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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 1107.PDF
JUNE IST, 1944 FLIGHT WAR- IN THE AIR syn- MM and West could be made to chronise. One wonders sometimes whether war correspondents at the front do not get confused by the latest organisation of British and American Air Forces. One message from Allied Headquarters in Italy reported that heavy bombers of the M.A.A.F. attacked the railway yards at Lyons and Toulon. Naturally it must seem to correspondents in the Mediterranean that all bombers based there form part of the Mediterranean Allied Air Force. For maintenance purposes it is true that they do, but operationally the U.S. Army 15th Air Force*is not under Gen. Eaker (who nmands M.A.A.F.) but under Gen. 'aatz, whose H.Q. are in Great Britain. The latter has two forces of heavy bombers (with long-range fighters for escort duties as well) under his operational command—the 15th Air Force in the Mediterranean and the 8th Air Force in the British Isles. It seems to have been the 15th A.F. which made the raids on Toulon and Lyons. Lyons was the most northerly point which heavy bombers from the south had reached. They wexe escorted all the way by Mustangs and Lightnings. The Overriding Need '"THE alternate attacks from north -*- and south must place a great strain on the German defence organisa tion. Its overriding need is to preserve a force of fighters to meet the Allied invasion, while at the same time those fighters have to fight for specially valu able spots, such as aircraft factories. In consequence, if the absence of fighters means defeat in one of the laud ON A NEW ROUTE : Sqn. Ldr. Orlinski, Tokio flight, now flies a Mosquito from battles, the German High Command decided some time ago to accept that. It would take a tremendous force of German fighters to disturb the air supremacy which the Allies have established in Italy, and no serious effort has been made by the Germans in that direction. Small packets of their aircraft have appeared there every now and then, but so seldom that their appearances have been re ported as something quite surpEUrtfig. These spasmodic appeaj»*f? one-time record breaker on Warsaw- Britain to Germany very frequently. enemy had done, but in proportion to sorties the Allied losses were tiny. Wise Words '"PHE Air Staff has never pretended that it hoped to win thb war by the bomber offensive alone. Last January there was an interesting talk between a gathering of journalists in Washington and Air Marshal Sir Richard Peck and Gen. Spaatz in Lon don , in the course of which Sir Richard rSs£* I think that whatever form ^OME FOR ME : Fortresses of the 15th U.S.A.A.F. attack the main Messerschmitt factory at Wiener Neustadt, south of V'enna. victory takes it will nojt have been won by fir warfare alone, because air warfare KIS nortjeen employed alone." The same poin^ has been rubbed in n more emphatically by Air Mar- 1^1 Sir Arthur Ccmingham, A.O.C. Seo^ckTlcticdi Air Force. Speak- ng |Kfthe\Sgjtfiffe squadrons of his "orce theS?t5er day he said: "It is for any one Service to win a modern war. . . . There is no short cut to beating the Germans, and you cannot do it by bombing alone." He then repeated Gen. Eisen hower's dictum that all the Allied forces, the Army, Navy and Air Force, British, American and Allied, constituted one big team. That is the doctrine which has bees consistently preached by Flight ever since the outbreak of this war. It has been questioned, and even denied, by many who thought themselves cleverer than the authorities of the Royal Air Force. The intense public interest aroused by the steady growth of the R.A.F. and U.S. heavy bomber forces, and the periodical statements of the amount of damage done to Berlin, Essen, Hamburg and other places no doubt inclined the public to take an exaggerated view of the effects of the bomber offensive, but Air Marshal Coningham's words should bring a proper sense of proportion.
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