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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 1006.PDF
.520 MAY I8TH, 1944 " WAR IN THE AIR especially around Lvov and Galatz. The capture of this fortress, on the other hand, sets free a Russian Army for employment elsewhere, though it seems evident that Russia has this year brought her enormous sea-power into play and needs extra armies less than she needs many other things. The mastery of the Black Sea, which the capture of Sevastopol has restored to Russia, is likely to be more im portant than the setting free of one Army. The air arm of the Black Sea Fleet has made a name for itself and has seized every opportunity of making its power felt. Its opportuni ties will now be increased. Behind the Lines ALL through last week the Air ^*l Forces of the United Nations have been striking at the back areas of Hitler's "fortress of Europe," from the West, from the Mediterranean, and from the Russian front. The numbers of aircraft employed have been prodigious, and the fine weather which mostly prevailed gave oppor tunities for great accuracy in bombing the.many targets. This was very for tunate, for many of those targets were in occupied territory, and the aircrews were warned to take meticu lous care that their bombs should fall in the target areas and not kill French men, Belgians, or Dutchmen if that could possibly be avoided. It is reported from the South-East Asia Command that Allied air co operation with the troops has been one of the outstanding features of the battles in Burma. The "tank- buster" aircraft has made its appear ance there, and one cheerful story tells how some of these formidable machines chased two Japanese tanks for a mile and a half along a road until the latter were finally destroyed. No less pleasing is the tale of some Mitchell medium bombers which were flying home with some bombs left in their r^cks. They passed over a British post and signalled, "Any job QUADS AND TWINS r This head-on photograph of a Mustang III formation gives the aircraft an appearance of queer multi-engined quadruplanes and biplanes. for us to do? " They were told that a Japanese battalion was forming up not far off, so they went and bombed it, and when the British and Indian troops reached the spot they found nothing but dead bodies of Japanese. Quite recently two distinguished fighter pilots of the last war have died:—Capt. Roy Brown, D.S.C., a Canadian, late of No. 209 Squadron, who was believed by many to have killed Baron Manfred von Richthofen, and Major G. B. McCubbin, D.S.O., a gallant South African pilot, who was credited with having shot down Max Immelmann. There have been discussions and disagreements about both these feats. The official history of The War in the Air, by H. A. Jones, accepts the theory that Brown killed von Richthofen on April 22nd, 1918, but the Australian Government, in an appendix to the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18, comes to the con clusion that the German pilot was killed by a bullet from a Lewis gun fired from the ground by Sgt. Popkin. Immelmann, the noted pilot of the Fokker monoplane, was killed on June 18th, 1916, and 2nd Lt. McCubbin (as he then was) of No. 25 Squadron, flying in an F.E.2B., had been attacking him just before. The Germans, however, thought it more likely that something was wrong with Immelmann's interceptor gear (which had been giving him trouble on .recent days), and that his gun shot off his own airscrew. The vibration, they say, then caused the Fokker break in two in the air. w. AIR BASE STRAFE : A Mitchell of the U.S. 7th A.A.F., low-bombing Japanese runways on Taroa Islands in the Marshalls. From this height the Americans v usually employ parachute bombs.
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