to the robots with that admirable and tiresome mixture of flippancy, phlegm and self-conscious stoicism that non-Britons find so hard to understand. "Why, the silly things," cracked one old lady last week, "the Germans are throwing darts."

On the other hand, it was noted that more people were seeking nightly shelter in the subways than at any time since the great blitz of 1940-41. And Minister Morrison warned that the robot barrage might not yet have reached its peak.

In Germany (where the robot was christened "V-I," for Vergeltungswaffe or "Reprisal Weapon" No. I), Herr Goebbels got cold feet about his first delirious claims of demoralization and destruction in Britain, and ordered his radio stooges to tone down.

They now urged their bewildered people not to "expect a miracle," pointed out that a country with the great technical resources of Britain would surely find some way to combat VI. The German Army communiques referred to the attacks simply and briefly as "harassing fire"--which is what they were. But harassing fire kills and destroys, as England was learning once again.

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