APPEAL BY FRENCH CLERGY

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 199, 20 May 1944, Page 7

APPEAL BY FRENCH CLERGY

Air Marshal’s Reply (British Official Wireless.) (Received May 19. 7.30 p.m.) RUGBY, May 18. Air Marshal Vallin, Commandr of the French Air Forces in Britain, and Sec-ond-in-Command of all French Air Forces, broadcasting to the people of France from an American radio station in Europe tonight, gave answer to the statement of the French clergy regarding bombing in Europe. “French Bishops have addressed appeal to the higher clergy of the British Empire and the United States asking them to intervene to ensure the greatest' possible diminution of the horrors of aerial bombardment,” said Air Marshal Vallin. “This is a most praiseworthy gesture. I approve its measured language, but am obliged to regret that it was not made sooner and addressed to others. "The air war began in 1940. It was in .1940 that the first cathedrals were destroyed. They were destroyed by steel manufactured beyond the Rhine! French cathedrals were the first to be damaged. "I imagine none of you can doubt that these attacks on German communications and factories are necessary. The almost total disappearance of the German Air Force and the increasing rarity of rolling stock available to the enemy are the best proofs of that. The thought of your security has been uppermost in the minds of the Allied air leaders. “Most careful precautions have been taken. But these may from.time to time be insufficient, and I want to tell you. why. Each -bomber crew has stern orders to bring back its bombs whenever it has not an adequate sight of its target. I can tell you from frequent personal experience that these orders are scrupulously carried out. Question of Defence. “Nevertheless, it is absolutely impossible to avoid some dispersal when the target is hotly defended. There lire times when groups of bombers are obliged to fly through a veritable wall of steel. Sometimes aircraft are jolted out of place by the blast of anti-aircraft fire, or their bombs are released completely in the air. ‘•When the defence is weak these things do not happen. For example, take the bombardment of the motor works nt Limoges. Right next to these works was a camp of 1300 boys belonging to the “Chantiers de Jeunesse” youth organization. Among these boys was only one victim, and lie was injured by' the fall of a beam the day after the bombardment.” Air Marshal Vallin said that, when a Lorraine group of French aviators blew up a well-known power station in the suburbs of Baris there were only two victims, but low altitude bombing such as was carried out on that operation was possible only with certain types of bombers and not with others. “You could not go hedge-hopping with heavy bombers carrying eight or ten tons of explosives. It is too much to ask the Allied pilots to make the job of the enemy defence as easy as that, and nt a high altitude, of course, mistakes are possible specially when the target . happened to be iu the middle of a town.”