AXIS AIR TACTICS ROUSE SPECULATION

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 125, 29 May 1942, Page 5

AXIS AIR TACTICS ROUSE SPECULATION

HOLDING STRENGTH?

Mass Paratroops May Yet Be Thrown In U.P.A. and British Wireless. Rec. 2.30 a.m. LONDON", May 28. The R.A.F. is continually attacking the airfields and transport columns in Libya under the new and swifter air support system on which the R.A.F. and Army have long been working. The German Air Force is not expected to be passive. Probably Kesselring is conserving his strength for heavy blows at a crucial period. For the first time German armoured units struck without a close aerial umbrella. Kesselring made little attempt to pin down the R.A.F. by dive-bombing the forward aerodromes before the offensive.

German fighters have taken up "siege duty" over Malta, suggesting that bombers are scarce in the Mediterranean unless they are being stored up elsewhere for action, which would reveal the Libya offensive as merely a diversion.

The Evening Standard military writer, however, says that Rommel has some of the latest fighters and a powerful armoury of dive-bombers. He knows that the British air supremacy beat him last time, and he probably plans to blast the way for his tanks with dive-bombers and simultaneously to throw airborne and parachute troops into the interior. Parachutfc troops massed in Cretemay be used to disrupt our communication lines between Mesra Matruh and the desert.

Stating that nearly 1000 tanks have been thrown in the battle, the Daily Express Cairo correspondent adds: "Both sides have equal tank and anti-tank forces. Britain is outnumbered two to one in infantry, but has air superiority."

Declaring that water is a bigger problem for the enemy than ammunition, the correspondent says: "Tanks must be like roasting ovens in the daytime. In this connection an interesting report comes from Istanbul where travellers from Cairo said that the Germans in Libya were using a new type of refrigerated tank, enabling the crews to fight in all temperatures."