MOUNTING EFFECT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1943, Page 4

MOUNTING EFFECT

OF ALLIED AIR OFFENSIVE — GERMANY ON DEFENSIVE. AND DOING VERY BADLY. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 1.5 p.m.) LONDON, May 30. Germany, which is very much on the defensive as the tempo of the great air offensive mounts, lost at least 83 planes last week in a vain endeavour to halt the Allies’ assault. Raids cost the R.A.F. 135 planes over Europe, but this was a mere fraction of the great forces employed. The four biggest night raids last week—those on Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Essen and Wuppertal—involved the loss of 121 valuable bombers and crews, but this loss, tragic though it is, must be considered as a compartively small price to pay for.the destruction wrought in the heart of the enemy s war production area. Hundreds of British, Dominion and Allied air crews, which are helping to reduce to rubble Germany's mightiest war factories, have told tales of the terrible destruction they have seen in Ruhr centres, and reconnaissance after every raid has verified their claims. . The Allied air forces from North Africa meanwhile are continuing to blast Italian war centres and also to beat German and Italian air cover from the skies of the Mediterranean. The .Americans, striking new and massive hammer blows on Sardinia and Pantelleria yesterday, did not encounter fighter opposition, says Reuter's Algiers correspondent. Enemy fighter opposition appears to have completely broken down for the second time since the blitz began against the islands in the Mediterranean. Axis fighters early last week reappeared with as many as fifty at a time but they have now vanished, again. “The Times,” in a leaciing article on the general air offensive, says: “It is no accident, at a time when the Allied air attack against the war industries of Germany and against exposed bases in Italy is growing in scope and weight that there should be loud laments from Beilin and Rome about the iniquity and inhumanity of bombing. What moves the enemy to self-righteousness is not the criminality of air warfare, but his present inability to exploit it as he did when he was strong and his adversaries were weak. The . Allies’ major attacks have already disrupted his war effort.”