In-Fighting

R. A. F.'s battering of Germany's rail connections to the western front has obliged the Nazis to service some of their bases on the Channel and Atlantic coasts partly by supply ships creeping inside minefields around the continental shore line. Last week at least two such ships were spotted by British reconnaissance. A British torpedo plane took care of one off the Dutch coast, a squadron of motor-torpedo boats the other, which was identified as the 5,943-ton Santos. Into the teeth of fire from an escorting German warship the "suicide" launches darted to make their kill. One of them was hit, but all got home, the British said. The Germans said three were hit and that the damaged Santos made shore at the mouth of the Scheldt.

Meantime winter fogs emboldened Nazi destroyers based at Brest to slip across the Channel by night, hunting British sea traffic creeping along the island's south coast. R. N.'s 5th Destroyer Flotilla, commanded by King George's cousin, Captain The Lord Louis Mountbatten, in the brand-new Javelin, fell upon three raiders before dawn, drove them off with angry shellfire. As they lit out for Brest, the Germans loosed a flight of torpedoes, one of which caught the Javelin. She had to be nursed to port while R. A. F. fighters circled out from the headlands and shot down three Nazi bombers sent to polish her off.

The Germans claimed one and perhaps two other British destroyers and four merchantmen knocked out in this action. The old destroyer Sturdy, now a minelayer, ran ashore in rough weather off Scotland and was lost. Destroyers are what Britain can least afford to lose. Lack of them is what makes possible the kind of news the British faced as a new week began: a convoy 400 miles west of Ireland attacked by U-boats with a half-dozen ships sunk or damaged, two other vessels closer to Ireland attacked by bombing planes.

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