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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1296.PDF
£ ULY 5"™, T945 1 FLIGHT [THE CAT'S WHISKERS: Naval Air Arm armourers loading rocket projectiles on to Hellcats on a British escort carrier operating with the East Indies Fleet. WAR Siarn Bridges Bombed i Allies Hammer Japan by Air and Sea is a subject in which the earnest student never stops learning, and the late and present wars have brought home to it worthy person how incomplete Ibis previous studies have mostly been, |He has had to learn the names of [many hitherto unheard-of Russian •cities, and has been surprised to read [how large and important many of [them are-. Then came Polish names, and even one Russian newspaper was humorously satirical about the diffi- culty of spelling and pronouncing some of them. The Burma campaign set seekers after knowledge looking up maps to locate names which they had read in Kipling's poems. Now comes the need to study the geo- graphy of Thailand (formerly Siam). The enterprising R.A.F. is respon- sible for most of these latest geo- graphical headaches. Last week it bombed to destruction (so it is hoped) two important bridges at Kanchana- buri. How many of our readers, we wonder, had ever known before of the existence of such a place? The help- ful Public Relations Department of the Air Ministry gives the information that it is 8o miles west of Bangkok (well, we had all heard of Bangkok before) and that the bridges in ques- tion crossed the Mek'.ong River, which is now swollen by monsoon rains and very turbulent. All supplies for the remnants of the Japanese Army in Burma have to be got across the Mek- long somehow or other; and likewise, if those remnants are to withdraw on an organised basis from Lower Burma into Thailand, they, too, must get across the Meklong. So1 the bombing of the two bridges was an important affair. Bombing bridges is a task which the R.A.F. does not really enjoy. It ...THEIR EXITS AND THEIRENTRANCES : The hole made in the bottom of the hull by a. piece of a12,000 lb. bomb which exploded inside the 45,000 ton German battleshipTirpitz during the attack by R.A.F. Lancasters last November. The Tirpitzturned over twenty minutes alter being hit. • • ••£•
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