OBLITERATION RAIDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 June 1943, Page 3

OBLITERATION RAIDS

NEW POLICY OF BOMBER COMMAND SCALE MORE IMPORTANT THAN FREQUENCY. ' REFUGEE PROBLEM IN GERMANY. (Bv Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, June 7. The Bomber Command has adopted a new bombing policy under which the round-the-clock bombing is vir-i tually abandoned, according to the “Daily Mail’s” correspondent, Colin Bednail. He says, “The scale of raids rather than the number of raids is now the primary consideration. “Raids against Germany every night may come later, when the Bomber Command is 'satisfied that the requisite scale for each attack can be maintained. This scale rnay far exceed even the recent sensational 2000-ton raid on the Ruhr. The actual obliteration of a large industrial centre in a single night is already a physical possibility and one at which the Bomber Command is aiming, while the belts of aerodromes which are necessary for the launching of the blows have been under steady development for months.

‘The Bomber Command now aims at ‘obliteration’ scale raids every time, rather than to make any ‘pot-boiling’ attacks. Calculations of the relative effect of one mass maid and two or more raids by smaller forces reveal that the former has immense advantages.” A “New York Times’ correspondent says that the Nazi-controlled Press of Alsace admits serious complications as a result of mass arrivals of refugees from bombed districts. The refugees are terrorising the local merchants and demanding special treatment. They also imperil morale, it is declared, by asserting that the German flank is ineffective and that the Rhineland cities fcannot stand much longer the terror of the Anglo-American bombings. _

30,000 CASUALTIES AFTER BREACHING OF RUHR DAMS. ACCORDING TO TRAVELLERS REACHING SWEDEN. (Received This Day, 11.20 a.m.) LONDON, June 7. Reliable reports from travellers arriving in Sweden from Germany state that the casualties after the breaching of the Mohne and Eder dams totalled 30,000. The British United Press Stockholm correspondent says travellers recently passing through Essen state that the city is completely dead, only a few firemen and railwaymen remaining. The R.A.F. has also disrupted Goering’s newspaper, the “Essener National Zeitung,” which is now being printed elsewhere. The latest copies received in Stockholm do not contain any local Essen news and no advertisements.