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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 0893.PDF
MAY IOTH, 1945 FLIGHT 493 Qood News Comes Thick and Fast: Air Offensive Nears Its End: Bombers Feeding Holland: Rangoon Freed OUT FOR TRADE : A busy scene at aCoastal Command base in Scotland with Mosquitoes taxying to take-off for ashipping strike. WITH good news coming from,all parts of the Western Frontalmost faster than one can assimilate it, the task of recording theair side of the war in Europe becomes difficult. The death of Hitler, pre-suming that he really is dead, would a month ago have seemed the biggestand best of all news. When he sur- vived the bomb plot some time agoFlight expressed its satisfaction that the competent German Generals werenot to be relieved of the necessity of obeying a Fiihrer whose intuitions hadled so many German armies into disastrous positions. But in the laststages this utility of Hitler to tho United Nations ceased to be effective.Gobbels may have disappeared also into tracts unknown ; but, if so, thefact seems relatively unimportant. Then Berlin fell to the Russians aftera comparatively short but fiercely fought siege, and on May 2nd the air-craft ceased to whirl and dive in com- bat over the doomed German Capital.Its capture is valuable to the Allies from many points of view ; but as apurely military piece of news the sur- render of air the German forces in TO BAMBOOZLE : Japanese dummyaircraft, made of bamboo, found on the Katena airstrip when the airfieldson Okinawa were captured. The dummy on the right presumablyappeared in a "game" book as "Destroyed on the Ground." Italy stands by itself. Even the fallof Hamburg to the British is of less importance. It has fallen to the lotof that very great commander, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, toachieve the two greatest and most com- plete victories of this war—Tunisiaand Italy. In each case a very large German Army, with its Commander-in-Chief and his staff, surrendered to this British leader, helped in the latterinstance by his very competent assistant, the American General MarkClark. The campaign in Italy was one in which the terrain did not permit theair superiority of the Allies to tell so heavily as it did in Normandy andelsewhere. If it is not too ungracious at this moment to look for spots onthe sun, one may even question whether the use of bombers to destroyCassino was a proper use of air power. But all's well that ends well. FromAlamein onwards, the British, with contingents from many other nations,have won every battle, including the last. That rather upsets another oldsaying; and if it is still to have force we must cast our eyes back to the cam-paign in the Low Countries which ,-ended at Dunkerque. Now our eyesr-are drawn to the Far
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