AIR COMMUNIQUE

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 2, 31 January 1944, Page 22

AIR COMMUNIQUE

In this article, written at an advanced Mediterranean Air base in October last year, Kenneth L. Dixon tells how War News is bom. The birth of a brief communique from an advanced air base is an amazing operation. When this was writtenin October last year —-North African Air Force communiques were made up in a crude wooden hut hastily flung up in the midst of a clump of mimosa trees. Combining the operations headquarters of the NAAF and the Mediterranean Air Command, this advance post has to figure on all aerial blows fired from this theatre. It is evening. Planes are landing in scores of fields in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Their day’s fighting done, the pilots check in their various squadron wings and groups to tell their story. Those points in turn report to the three Commands ßomber, Air Support, and Coastal.

From these commands reports like brief newspaper bulletins are flashed to the command post at the advanced base, first telling of the planes’ return, the

score and the success of the day’s, operations.

Later in the evening more details follow. Finally, at night, each command checks in —by radio or telephone—complete summary of the day’s operations, listing in detail the various errands, the score of victories and defeats, the numbers of enemy planes knocked down, and the numbers of Allied planes and men failing to return. Inside one blacked-out hut the light burns through the night. A combined operational summary, condensing all reports, is being prepared under the direction of the NAAF officer in charge of despatches. t. In the morning one of the Generals checks the summary. Military intelligence men use the more complete reports to keep their picture of the operations up to date.

Then the censor writes the communique. A pilot himself, he must decide how much of the summary can be released without affecting military security. A communique is born.