For Peter Masefield, compared with certain assignments to come, it was fairly small beer. A trip by air to Amsterdam, to visit KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and discover how the national carrier was being affected by the impact of war, brought a degree more risk than in peacetime, but the Netherlands had declared neutrality when hostilities broke out and KLM should not, therefore, have been subject to enemy action. Missions over occupied Europe with bombers of the US 8th Air Force would be a tougher test of this aeronautical correspondent's mettle. But note the date on which The Aeroplane carried its technical editor's Dutch dispatch: 10 May 1940. As the first copies were being bought from British newsagents, so France and the Benelux countries were under German attack. Luftwaffe aircraft bombed Dutch airfields, paratroops conducted an airborne assault. The story had changed again.
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