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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0940.PDF
APRIL 24TH, 10.41. WAR IN THE AIR (Continued) and on to Solium ; but provided that Tobruk is adequately garrisoned, as is believed to be the case, the enemy cannot attempt a serious invasion ot Egypt with that hostile post on the flank of their advance, especially as thai post has sea communications. They tried one surprise attack on the' place and were rebuffed. The affair was not much more than a reconnaissance in force, or a major skirmish, for the enemy only lost 100 men or so killed and twice that num- ber taken prisoner. They lost 15 tanks and we lost eight. It will be much easier for us to make good the loss than it will be for them. Along the few roads in the desert the R.A.F. bombers are constantly vigilant and aggressive, and night raids on the har- bour of Tripoli itself are frequent. The Egyptian Government does not seem to be in the least alarmed at the re- newed chance of the enemy invading that country. One of the least desirable jobs in this war must be that of pilot (or, for that matter, gunner) of a Ju 87 dive bomber. Such men had their moments in Poland and in the Battle of France, but since then the Luftwaffe chiefs seem to have regarded that type of. aircraft as (in the words of a certain K.A.F. officer) "expendible stores." The Stukas are regularly sent out like sheep to the slaughter (their consider- able success in the affair of the Sicilian Straits was very costly to the crews), and the Hurricanes of the Middle East find in them an easy way of swelling their total of enemy machines cer- tainly destroyed. Great numbers of Ju 87s have been sent to the Balkans front, where they would perform their natural work of co-operating with the German Army, but they have not found their work there at all safe or easy. Some Ju 88s have also been used there for dive-bombing and have also suffered casualties. The latter are much more valuable machines, and the Germans are loath to risk many of them on work which can be done by the less valuable 87. Apart from the enemy aircraft shot down in the aii in the. Middle East, the R.A.F. have continued to destroy large numbers on the ground. When our forces entered Addis Ababa they found 31 wrecks in hangars, and recently the R.A-.F. destroyed 17 on the ground at Derna Unless the enemy can attain some- thing like parity in the air in Libya, they certainly will not be able to take full advantage o( the British with- drawals. Air parity, if not supremacy, is desirable in all campaigns, but par- ticularly so in desert warfare where roads are few and are easily watched and bombed. Night and Day Bombing •\17TTH the spring weather the daflo- *^ dils come out and so do the bombers. The farmers pray for fine weather to bring on their crops and seeds : the townsman laments the foggy nights when aeroplanes are kept aground. The night bomber crews revel in the opportunities for destruc- tion, and the night fighters welcome the moonlight and the abundance of targets. Naturally the greatest prize for the bombers on either side has been the presence of the German warships Scharnhorst and Gncisenau in Brest Harbour. The Bomber Command has used every endeavour to plant heavy bombs on one or both of them, and the crews have claimed any number of near misses. Some of these may have been hits, for the results could not always be clearly observed. Near misses may well do damage, and it is quite possible that damage has been done. But, up to the moment of writ- ing, those ships have not been sunk, and we have no certain knowledge that they are any the worse for trft energies which the Bomber Command has ex- pended. We all continue to hope that their capacity for raiding shipping in the Atlantic has been curtailed. Kiel has also been subjected to a series of very heavy night raids, and much of the town has been reduced to ashes. Many buildings of importance to the work of the naval dockyard have been hit, and again we must hope that the building of submarines has been seriously hampered. There have also been numerous severe attacks on the aerodrome of Merignac, near Bor- • deaux, where the Focke-Wulf Kuriers' are based. All this has been sound military use of bomber aircraft. On one night the heavy bombers penetrated once more to Berlin and do not seem to have confined their attentions to railways and factories. They created considerable havoc in and round the Unter den Linden, and burnt the great Opera House and various other buildings. The loss of Gciman life is believed to have been • considerable. The Germans called it an attack on the cultural life of their Capital—though the real culture of Germany has suffered more from the policy of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party than it can ever suffer from British bombs. Big Raid on London HPHE Germans were prompt to take -*- revenge. They sent pretty nearly every bomber they could raise against London one night, and showered dov. n H.E. and incendiary bombs in vast numbers. The raid started at 9 p.m.. and the '' all clear'' did not go until 5 a.m. next morning. There rarely seemed any interval in the procession of bombers overhead, and the gunfire only ceased when the British night fighters were in action. Naturally the CONVOY PROTECTORS: An air view of one of the long-range Consolidated Catalina flying boats now being used by CoastalCommand in the Battle of the Atlantic.
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