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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 0516.PDF
266 FLIGHT MARCH O/TH, 1944 THE AIR ESTIMATES matter of speculation. He had the impression that our bomber offensive was sometimes thought of as if it were producing no visible results for the time being, but might lead suddenly to the enemy's collapse, as if we were ham mering at a door in the expectation that the lock might suddenly give way. On the contrary, we were steadily pushing the door open, inch by inch, until we could pass through. Our offensive was producing results which were visible, measurable, and progressive. As soon as possible after our attacks we always photographed the results. We knew not merely what factory had been hit but which shop in the factory and what it was producing. Assessable Damage The concentrated products of thousands of hours of skilled work, of careful rationing, spoils from the occupied territories, supplies laboriously transported thousands of miles, the precious fraction that got through our blockade, were all destroyed in one night. Machine tools, generators and transformers, precision instruments, all were buried under a crumpled heap of girders; food, materials, chemi- c*ils, and timber were piled in a smoking ruin. These were the sinews of war. Repair and replace them the Germans could in the long run, if we let them—some of their efforts at repair had been really remarkable. But it was in these photographs of bomb damage that we could read some at least of the reasons why Germany had n.) longer abundant man-power and materials to throw into the offen sive; repair and defence must have first claim. Far better than capturing or destroying 100 enemy guns in the field, after, perhaps, they had killed many of our men, was to destroy them halt completed in the shops, and at the same time the tools with which the enemy could in a month produce 200 more. Berlin was the greatest battle of all. Little output could have been obtained from its hundreds of factories or those that were still functioning at all. With little efficiency could the administrative centre of the Reich have been directing their vast war machine, when the people knew that the morning might see no trains or trams or buses running, no electricity, no gas, no water, and when the shops were empty, their meals obtained from canteens, and their nights spent in a shelter, and their prospects— still greatei desolation We should be wearing long faces now if we had lost one quarter of the resources the Germans had lost in the last year. It was not only the overall loss of production and consumption of man-power on repair and replacements; there were many points where the Axis was especially vulnerable, and these had not been neglected. Some of them had been particularly appropriate—since the specialised targets were usually small—for attack by day, and it was against such targets, heavily defended because so vital to the enemy, that some of the most successful blows of the American Army Air Forces had been delivered. The offensive justified itself by the fact alone that we were keeping from the Eastern and Mediterranean fronts aircraft, men, and guns that might have turned the battles there. Bomber Command and the United States bomber squadrons had compelled the German High Command, as their whole front recoiled in the East, to tie down for the pro tection of their factories full four-fifths of their fighter strength in the West. This was the true strategic employment of air power. Our gains had not been won without losses. From bombing operations from this country in the last year over 2,500 aircraft had not come back. Taking an average of seven men per aircraft, this meant that nearly 18,ODD men, drawn from the flower of our manhood, were killed or prisoners. But that should be compared with the bloody fighting of the Eastern front, or with the carnage of the last war. In one day, July 1, igr6, we lost on th, Somme 21,997 men killed and missing, to secure, in tl: words of the Official History, an advance 3J miles wide and one mile in depth. Our aircrews who had fallen in destroy ing the weapons of the Nazis at their source were in the position of the man who died putting out of action the enfilading machine-gun which was decimating his comrades and so let the advance go through. The Air Minister then mentioned our decreasing rate of casualties and the development of navigational aids and safety devices. He paid a tribute to the combined work of British and American scientists, to the Pathfinder Force, and to Sir Charles Portal and other high officers. He ended by saying that the events of the coming weeks no man could foretell. Already, while the dust and smoke still billowed around his shattered factories, the enemy was driving his toiling millions in desperate efforts to recover the ground he had lost. The wounded tiger was dangerous. But there lay before us, now clearly attainable, the glitter ing prize of air supremacy, the talisman that could paralyse German war industry and war transport. That would clear the roaa for the progress-of the allied armies to Berlin. A debate then followed. CIVIL AVIATION I T is only possible, in the limited space at our disposal, to give a very brief outline of the debate on Civil Aviation, opened by Mr. Bowles, the Labour Member for Nuneaton, the' full report of which filled no less than 63J columns in Hansard. In effect the debate boiled down to Labour versus the Rest, and it was enlivened now and then by some of those traditional Parliamentary exchanges which are more entertain ing than constructive. Mr. Bowles, supported by Mr. M. Hughes (Carmarthen) and Mr. A. Bevan (Ebbw Vale), moved as an Amendment that " This House, realising the important part that civil aviation can play in bringing the peoples of the world together and in promoting mutual understanding, urges that post-war plans shall not regard national facilities for this means of air trans port as a bargaining point between the nations, but be based upon the need for full international co-operation." On the matter of post-war air traffic, Mr. Bowles was not very optimistic. "1 find," he said, "that people are exag gerating tremendously the real importance of civil aviation after the war. So long as air travel remains so vety dear, it is obvious it can attract only the real cream of the rail, road and shipping traffic. The first-class passengers of liners will be the only people who will be able to afford air transport." From available information he thought that about fifty air craft would be all that would be needed after the war to carry "that cream of traffic which is likely to travel by air." Finally, Mr. Bowles spoke in favour of the complete inter- nationalisation of civil aviation, as the Labour Party's solution to the main problem. They believed it was the only scheme to save the peace of the world. Mr. Hughes, seconding the amendment, intimated that those who were mainly con cerned with seeing that the British Empire "got its plsj£/j in the air" were using arguments that were inspired by k^L urge for power and prestige, and thus led eventually to wai. Still less would it lead to peace if civil aviation were kept under the control of the Air Ministry, for to have civil and military aviation linked under the same roof could not fail to breed suspicion and distrust; it would also prevent the growth of a really civil type of aircraft. Nine-tenths of those engaged on producing aircraft to-day would not be wanted as far as civil aircraft were concerned. Among those who spoke against the amendment were Group Capt. Wright, who said internationalisation was impossible so long as America and Russia held their present views; Lt. Col. Sir Thomas Moore, who said one could only feel that Messrs. Bowles and Hughes were living in a world of fantasy; Fit. Lt. Teeling, who said that if it was the Labour Party's policy so pessimistically to decry the future of the air, they would never get young men and women to join them ; Mr. Quintin Hogg, who used such terms as silly, cowardly, defeatist and ignorant in referring to the Labour policy, and said their scheme was " bogus from its inception," and finally Capt. Harold Balfour, who replied at some length for the Government, after saying that when he listened to the Labour speeches, he began *to wonder if it was really necessary to have the debate at all. Mr. Hogg's speech was followed by a counter-blast from Mi. A, Bevan, who said the Hon. Member for Oxford's contribution to the debate was derived from his hatred of the Labour Party.
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