RAIDS ON HUGE SCALE

Evening Star, Issue 24284, 27 August 1942, Page 5

RAIDS ON HUGE SCALE

TROUBLE IN STORE FOR GERMANY SYDNEY, August 21. British and American journalists are turning the spotlight on a former Rhodesian tobacco planter, who is now directing the biggest air offensive in history. He is Air Marshal Sir Arthur Travers Harris, Commander-in-Chief of the Bomber Command. Air Marshal Harris, who is responsible for the “ 1,000 bombers a night ” technique, spent the years from 1910 to 1914 as a grower of tobacco in Rhodesia, where he went from Cheltenham. On the outbreak of the last war he attested as a bugler in the First Rhodesia Regiment, and served in Botha’s victorious desert campaign in South-west Africa. When the campaign was over he left for Engand, and became a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. The ‘ Sunday Express * columnist, Godfrey Winn, describes Air Marshal Harris as he saw him at, headquarters, sitting at a desk with his tunic open and gazing at the other end of the room, where two lamps threw a fierce glow on a map of England and a graph. The map, thickly dotted with pins, showed every operational bomber station in the country, and the graph gave the names of the stations in their respective groups. Air Marshal Harris _ speaks very quietly, without emphasis, But assurance underlies ,his words. Until the afternoon of a raid night he does not tell anyone what the target will be. Then his instructions are sent out by telephones direct to the various group headquarters. But even then the name of the target is in code. “ We are not yet able,” Air Marshal Harris told Mr Winn, “ to mount our raids on such, a gigantic scale all the time. But the day will come when it will be possible, I believe, to send over a bomber force of 1,000 planes, and even more, every night of the week that the weather experts allow. When that day comes you will know that the end is in sight. “ From that day I give the war from four to six months. _ Meanwhile, I hope people will be patient _ andl will not expect miracles.”