CLOSING ON ROMMEL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 March 1943, Page 3

CLOSING ON ROMMEL

ALLIED AIR FORCES MOST POWERFUL YET PUT INTO FIELD. TASK OF MALTA PLANES. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. March 20. An agency correspondent in Tunisia says air jaws of the Allied pincers are closing more tightly, one pressing Rommel from the South and the other from the west. The correspondent continues that the most powerful air force the Allies have yet put into the field is divided in two sections: the Western Desert Air Force, which has followed the Army almost 2000 miles, and the Tunisian Air Force, composed of R.A.F. colonial, Dominion, and American pilots, with what could be saved of the former French Air Force stationed in North Africa. They are all united under the command of Air Marshal Tedder. Behind these forces is another operating from Malta, whose main task is to cut off the enemy’s shipping supplies which must come from south Italy and Sicily to Tunisia. The correspondent adds that there are also the fighters which defend night and day oui’ own shipping bases stretchng from Algeria to Egypt, Palestine and Syria.