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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 0687.PDF
APRIL 6TH, 1944 ,0»^ mm k IS 0* " MINES WERE LAID . . . " : Filling the capacious bomb bay of a Short Stirling with sea mines. The Pas de Calais Objectives : Elijah's Ravens at Cassino : Air Superiority in Burma DAY after day the medium bombers of the B..A.F. and the U.S. gth Air Force cross the Channel to attack the unspecified '' military targets'' in the Pas de Calais. Whatever these may be, the attacks seem to have kept them quiet hitherto. In addition, mediums, and sometimes Fortresses and Liberators as well, take an easy day by attacking airfields in France. Locomotives seem to have lost the great attraction which they not long ago had for fighters and fighter-bombers, and airfields and training stations further inland are now preferred. The futility of bombing airfields is always a matter for discussion. When it is done tactically during a battle to prevent the enemy aircraft from haras sing our own troops it is often very useful, but the effect is usually only temporary. In these raids the obiect probably is to provoke the eneVny fighters to come up and engage in com bat, and this they often refuse to do. In that case the buildings are damaged or destroyed, and a certain number of aircraft are destroyed at their dispersal points on the ground. It is said that the frequent recurrence of these raids has driven the Germans back from the airfields nearest to the shores of the Channel to others farther inland. Those advanced bases were doubtless very useful during the period when the Fw 190s were indulg ing in daily tip-and-run raids on the towns along the South Coast of Britain; but the Typhoons defeated those raids some time ago and made them not worth while. Otherwise their evacuation, if it is a fact that they mostly have been evacuated, will not matter very much to the Germans. The bombing of the airfields has not VICTORY IN THE AIR : An Me no falls to the guns of a U.S. 8th A.A.F fighter.
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