NOTES OF CAUTION

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 190, 10 May 1944, Page 5

NOTES OF CAUTION

Military Results Of Air Offensive . LONDON PRESS COMMENT (By Telegraph.—Press Aissn.—‘Copyright.) (Special Correspondent.) LONDON, May 8. The air offensive is the preoccupying subject at present, but while there are daily reports of various forces being engaged over different targets, the numbers of aircraft involved, and the tonnage of bombs dropped, there is one query -which is difficult to answer. It is: What is the exact effect of the bombing? “It is impossible,” says the well-known commentator. Chptain Cyril Falls, “to estimate with certainty the effects of the offensive which is now being carried out with forces many times as strong as those which fought the earlier battles of the war. Communications in France, which in times of peace are among the best in the world, are not easy to interrupt, and can be relatively quickly restored. If the Allies in Italy, where communications'are sparse and the destruction of a single bridge -may be a minor catastrophe, have not been able to prevent the Germans from supplying their front, it is doubtful whether they will he able to do so in France, even though the attack be on a vastly greater scale. ' “But it would appear that the offensive is meeting with a considerable measure of success, and it is highly significant that the Germans have frequently declined to fight. They have done this, not because they have no power to fight, but because they lack the power to fight and at the same time hold in hand an adequate reserve to meet even greater dangers.” Saving Air Defence. “Liberator,” writing in the “Observer,” says it would be wrong to look on the present phase of the war _in the west as an air prelude to a coming battle on land. “Not so long ago,” he says, “it was thought that, before a land battle for Europe could be fought the command or the air would have to be gained in a series of gigantic battles. Now that ‘the day’ is getting near, air battles are exceptional.” He adds: “The Germans tire obviously saving their air force rather in the way they refused to risk their Grand Fleet in the last War. This is of profound importance to the progress of the Allied attack, for the Germans can only do so by uncovering important targets.” He continues that the German caution enables the R.A.F. to carry out night precision bombinsr from low altitudes, and in this connexion suggests that the authorities of the R.A.F. and the American air force might well abandon the present method of reporting air raids as n they were announcing record sale figures. “What matters is the type of target attacked -and that the targets are hit.’ Captain Liddell Hart, writing in the “Daily Mail.” says that the present.operations —against railway yards, airfields, ammunition dumps, equipment stores, and repair works—really amount to strategic bombing and that the earlier bombing was grand strategy bombing in that, it was aimed at industrial targets. “It is suggested.”* he. says, “that the result of the attacks has been to halve the prospective mobility of the German army in the west —and under modern conditions mobility is as vital 'to defence as to attack. Only the event ean show whether such estimates are justified.” One interesting development recently is the apparent switching of German fighters from Germany further west, as evidenced by their vigorous resonse in last week's attack against Mailly, compared with the light opposition which the American' bombers met with when they bombed Berlin on May 7. It is assumed that this is being done in the expectation that the shortening nights must restrict the R.A.F.’s night penetrations into Germany. But the longer days also give Ibe Americans an increased neriod for day operations, which adds to the Germans' dilemma in putting- their limited air resources into position.