CONTINUED ALLIED AIR OFFENSIVE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 17, 15 October 1943, Page 5

CONTINUED ALLIED AIR OFFENSIVE

“Germany’s Greatest Fear” (British Offici i Wireless.) RUGBY, October 13. The Secretary for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, speaking in London, said that the Anglo-American air offensive was rocking German military power to its foundations. There was no front which the German people and the German High Command feared more than the air front from which bombs were hurled at the heart of the German war industries and the nerve centres of war transport, Ese-en, Dusseldorf. Dortmund. Cologne, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Hanover, Regensburg, and Marienhurg—these wounds would prove mortal. There could be no doubt about the estimate which the German High Command placed on the importance of the bomber offensive. Their armies were being driven back along a wide front by the heroic Russians, closely supported by the powerful Soviet Air Force. Yet the German High Command, which was facing, on one hand, the Anglo-Am-erican bomber offensive, and, on the other hand, the, powerful Russian armies and air forces, found it necessary to concentrate more than two-thirds of its force' til single-engined and twin-engined fighters against the Allied bomber offensive. Nor did Germany yet: know the worst. The Allies wore not near the culmination of the offensive. For very many months to come the process of expansion of both the British and the American Bomber Commands would continue. The range and weight of the hammer blows would increase. , , Tlie Battle of the Ruhr would rank as one of the decisive battles of history —6001) or 7000 gallant airmen, flying through the night Io the Ruhr cities with hundreds of thousands of Germans below them manning guns, searchlights, the A.R.P., and fire-fighting services and the great might of the fighter organization, the strength of which the Germans had more than doubled during the past year. I’ho Minister referred to tlie ihwtru.etion wrought in tho Ruhr, particularly in Essen, tlie huge defences of which had failed not because they were weak or inefficient, but because of the almost superhuman. courage and determination of the

bomber crews who broke through them time after time to reach their objectives. Germany now had no reserves of labour —she was stretched to the utmost to provide the needs of her armies and her civilian population. Therefore by fur the liU'Ser part of the devastation noiv being wrought to her munitions industries and the surrounding built-up areas by the bomber offensive was, for' the practical purposes of this war, irreparable. The cost in casualties had not been light. Yet in the last few months of intense fighting against the enormously strengthened German defences the casualty rate had been less than a. year ago —a miracle of scientific achievement, sound training, and resourceful tactics. Germany no longer had any hope of winning tlie wan