FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1944
1944 - 2262.PDF
478 FLIGHT NOVEMBER 2ND, 1944 Behind lhe Lines Acknowledgment and Threat THE enemy's only trump card at the moment is his Air Force, but the day is approaching when it will be hampered and mauled badly." (From a German broadcast.) Slill Trying MUSSOLINI'S Fascist Council has opened a. recruiting drive for men between 17 and 50 to join the A.A. units operating with the German forces in Northern Italy. T Gas Production HE Germans have considerably in creased their production of poison gases during the past few months, reports ihe Swedish Aftonbladet from Germany. Seventy factories employing a total of 500,000 workers are said to be working 24 hours a day. The Difficult Round COMPARING the present position of Germany with the difficulties of Britain after Dunkirk, and of the Russians at the time of Stalingrad, a Nazi newspaper says: "There is a difference between being forced to take hard blows in the first and the tenth rounds, and we have suffered reverses, so to speak, after half-time. "Therefore our situation is psycho logically and materially incomparably more difficult than theirs." German Calculations GERMAN air defence forces destroyed • 13,309 Anglo- American aircraft during the period from January to Septem ber, 1944, ^y8 a German rePorT- The balance, sheet of the air s war as compiled bv German air experts attempts to show that Allied losses were even higher. In these circles it is assumed that during the ported mentioned the Allies have lost at least 16,000 aircraft, including aircraft landed in neutral countries, machines which crashed into the sea and those which crashed when land ing. According to German cal culations this figure includes more than 10,000 four-engined bombers. These figures are given in order to show that the Luftwaffe, even in its defensive role during the past nine months, possessed a defensive strength of some im portance. " The high number of enemy aircraft shot down, parti* I'ularly by our fighters and A.A. guns"—it is said — "were destroyed under very difficult conditions." A considerable change will take place in the air situation— says a German report—once the German "Lightning fighters"— , the new German type of aircraft operating in only small forma tions at present—have imprinted a new lace on the air war. Service and Industrial News from the Inside of Axis and Enemy* occupied Countries Priority No. 1 NO. 1 priority has been given to the creation of "a new air arm by the German High Command in their pre parations for the winter campaign in the west." German Steel Supplies AN article in a neutral periodical creation of " a new air arm by the Tottering" states: "The iron and steel producing districts of Luxembourg and Belgium lie just in front of the West Wall. The . Allies have succeeded in making their first break through in such a way that there is hardly any prospect of the Germans being able to keep these deposits. But even if the Allied armies could be held up in front of the West Wall, Germany's iron and steel supply has received such a blow that it cannot be repaired in view of Germany's steel requirements. Both the Saar and the Ruhr lie so close to the Allies' airfields in France, that nothing can prevent these production centres from being subjected to area bombing. It was this method of attack which enabled the Allies to sweep past the strongest lines of defence and which would ' rub out' the industrial plants of the Saar" and Ruhr even if the West Wall were to hold." <^§C] PROPELLING UNIT THE DOODLE-BUG FAMILY : The rocket-propelled HS293 is carried by aircraft and used mainly against shipping. Length of the propelling unit is about 5ft. Petrol Evacuation A Norwegian underground paper reports it has fresh evidence that the Germans are sending petrol to Germany from their stocks in Norway. Pruning the Luftwaffe ANOTHER Lujtwaffe fighter ace, credited with seventy-eight air vic tories, Major Walter Hdckner, com mander of a Gruppe, has been killed in action. He was engaged on operations against Allied bombers, and was awarded the Oak Leaves early this year. Otto Heinrich, a bomber ace, who was recently decorated by the Fuehrer with the Knights Cross to the Iron Cross, has been killed on the Western front. Preparing for Air Blows UNDOUBTEDLY," says a German commentator, "we are now wit nessing the enemy's deployment for an intensified air war which may one day be directed against one and the next day against another district, and the aim of which will be to undermine and destroy the moral and material advantages gained by our conduct of the war in recent weeks in a tremendously hard and trying process." The Hs293 ONE of Germany's reaction-propelled flying bombs, incorrectly called the glider bomb, is the HS293 built by the Henschel Flugzeugwerhe A.G. Carried usually under the wings of such types as the He 177, the D0217E or the Fw200, the radio-controlled, rocket-propelled HS293, is used mainly against shipping. It is composed of a relatively small fuselage which carries a pair of wings, tail surfaces and vertical fins, a tail tracer unit and a rocket-propulsion unit. The forward part of the fuselage is the bomb body (total weight about 1,300 lb.), while the-rear section houses the radio-con trolled automatic pilot and its control unit. When released from the parent aircraft, operation of the propul sion unit and the tracer unit is initiated and the bomb fuse is armed. After launching it is immediately brought under radio control from the parent aircraft, which is effective over a range of about five miles, although the usual practice appears to be to release the missile two or three miles from the target. The HS293 is ' said to be reasonably manoeuvrable; its height can be maintained and corrected. While most versions function on impact, one type, presumably used against bomber formations, is equipped with a radio impulse fuse. The HS293 has an overall length of 12ft. 4in. and a span of 10ft. 3in. With a total weight of about 2,000 lb., the maximum speed is reported to be about 300 m.p.h. TAIL TRACER UNIT
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
