AIR WARFARE

Grey River Argus, 8 June 1943, Page 6

AIR WARFARE

NEW R.A.F. BOMBING POLICY

INSTEAD OF “ROUND-THE-

CLOCK.”

(Rec. 6.30) LONDON, J’une 6. ' A “Daily Mail” correspondent, Mr Colin Bendall says: The Bomber Command has adopted a new bombiim policy. Round the clock bombing has virtually been abandoned. The scale of raids rather than the number of raids, is now the primary consideration. Raids against Germany each night may come later, when the Bomber Command is satisfied a requisite scale for each attack can be maintained. This scale may far exceed even the recent two thousand-tons raid on the R'Uhr. Actual obliteration of a large industrial centre in a single night is already a physical possibility and one at which the Bomber Command is aiming. Belts of aerodromes necessary for launching blows have been under steady development/ for months. The Bomber Command now aims at “obliteration” scale raids every time, rather than to make any "pot boiling” attacks. Calculations of relative effect of one mass raid and two or more raids by similar forces reveal the former as having immense advantages. The Air Ministry states: “In offensive operations by aircraft of the Fighter Command to-day, Whirlwinds bombed and set fire to two enerav mine-sweepers in the Channel. Spitfires of the Canadian Squadron attacked railway - targets in Brittany. None of our aircraft is missing.'

THE DAMAGE IN WESTERN GERMANY. (Rec. 7.30) LONDON, June 7. In a Stockholm newspaper, “Allehanda,” appears an eye-witness’s account of bomb-stricken areas in Germany. The paper does not publish the name of its informant. but vouches for his reliability. It says: “Thick smoke, far different from smoke of busy factories, now hangs over a great band of death and destruction which runs across Germany from Cologne to the Hanover district. It ■is smoke from fires, thick and often yellow, which, sometimes is almost suffocating, owing to phosphorus from British incendiaries. Blast furnaces in Germany’s great steel producing region at night no longer look the same. Many of them have closed down, also many mines, where huge dumps of coal and coke have been burning for weeks. R.A.F. raids have put out of action sprinkler systems in additional mines, where production is impossible without sprinklers. Water rose to a depth of three feet in Dortmund suburbs after the R.A.F. raided the Mohne and Eder dams, Flat-bottom-ed boats carried on essential traffic. Tremendous explosions put out of action blast furnaces when- water reached molten metal in them. At least two railway tunnels caved in between Dortmund and Hagen. Great stretches of railway were also flooded.

AMERICAN DEVICE. NEW YORK. June 6. The Bell Aircraft Corporation is producing for aircraft machine-guns a recoil damping; device, which has already prominently assisted American gunners to establish phenomenal records in shooting down enemy planes. The device weighs three pounds. It enables a gunner to train sights on a target and keep them there. It also reduces fatigue. It is used on Flying Fortresses, Liberators, Mitchells, Marauders, & fether bombers, and also on British aircraft. Raid in England RUGBY, June 6. About fourteen enemy lighterbombers this afternoon attacked a place on the south-east coast of England. Some damage and a small number of casualties, including fatalities were caused. Nigerian Spitfires destroyed at least one raider. Lancaster Bomber TO VISIT N.Z. CREW’S VIEWS ON OFFENSIVE (Rec. 6.30.) SYDNEY, June 7. Three members of the crew of the Lancaster bomber, now im Australia, (which is shortly to tour New Zealand'i made fortv-five raids together on German and Italian .targets. They said air raids at present in what the R.A.F. calls “the . thunderbolt run"

will substantially shorten the war against Germany. The Lancaster s entire crew of e in ht are all Italians. They have been in fifteen raids. They describe the Lancaster as “the biggest and best bomber) in the world.”. They say no other can compare with iu ineir plane did the fourteen thousand miles trip across the Atlantic, America and the Pacific in seventy-two flying hours. Seven giant hops were made. The average speed was 194.5 miles an hour. The Pacific section took forty-two hours, including six hours delay when a. cyclone turned tne plane back. The captain, Flight Lieut. Peter Isaacson, D.F.C., D.r .M.. is twenty-two years of age. The navigator is Flight Lieut. S. M. Neilson, D.F.M., and the radio operator Pilot Officer E. M. Copley, D.F.M. This trio made their first operational flight in the initial thousand bomber raid on Cologne early last year. They said the current raids were on a much heavier scale. They regard Essen as the most difficult target in Germany. In one concentrated attack on Berlin their Lancaster was deluged in a load of incendiary bombs dropped by another Lancaster flying above them. Thev were forced down below 1000 feet before Isaacson got the plane under control. In more recent raids the crew had been members of the famous “Pathfinder” squadron which seeks put targets, and illuminates them with flares and incendiaries for the main bomber force. Their bomb-aimer' is Flight Lieut. Alan Ritchie D.F.M., who added a touch of romance to his homeward flight by becoming engaged to> a Sydney girl after a long-dis-tance telephone call, costing six pounds six shillings and six nence. Seen alongside a United States neavy Liberator bomber, the Lancaster seems to dwarf the machine. In flight the Lancaster does not convev an adequate appreciation of her size Taking off she rises rapidly, almost like a fighter. Lord Burghley, British Controller of Repair and Overseas Supplies, who came as a passenger on the Lancaster, told interviewers that Britain looked forward to the (lav when she could give Australia and New Zealand more direct, help in their fight against the Japanese. A main purpose or his visit to Australia was to discuss assistance for the Commonwealth’s expanding aircraft industry.