DAY OF VICTORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 May 1943, Page 3

DAY OF VICTORY

FOR AUIED MEDITERRANEAN FORCES 113 Axis Aircraft Destroyed and Much Other Damage Done AT COST OF ONE ALLIED MACHINE SARDINIA AGAIN HEAVILY BLASTED LONDON, May 21. Allied air forces in the Mediterranean have had another victorious day. Yesterday’s toll of enemy aircraft, 113, was achieved with the loss of only one Allied aircraft. Ninety-one 'of the enemy planes were knocked out on the ground and the other 22 were shot down out of the sky. In two days the Axis has lost 186 planes in the Mediterranean for the loss of six Allied machines. < Yesterday, the biggest raid was on an Italian aerodrome 80 miles north-west of Rome, where Flying Fortresses found 59 aircraft, most of them big bombers and transports, parked on the ground. Of these aircraft all but one were destroyed. It was one of the most successful precision bombing raids ever made. Most of yesterday’s attacks were concentrated, for the second day running, on Sardinia, where, as one pilot put it: “We played hell with the whole island.’’ Allied aircraft ranged from one end of Sardinia to the other. Most of the attacks were on airfields, where enemy aircraft on the ground were smashed up and a heavy toll was taken of enemy fighters which tried to interfere. In one furious action seven German six-engine transport planes were encountered and every one was shot down in flames. Road and railway bridges, railway junctions and other targets were attacked and three hits were scored on a dam in north-east Sardinia. Targets at Pantelleria, an aerodrome in Sicily and railway transport in Southern Italy, as well as Axis supply ships, were also attacked. Enemy raiders dropped bombs on Malta today, for the first time since December. About 36 enemy aircraft, fighter-bombers and fighters, approached the island but Malta fighters broke up the formation, shot down two and damaged several more. The few bombs dropped on the island caused only very slight casualties. Figures given by Allied Headquarters in North Africa show that up to the Axis surrender in Tunisia 5172 enemy aircraft had been destroyed in the Mediterranean area. Two-thirds of that number fell to the Middle East Command.