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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 0117.PDF
JANUARY 20TH, 1944 FLIGHT rWAR IN THE AIR ENEMY AIR LOSSES TO JAN. Jan. 9 ... „ 10 ., I' „ <2 „ 13 , M ,. 15 Over G.B. 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 Con tinent 0 2 0 0 8 6 0 16 Middle East 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Totals : West, 7,872 ; Middle East, over North-West Africa 3,973. 15th N.W. Africa 1 9 II 2 29 4 0 56 5,760 ; and the aircraft continue to harry traffic on the Irrawadi and other rivers, while a contingent of West African troops, who are said to be natural jungle-fighters, has arrived. Anpther, and a particularly wel come, accession to Allied, strength in India consist of Spitfires. Though our airmen have suffered few losses from w enemy action, still the improvement ^in Japanese aircraft which Admiral Halsey mentioned must be taken into account. Spitfires in sufficient num bers will give the Allies undoubted mastery of the air, and that is a neces sary preliminary to all forward move ment. Rubbing It In COMETIMES the tactics of bombing ^ demand that a target shall be given a rest after a heavy attack, to give the industrious Germans a chance of expending man-power and time on repairs, which are then wasted when the second visitation comes. On other occasions it is deemed advisable to let off the second barrel as promptly as possible after the first. The reasons for such different treatment cannot J*,usually be known to the public, but they are doubtless sufficient. Brunswick has been judged a case for a left and right from the Allied twelve-bore—to use a shooting metaphor. The Americans had 59 BRITISH & U.S. AIR LOSSES TO JAN. 15th Jan. 9 10 II 12 13 14 15 Totals : Over G.B. A'crft. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Continent B'brs. F'ters. 0 1 0 3 59 5 0 0 . 1 1 44 10 0 0 104 20 Middle East A'crft. 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 N.W. Africa A'erft. , 1 3 7 3 5 5 2 26 West, 9,250 ; Middle East, about 2.345 : North-West Africa, 1,511. and this is the undercarriage control." SERVING ITS TIME : Manhandling a Vickers Walrus in northern Australia. The Walrus first went to Australia as the Seagull V in 1937. An earlier, wooden version of the amphibian was bought by Australia in 1926. bombed it by day, so the next thing was for Bomber Command to hit it by night. Ringing the changes is now one of the cardinal maxims of bomb ing policy. So on Friday night last week hundreds of Lancasters set off with the intention of flattening out any sections of the Messerschmitt works which had escaped the daylight bomb ing of the Americans. The staff of Bomber Command has in recent months shown itself to have become expert in two other features of bombing tactics, namely, in foxing the enemy, by feint attacks, and by letting go a tremendous num ber and weight of bombs in a space of time which not long ago would have seemed fantastically short. In this case the Com mand's freedom of action was limited by the time of the moon's rising, and therefore the duration of the attack had to be re duced to the shortest possible time. Not very long ago it was^noted with appro- ion that the dura- on of a heavy bombing attack had been reduced from one hour to 50 minutes. Since then half an hour has become quite usual. But last Friday the whole business was got through in no more than 23 minutes, although in that time no less than 2,000 tons of bombs were released from the racks of the Xan- casters. The first of them fell at 7.10 p.m. They continued to fall at an average rate of 90 tons a minute, and at the peak they were going down at a rate of 150 tons»a minute. As a consequence, the bombers were well on their way home before moonrise. Those of our readers who remember the last war wilFrecollect how, in the days of Zeppelin raids, clear nights set hearts beating faster, and murky dark ness was welcomed. Now things have changed, and clear weather is re garded as favouring the defence, while modern inventions have enabled the attack to defy clouds and fog. On Friday night the German fighters, who had been depleted by the guns of the Fortresses and Liberators, and who had been driven by that great daylight raid to bring into action reserves which they would sooner have held back,* were once again misled by diversionary attacks. Mosquitoes flew to Berlin and Magdeburg, and by doing so drew off a number of the German defenders. They were in action along the route, but they evidently could not make up their minds which way the real attack would go. The German rule .seems to be: "When in doflbt, defend Berlin." So numbers of them made for the capital, and spent what was probably an un profitable time in hunting the speedy Mosquitoes. In consequence, most of them were late in getting to Bruns wick. They used red and white flares to light up the route, and they made free use of rocket missiles, but they did not prevent the Lancasters from hitting a tremendous blow at Bruns wick. All things considered, the loss of 38 bombers from all the operations of the night was a moderate price At the same time, far away in Russia, the shortage of German fighters has given the Stormoviks something like a free hand in helping the soldiers to gain their remarkable victories. The very modesty of the Russian claims of enemy aircraft destroyed shows that the air opposi tion there is far from formidable. In fact, the Germans are in a cleft stick, and their only guiding principle for using fighters is to defend Berlin.
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