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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0885.PDF
APRIL 17TH, 1941. 2S3 WAR IN THE AIR (Continued) ' bidding Jebels guarding Keren 3,000' feet below. As the pilot banked his aircraft to the right, the stillness was broken by a myriad puffs of smoke from British guns. The assault on Keren, Italy's greatest stronghold in Eritrea, had begun. The pilot flew his bomber over a seemingly unpopu- lated mountain rock and watched his bombs burst on the forbidding moun- tain side. He could see nothing of the effect of his salvo but his was the first of a plethora of high explosive bombs that was to help the Army to shake the Italians out of what has been described by mountain warfare experts as the toughest fighting proposition in the world." Plan of Campaign ^ '"FHE day before, representative pilots -*- of all the squadrons in the group had been taken to the front in lorries and shown on a large scale relief map made out of sand, just where the Army positions were, just where the enemy lay, and just what was expected of them in their carefully co-ordinated air support. A wonderful thing was that sand map. The front of the towering Jebels up which our troops would have to toil, fighting all the way, on the morrow, was laid out under a screen of camel thorn bushes. On it every peak and pass was clearly labelled. Round it stood pilots listen- ing attentively to a Staff Officer who told them of the army's plans for the attack. "Without the help of you fellows in the air," said the General, 4'we cannot hope to carry out our plan of campaign." I- . When that lone aircraft that was p' over the pass as the battle started [ - . returned to its base it was replaced by [:-!'. an endless stream of other aircraft all I bent on the reduction of the natural citadel that is Keren. Night and day, without ceasing, tons of bombs fell on e Italian defenders hidden away in their cunningly camouflaged gun em- placements and trenches carved out of the rocks. At all hours during the battle, pilots and crews of aircraft in the Sudan and in conquered Eritrean territory stood by ready to take off for Keren as soon as the signal was given. Bomber squadrons dropped nearly 15 tons of bombs on the first day and made 23 raids during operations which lasted from before dawn to after dusk. ENEMY AIR LOSSES TO APRIL 5th Over G.B- Over Europe Middle East March 30 I — — 31 1 April 15 — — ,,2 1 — — ,,3 2 2 — ,,4 4 — — 5 . 14 2 — Figures for this period in the Middle East are not available. Total in Northern Area, 4,346 ; Middle East to March 30 about 1.232, Slowly the news of the battle filtered through. Bulletins were posted on the door of the operations room and tired, dusty, but determined flying crews and red-eyed, blistered ground-crews gathered round to read them. '' Bombers appeared to have silenced the batteries behind Sanchil," read the first one. Sanchil was one of the peaks guarding the pass. " Sammanah and Brigs peak successfully attacked and held by us,'' read the next. Word came through that certain units of soldiers who were holding the fort at Dologorodoc needed food. The bombers loaded up with tinned rations and under fierce fire from Italian bat- teries dropped the food within a few yards of where it had been arranged. There were no parachute containers handy, so the aircraft came down to within fifty feet from the ground in order to prevent the tins from burst- ing on impact. Some tins were carried in the bomb racks, and others inside the aircraft." Although many peaks in the hills around were in the hands of the enemy, most of our pilots made two runs over the area, weaving in and out of the valleys until every tin of beef, milk, water and jam was dropped. One man made a special run to drop a packet of cigarettes which he found in his pocket. The Air Force which played its part in this great Battle of Keren was com- prised of squadrons of the Royal Air Force, South African Air Force, and units from Rhodesia. The Channel and the North Sea '"THE German Navy seems to be tak- -*- ing liberties with the Bomber Command. Recently the cruiser Hipper or one of her sisters was in Brest harbour, and the R.A.F. natur- ally made strenuous efforts to plant a few bombs on her. It seems that the ship got away without suffering any crippling injury. One might have thought that her escape would have persuaded the German Navy that Brest was not a very salubrious har- bour. But no! The battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, which had survived various adventures off the Norwegian coast and in the docks at Kiel, and which had, it is believed, been out raiding shipping in the Atlantic, then put into Brest. One of them actually went into dry dock, while the other tied up beside a quay. There was a great prize for the R.A.F. to win ! If either or both of these two great ships could be crippled it would be a great step towards Britain win- ning the Battle of the Atlantic. The Bomber Command naturally did its utmost. A series of raids were made on Brest by numbers of heavy bombers. Helped by the moon and by flares, the observers saw the German battleships clearly, and the air crews came down low with a total disregard for their own safety. Bombs of the heaviest calibre were dropped, and near misses were claimed. It is to be hoped that some of those near misses really did damage the vessels—but the coolness of the Germans in venturing to bring such valuable ships into that harbour is a little upsetting to our own conceit. It is also to be hoped that worth- while damage was done at Kiel on the nights when the R.A.F. made its heaviest attacks on that dockyard. One raid continued for five hours, during which 100 tons of H.E. bombs and over 30,000 fire-bombs were dropped. The centre of the town be- came one vast fire, and it is probable that the work • of the dockyard must have been gravely interfered with. U-boats may well have suffered, and the destruction of these underwater craft is perhaps the best help which the R.A.F. can give to the Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic. The next raid was even heavier. Provinces Again Main Target /CLEARER weather brought the ^-^ night bombers of the Luftwaffe into the air again, and there have been raids on Bristol, Liverpool, Coventry again, and (for the first time) Northern Ireland. Some of the German pilots engaged do not seem to have been of the first order, for many of them avoided the "hot spots" of our de- fences and scattered their incendiaries and H.E. bombs in open country. By day there has been sporadic raiding at different parts of Great Britain. Of course these raids have caused damage and casualties in places, though the degrees of damage have varied considerably. British night- fighters have also appreciated the moonlight, and have shot down quite gratifying numbers of bombers. On one night the total bag was six, two of which fell to Beaufighters, two to Hurricanes, and one to a Defiant, while A.A. fire claimed another. Another night saw no less than seven raiders destroyed. During the month of March 4,259 civilians were killed in air raids and 5,557 were detained in hospital. These were classified as follows:—Men 1,956 killed, 3,067 wounded ; women, 1,500 killed, 2,077 wounded ; children under 16, 598 killed, 413 wounded. The remaining 205 were not classified. BRITISH AIR LOSSES TO APRIL 5th Over G.B. Over Europe Middle East Aircraft Pilots Aircraft Aircraft March 30 — — — — „ 31 — — 3 - April I — — 2 ',', 3 I I 4 — „ 4 — — 3 — .. 5 — — — — "1 I 14 — Figures for this period in the Middle Eait are not available. Total in Northern Area 1,814; Middle East to March 30 about t33.
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