WITHOUT PRECEDENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1942, Page 3

WITHOUT PRECEDENT

MANIFESTATION OF ALLIED AIR POWER NOW PLAYING DECISIVE PART. j BOMBER & FIGHTER UNITS REINFORCED. LONDON, July 6. The attack has now passed wholly to the Eighth Army, and the trend of battle is generally westward, says the “Daily Telegraph” correspondent with the Eighth Army. “This new turn,” he said, “has been achieved without a single sensational action, but through determined fighting all along the front.” “Air power is doing for the Eighth Army what sea power did for the army at Dunkirk, with the difference that it is now not only a question of rescuing the retreating force from destruction, but of creating conditions that may turn the threat of catastrophe from us against the enemy,” says “The Times,” in a leading article. It adds:— “Nothing like the present manifestation of air power has previously brought aid to the British Army. That which our men vainly longed for on the plains of Flanders and in the defiles of Greece has now been brought to pass." The Swiss “National Zeitung” quotes a Berlin admission that, air strength is now playing a decisive role in Egypt. It is claimed that the R.A.F. has concentrated in Egypt every available plane from all the Mediterranean bases, and that substantial additional British bomber and fighter reinforcements were brought in at the weekend. The Axis radio propaganda directed toward Egypt has taken on a subdued tone in the past three days. The Axis announcers previously indulged in the wildest exaggerations, but now little reference is made to the fighting.

ROMMEL WOUNDED

ACCORDING TO CAIRO RUMOUR. LONDON, July 6. It is reported in Cairo, without confirmation, that Field-Marshal Rommel has been wounded and has handed over the command of the Afrika Korps to an unnamed Italian general.