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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1902.PDF
SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1945 FLIGHT 333 COLOGNE : A typical scene with people waiting for casual lifts. PART I: Factories and Communications Disrupted : Research Establishments Almost Intact : Some Projected Types By G. GEOFFREY SMITH, M.B.E. ^ yEITHER pictures nor descriptions can adequately ^ convey the extent of the bomb and gun damage 'to German cities, industries and communications. Kail and water transport hardly exist. There is com- plete reliance on motor vehicles. No major attempt has yet been made to clean up the damage and the absolute dislocation must be seen to be believed. Desolation is complete, movement being impossible without official assistance. There are no telegram or telephone services, and hotels have been requi- sitioned. Such, briefly, is the impression formed during a recent officially •^sponsored frying trip to fac- tories in the Ruhr, N.W. Germany and Austria, several research establish- ments, and a visit to the main centres of the British, American and French zones of occupation. THE accompanying general impressions are of a recent flying trip to Germany and Austria, and appear in " Flight " and " The Autocar." The author desires to extend his grateful thanks to the British and American Armies and Air Forces for their ready help in providing transport facilities by air and road, and for placing at his disposal many facts and figures. mostly unusable, the German Aj"my in their hurried retreat having destroyed everything that might now have helped in their own salvation. Coal is the key to the whole position, yet absenteeism in the mines is as high as 25 per cent., the reason being that many workers, cowed and indifferent, take time off to collect food mostly potatoes—from country districts. This is retribu- tion with a vengeance! In the Cologne and Essen region there are many pathetic scenes of old men and women and young children wandering with seeming aimlessness and struggling along under the weight of their few belong ings. The trek to the Ruhr is increasing rapidly. Every wheeled vehicle from a perambulator to a horse cart is at a premium and loaded to the limit. So theOnly uni- formed men may move freely with suitable permits British authorities are granting high priority for re- entitle them to use Service messes and official newed manufacture of handcarts. Having flown in a Dakota to Brussels we journeyed by Humber army car to Herford, via Maastricht and the much devastated Ruhr Valley, and radiated to Bad Oeynhausen, Biickeburg, Bunde, Hanover and Bruns- wick to discuss conditions with administrative officers controlling the multifarious sections. The busi- ness of regional government of ati occupied country in such dire straits as Germany is extremely complex to a billets. The outlook is indeed grim for the German nation tliis winter, and hordes of Allied officials now stationed on the Continent have a stupendous task in restoring some order from chaos. Cities are dead, shops mostly closed and factories idle, but country life goes on, though tanks, cars, trucks and guns litter the roadsides. Bridges everywhere are down, rivers and canals blocked, railways
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