TABLES TURNED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 April 1943, Page 3

TABLES TURNED

ALLIED AIR OFFENSIVE IN AFRICA SPLENDIDLY IN CONTRAST. WITH EARLIER EXPERIENCE OF NEW ZEALANDERS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) ALGIERS, April 18. Just two years after their blitzing along the roads of Greece, the New Zealanders with the Eighth Army have watched the Luftwaffe and Axis land forces in Tunisia take the greatest Allied air offensive that has ever been launched with our land operations in Africa. Thousands of light bomber, fighter-bomber, and fighter sorties have swept over our gun and transport lines in thh three weeks since the Mareth battle began. Never before in their history have the New Zealand troops seen anything like the magnificent fighter cover and bombing support they have been given in this advance. They have been bombed and strafed in the three weeks, but in hit-and-run attacks. It is inspiring to hear the unreserved praise for the Allied air forces from these infantrymen, gunners, and drivers who have known terrific air attacks, and from the anti-aircraft gunners who held the record for the number of German aircraft shot down over El Alamein.

Our troops have watched the fighter squadrons graduate from 1940 Gladiators to Spitfires, Warhawks, and Hurricanes, and have seen the bombers grow from a handful of Blenheims to a powerful force of the newest American light and medium aircraft. The first Australian fighter squadron to serve overseas and the famous R.A.F. Shark Squadron, have reached totals of 200 enemy aircraft destroyed in the fighting in the desert campaigns in which our troops have served, and the Hurricane squadron in which six New Zealanders fought during the El Alamein battle has taken its total to 300 in the two years it has been in Africa.