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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 0058.PDF
WAR IN THE AIR lease some very quick work on thecontrols would be called for to prevent the aircraft making contact with thehill through which the tunnel ran. The bombs had special delayed-actiondetonators. The cutting of a railway line formilitary purposes has always been a matter for judgment. Damage on astraight, open stretch is almost useless, as it can easily be repairetl. To bombthe line as it goes through a cutting is the usual ambition, for almost cer-tainly plenty of earth from the hillside will be brought down on the line.Moreover, repair workers are bound to be conspicuous, and can be attackedon subsequent days. But all anti-rail- way work needs to be planned by rail-way experts, as it doubtless is being done on the Western Front now. AHtunnels cannot be equally important. To block a really important one by anexplosion (and such an explosion!) inside must certainly give the maxi-mum of trouble to the most ingenious repair engineers. Yet Once More A NOTHER New Year's Day present•^ for the Germans was the draining for the fourth time of the Dortmund-Ems Canal. This was done by Lancas- ters in daylight. Perhaps the Germanshoped that in time Bomber Command would get tired of bombing thisfamiliar target. At any rate, imme- diately after the last attack they beganrepairs, and by working night and day they got the canal into order afterfive weeks. Six barges were then spotted moving through it. All theresult of that great effort was undone in one brief period of bombing. Per-haps the Germans have by now already started to repair it once again—though they must have given up •hope that breaching it is an amuse-ment which will pall on Bomber Com- mand. The attack on German coastwiseshipping has lately developed into a regular battle of Skagerrak. CoastalCommand is the aggressive partv in it, and its Hal if axe's have been going outby night as well as by day to catch the oil tankers and other richprizes and set them ablaze. There are usually formidable escorts, and theBritish bombers do not always come home unscathed; but the Germanslose a lot of stuff which they are very loth to lose. Winter Fighting TN olden days armies used regularly•*• to go into winter quarters, and an unofficial truce was observed until thespring. Marlborough was one of the first commanders to prolong his cam-paigns well into the winter and the military pundits of his day did notmuch approve of his doing so. Winter campaigning now brings DOWN GERMANY WAY : A remarkable series of photographs showing a salvo of1,000 lb. bombs falling from an Avro Lancaster. It is interesting to note how the missiles appear to point in different directions, even in the bottom right-handphotograph where they are the farthest away from the aircraft. special problems of its own. So muchdepends nowadays on the air that the . weather has taken on a new impor-tance, not connected with the hard- ships of the infantryman trying tosleep in a very cold slit trench. Critics have asked whether the surprise whichRundstedt sprang upon the Allies by his Ardennes offensive was not madepossible only by the fact that for some time past the reconnaissance aircrafthad not been able to do their work, and that modern commanders havecome to rely so entirely on the air that they have neglected other means ofgathering information. Well, there are now no horsed cavalry in WesternEurope, and if there were it is doubt- ful whether they could find out muchin modern conditions. Wintry weather and its effect on thepowers of aircraft may, perhaps, have another important effect on the presentArdennes battle. Suppose that Rund- stedt decided to "call it a day," asthe saying goes, and to withdraw his forces from their present bulge lest aworst thing befall, his ability to do so would depend very much on theweather. If it turned bright and clear for a reasonably long period, the AlliedAir Forces would almost certainly make it impossible for the Germancommander to get away without losses which might well prove disastrous.Even in bad weather the going would
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