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Aviation History
1943
1943 - 0085.PDF
JANUARY 14TH, 1943 FLIGHT HIGH FLIERS : Fortresses of the U.S. Army Air Corps in England making broad vapour trails from their engine exhausts. 'ARin A Profit and Loss Account : In the Bay of Biscay : Activity at Rabaul Bombing Offensive in Burma STATISTICIANS of the Air Minis-try are still busy with the recordsof the past year, and keep on dig- ging out interesting figures and giving them to the world in attractive guise. One such calculation concerns the doings of Fighter Command in 1942, when it destroyed 738 enemy aircraft. roughly the equivalent of 62 squadrons of the Luftwaffe. This figure includes the contribution of the A.A. guns, which belong to the Army but, never- theless, form part of Fighter Com- mand. Of this total 443 were shot down by fighters over the Continent, 399 by day and 44 by "intruder" TORPEDO GONE ; An Avenger launches a zi'm. torpedo. It has been statedthat the American ziin. torpedo carries the same amount of explosive as the British i8jn. weapon. Note the exhaust and spinning propellers ; ours do notstart until the water is reached. pilots by night. In German raids over Great Britain n8 machines were shot down by day and 177 by night. As enemy air raiding has been on a \rery modest scale during the year, these figures may be taken as quite satisfactory, though naturally they do not compare with the holocaust in- flicted on the enemy during the Battle of Britain. During "the year Fighter Command has been on the offensive, which means that most machines damaged over the Continent were lost to the K.A.F., though not all the pilots were killed. In such air battles our fighters get no help from our own A.A., and have to go through the flak of the enemy. Even so, the losses of Fighter Command were substantially below those of the enemy. The Command lost 593 mapfeines, but 49 pilots were saved by tfa?* Air-Sea rescue service. Toe profit-and-loss account cannot be judged entirely by our losses in fighters, for in many cases the object of an offensive operation was to bomb some enemy target, and then the fighters were called upon to take risks in defending the bombers. The main object of Fighter Com- mand's offensive during the year was to force the enemy to fight, and even if we had lost rather more machines than the enemy did, the result might well have been considered satisfactory. As our losses have been substantially
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