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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 0111.PDF
JANUARY I8TH, 1945 59 WAR IN THE AIR ing buildings were the chief targets. The opposition of Japanese fighters was not formidable and the A.A. fire was described as meagre and inaccur- ate. None of the American bombers was lost, and they all came home aft"er a round trip of over 3.500 miles. The number of Superfortresses in the Pacific area is evidently swelling, and, though no Japanese town can yet be treated as Hamburg and Cologne have been, the danger is growing, and its growth must be highly disturbing to the Japanese war lords. It can scarcely be exactly welcome to the civil popu- lation and the factory workers. Some fine weather marked last week- end, and on Saturday the Allied Tac- tical Air Forces had about four hours' flying. They put in 650 sorties. Sun- day was better, and the aircraft struck in strength at enemy columns moving eastward out of the threatened head of ft -fte Ardennes salient. Many transport vehicles were destroyed, and some armour. But the chance came too late to prevent the Germans from evacuat- ing the bulk of their armour from the salient. This episode is now pretty well over, and it remains to be seen what the next move will be, and which side will make it. It is known that the Germans in their advance overran a number of supply dumps, and the loss of the material in them will have to be made good before Gen. Eisenhower will be in a position to commence an- other full-scale offensive. It is fortun- ate that the port of Antwerp is open. Of course, the heavy bombers also went out, attacking oil supplies for the main part, while Halifaxes made an afternoon raid on the railway yards at Saarbriicken. These yards were crammed with trucks full of supplies for the German front, which could not get away because of the great disloca- tion of the German railway system west of the Rhine. The dislocation is one of the dividends of methodical FROSTED GLASS : Cleaning snow from of a Second T.A.F. Latest silhouette of the MesserschmittMe 262 ; two Jumo 004 axial flow, gas- turbine jet units^ UPS AND DOWNS : A Westland Whirlwind shot down behind the German.on the Western Front. Originally designed as an interceptor fighter^ wind has had to spend most of its operational life the navigator/bomb-aimer's compartmentMitchell in Belgium. bombing ; and the destruction of the goods waggons follows on as a logical result. It is some compensation for the loss of supply dumps during the Ger- man advance. Before the bombers of the U.S. 8th Air Force took off,,an order of the day by Gen. Spaatz was read out to the crews. In it the General said : " Your mission is to attack vital units of the German oil industry. It is compare, ble in importance to your operations against the German aircraft industry from February 20th to 25th, 1944, when you assured air supremacy for the Allied landing in France. . . . The output of military products has been reduced to the point where German re- serves are now critical. ..." The Russians Strike ^gain ^THOUGH bad weather kept aircraft -*- grounded, the Russians opened their long-expected winter offensive on the Polish front, and their formidable artillery tore lanes in the German de- fences through which their ground forces poured. Berlin radio said: '' We must have no doubts about the powerful masses of troops, tanks and aircraft which have been assembled by the Russians in order to hammer at the German front. The Russians are not only out for gains of ground but for the final decision. ..." In Luzon the Americans are de- scribed as having '' complete air supremacy," and Superfortresses have been raiding Japan and Formosa. Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser has said that the British Fleet expects to lay a major r61e with the American leet in actions in the near future. The Allies," he said, "have over- whelming sea-power as well as superior air strength. . . . It is a truism that he who has control of the sea and is in- creasing in sea-power, as we are, must
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