TARGETS IN VIEW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 March 1943, Page 3

TARGETS IN VIEW

FOR UNITED STATES AIR FORCE IN CO-OPERATION WITH R.A.F. GENERAL EAKER'S SURVEY & FORECAST. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, March 24. Heavier raiding day and night on targets in Germany, and the possibility of a hundred plane daylight raid on Berlin, were forecast by Major-General Ira C. Eaker, commanding the Eighth Air Force of the United States Army, in an interview. “We shall continue to bomb largely by day,” he said, “but should the weather prove to be better for night operations, we are prepared to bomb at night. I cannot say when our night operations will begin, but certainly we shall do it this summer. There will be the best co-operative effort with the R.A.F. and we have some fat targets in view. What could be better than for the R.A.F. to crack a target at night and for us to go in the day after? It is my opinion that the Vegesack raid will be counted as more or less the conclusion of an experiment which began on August 17, when our bombers attacked Rouen. We were determined to find out if high-level bombing was practicable in this theatre without serious loss. The answer is definitely in the affirmative.” Major-General Eaker proceeded:, “In the course of 51 raids, American bomber losses are in the region of ninety, while we accounted for 255 German interceptors. We are now turning to building up our force so as to join the R.A.F. in full partnership in a largescale offensive against German targets. Our Liberators and Fortresses can go to any vital target in Germany and attack and hit it and then can beat off fighters all the way there and back. Our new bombers will be much bigger and faster. They will carry three or four times the bomb load and have better defences.”

Major-General Eaker also addressed a meeting of both Houses of Parliament. At the House of Commons he gave an account of the close co-opera-tion and happy relationship existing between the United States Army Air Force and the Royal Air Force.