RISING POWER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 August 1943, Page 3

RISING POWER

OF ALLIED AIR ATTACKS COMPARISONS WITH LAST YEAR. IMMENSE EXPANSION SHOWN. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) RUGBY, August 18. Between 2,500 and 3.000 sorties were flown by Allied aircraft during Contin-ent-wide attacks from Britain and North Africa yesterday and last night. Giving these figures in London today., a commentator emphasised the severity of attacks on different targets by aircraft of the different commands. There are so many different targets in the news that the pattern and purpose of the series of offensive operations often escapes notice. Operations during 24 hours, for example, when St. Pol, Calais, Poix, Lille, Vendeville, Woensdrecht, Bryassud, Schweinfurt, Regensburg, Berlin, Istres, Salon and Letube, as well as many railway and other subsidiary targets in France and the Low Countries and North-West Germany were visited, indicated the far-flung nature of our offensive, aiming principally at the destruction of enemy aircraft and of components and auxiliary equipment, both completed and in various stages of production. The many sweeps helped to perplex and confuse the enemy and divert his attention from attacks on major targets at the same time as damaging lesser targets. The commentator said the attack on Regensburg, carried out against very stubborn opposition, was a particularly fine example of American daylight precision bombing technique. More striking figures concerning the air war were also given in London today. The Bomber Command in July flew nearly twice the number of sorties and dropped 10,000 tons more bombs, for the loss of only eleven more planes, than in July, 1942. Eighty tons of bombs were dropped for every plane lost in July, compared with 40 tons in July, 1942, and the personnel lost per unit of bombs dropped was halved in 1943. Seventy-five thousand tons of bombs were dropped on Germany by the Bomber Command in the first seven and a half months of this year. This was over twice the tonnage dropped during the whole of 1-942 and well over half the total tonnage so far dropred on Germany since the outbreak of war.

Allied fighter sorties from Britain last month totalled over 11,000. Last month the R.A.F. Fighter Command alone dropped over double the bomb tonnage delivered on Britain by all the German planes in the same period. Emphasising the great change in the scale of the Bomber Command attacks in the last twelve months, the commentator said that in 1942, except in a few special thousand-bomber rdids, there were only seventeen raids in which ■over 500 tons were dropped. Since February, 1943, however, there have been thirty raids of 500 to 1000 tons, sixteen of 1000 to 1500 tons, one of 1500 to 2000 tons, and eight of over 2000 tons. Yet, in spite of the impressive operations now carried out, we were hardly at the beginning of the technique of knocking out an objective by air power. The quality of bombs had improved and the big bomb, which yielded good results, had not yet reached its finality.