HOW BERLIN ESCAPED

Taihape Daily Times, 12 April 1919, Page 3

HOW BERLIN ESCAPED

It lias already been mentioned in the cables that, the British preparations for bombing Berlin were completed some three days before the signing of the armistice. The machines for this work were only delivered at the' cud of October, and by the time they were ready for service the overtures for an armistice had been made. The longest distance flown out and back by British bombing aeroplanes in Franco was 342 miles, in August, and as the distance from Nancy to B'erlin is sonic 400 miles, our machines were clearly not good enough to go one way to Berlin, ■let alone there and yfback. (That answers the question that used to be So often asked why the British authorities concentrated on the Rhine towns and left Berlin alone. General Trenchaid, commander of the Independent Air Force, thinks that the moral effect of bombing is twenty times greater than the material, and he argues that until we had secured'something like mastery of the air on the battle fronts, the bombing of German towns -was a luxury. The role of the aeroplane in war would seem to be two-fold. It can be used for reconnaissance, for punishing a retreat, for interrupting communications, and for attacking the enemy's war factories. General Trenchant *s report gives some very striking information on the efficiency with which this role was fulfilled, uagwi.zth eoli rthreirfco c