FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1943
1943 - 2086.PDF
218 WAR IN THE AIR mand raided the German research and development station at Peenemilnde on the Baltic coast, 60 miles to the north-west of Stettin and 700 miles from Britain. Peenemunde might be called the German equivalent of the R.A.E. at Farnborough. It was a difficult target, for the buildings had been cunningly strung out for some miles among woods, and the defences were very strong. The British loss was 41 aircraft, a higher figure than has been sustained for some time past, but this testifies to the gallantry and determination of the crews and also to the value placed by the enemy on the place. The results of the bombing are believed to have been very good. As a sort of bon bouche a few Mos- quitoes bombed Berlin. The exterior lines of the Allies now permit of air attacks on "the European strong- hold" from all directions. The Fortresses which raided Regensburg flew on to airfields in Africa, giving yet one more example of how the northern and southern fronts are now linked together. Air Pursuit H the fall of Messina the minor Dunkerque promptly ceased, and the allied aircraft and warships quickly turned their attention on to the roads, railways and harbours of the ATLANTIC BATTLE SCENE ferial depth-charges (shown by circles) drop- ping on a German U-boaf. One is actually glancing off the/side of the conning tower. The aibmarine sur- rendered within 12 mmutes of being attacked. TARGET IN GREECE : Close-up of a Cant Z.501 taken by a Beaufighter during an attack on the seaplane base at Preveza on the west coast. Two other Beaufighters can be seen in the background. Italian mainland. The Royal Navy shelled both the west and the east coasts of Italy, and the aircraft pur- sued the fugitives from Sicily. During the real Dunkerque in 1940, British and French soldiers were safe as soon as they reached the shores of England, but that was not the case with all the Germans and Italians who escaped from Sicily to Calabria. There, there was nothing like the R.A.F. Fighter Command to hold off the pursuing bombers, and many soldiers who had escaped from the island met their fate on the mainland. Allied fighter pilots have been sur- prised to encounter Italian aircraft with unfamiliar markings on them, but the explanation was found to be that emblems of the Fascist party .have now been expunged and national markings substituted. Another and rather similar puzzle has been pre- sented in Northern France, where on several occasions lately machines of German types have been seen with Italian markings on them. Attention has naturally been so con- centrated of late on the splendid vic- tories in the. Mediterranean that one is apt to overlook the persistent hard work being done by fighters and fighter-bombers which start off from Britain day after day and night after night to harry the Germans in France and the Low Countries. They were particularly busy on the memorable , and they and medium jmbers ragged far and wide. These operations tie o&wn a verwlarge pro- portion of GermaK fighter squadrons to that area, and itSisiextrernely im- portant to keep thejf there at the present juncture \»e\i the\ enemy only too deyly ll^e to\be able id them elsewpere. Sewise we «US*«JIG fortet the ceaseless harrying of German shipping by Coastal Command aircraft or the continual laying of mines in enemy waters. The attacks*"on the shipping usually call for great daring and skill on the part of the crews of Beauforts and Beaufighters, but the day-by-day incidents cannot all be recorded here. All these operations combine to hamper the German war effort, and the best record of them is to be found in the list of decorations conferred on the crews, which are published on other pages of Flight. The Japanese War /^ENERAL MACARTHUR'S reach ^ js growing longer and longer. The air is his main arm still, but he uses his naval and military forces with skill and initiative as the situation calls for new moves. The seizure of the island of Valla Lavella, in the New Georgia group, took him a step nearer to what must be his first chief objective, Rabaul, and when the Japanese sent a convoy of barges and destroyers to retrieve the position, American naval vessels attacked and scattered the destroyer escort, and then proceeded to sink most of the barges. Only 300 Japanese soldiers are believed to have • reached the shore, and they were in no condition to attack the American troops ; in fact, they promptly disappeared into the jungle. Meanwhile, the enemy massed over 200 aircraft round the base of Wewak, in New Guinea, evidently in- tending some sensational development, but a series of attacks by the Allied bombers destroyed nearly all of them at slight cost. In addition, there have been raids by Liberators on oil stores at Balikpapan, in Borneo. These have
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
