AIR SUPERIORITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 December 1943, Page 3

AIR SUPERIORITY

DEMONSTRATED BY ALLIES FLYING WEATHER TRICKY. BUT EVERY AIRMAN’S MORALE “SKY-HIGH.” (By Telegraph—Press Association— copyngnt) LONDON, November 31. Throughout today’s actions there was an. impressive demonstration of Allied air superiority. Spitfires tore down against the enemy positions, spraying them with bullets and then wheeling off. Our bombers also hammered against the enemy. German.. snipers continued fighting when the main resistance had been broken, and even German wounded were given grenades, which they flung from houses where nests of Nazis held out, Gurkhas cleaned up the snipers with their kukris. One observer says the road up the ridge was a way of death on which lay German dead and some of our own casualties who fell in the .battle.

The flying'weather has been tricky, but as a Royal Air Force squadron leader has remarked, every airman’s morale is “sky-high.” A German commentator says the Allied air activity is on an unprecedented scale. Eighth Army attacking forces are now only two miles from Lanciano, the chief German defence centre in the line. A special communique records the capture of the village of Mozzagrogna, three miles north of the river and four miles from the Adriatic Sea, and three other nearby villages, including one on the coast, and one on the western end of the five-mile ridge protecting the German supply line. All are on the road which runs inland from the Adriatic through the communication centre of Lanciano.