GREAT R.A.F. RAID

Southland Times, Issue 24878, 19 October 1942, Page 5

GREAT R.A.F. RAID

CREUSOT WORKS IN FRANCE (Rec. 1.10 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 18. Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force at six o’clock last evening made a short heavy attack on the great Creusot armament works, 175 miles from Paris. It was the heaviest daylight attack yet undertaken by the Bomber Command. Unescorted, the large force of Lancasters flew 300 miles into France and, in comparison with the daylight raid on Augsburg some months ago, when seven bombers out of 12 failed to return, only one plane was lost. The pilots were told to finish the job as quickly as possible and they were over the target for only 20 minutes. They did not attack in formation, but went in singly. All statements agree that heavy damage was done to the works. During the Battle of France the Creusot works, which are the French equivalent of Krupps, were not molested, as the Germans had earmarked them for their own use. Since the Franco-German armistice all the production of guns, armourplate and castings has gone to Germany.

Although the works cover 287 acres, the town itself is congested and without landmarks. It was decided, therefore, to attack in daylight as a night raid would have endangered the civilian population. BOMBING OFGERMANY Heavy Damage Admitted (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) LONDON, October 17. The Luftwaffe spokesman, Major Wofgang Blei, broadcasting over the Berlin radio, said the damage the enemy was doing by the bombing of Germany could not be denied. “It is extraordinarily heavy, but compared with the total property the damage is smaller than the enemy thinks,” he said. “The damage would be far greater if the enemy directed his attacks against the military front. The German labour power is neither destroyed nor disturbed. The enemy cannot reach the German labour power. Therefore, he cannot win the war. The war can be won only on the military field. The Luftwaffe could answer every British blow with harder blows which the British, for all their tenacity, would be unable to endure.” ALLIES’ AIR EFFORT Captain Rickenbacker Impressed WASHINGTON, October 17. “The picture from the standpoint of the United Nations is as bright as the grim portrait of a war can be,” declares Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the famous American aviator of the last war, who has returned to the United States after a survey tour of the European theatre of operations. Of the air war in particular, he said: “The trend is entirely in our favour.” Discussing the Allied raids, he added that the British were continuing the production of long-range night bombers. British night bombing and American day-time precision bombing would complement each other in a round-the-clock bombardment. In this the day bombers would serve as pathfinders by setting fire to enemy targets and providing beacons for the night bombers. Captain Rickenbacker said that he had found that Britain had mobilized all her resources for victory and was employing all her man-power and woman-power in the war effort. He told the War Department that the fog of confusion regarding the respective qualities of British and American fighter planes was rapidly disappearing. The fact that American pilots in England flew Spitfires had been widely misinterpreted as meaning that American fighters were inferior. The facts were that American pilots flew Spitfires because Spitfires were available and thus American fighters, instead of going to England, could be sent elsewhere.

ENEMY AIR LOSSES American Planes Praised LONDON, October 17. Ten thousand Axis aircraft have been brought down during the war, not counting heavy enemy losses in Russia, the Far East and the Pacific. This figure is given by the English magazine Aeroplane, which pays a tribute to the United States Army Air Forces. Referring to the heavy toll of German fighters taken by Flying Fortresses and Liberator bombers in the recent raid on Lille, the paper says that United States machines are winning successes with a weapon the Royal Air Force has never possessed—the .sin machine-gun. The Royal Air Force is equipped only with .303 machine-guns and 20 millimetre cannon. FOCKE-WULFSHOT DOWN New Zealanders’ Success (8.0.W.) RUGBY, October 17. Flying over the Channel this afternoon, two New Zealand pilots of the Fighter Command saw bombs dropped on the south-east coast. A few moments later they spotted two FockeWulfs racing for home low down over the sea. They concentrated on one and shot it down into the Channel after a 10-mile pursuit.