BOMBS ON GERMANY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 88, 15 April 1941, Page 4

BOMBS ON GERMANY

R.A.F. PERSISTENCE

GOERING'S IDLE BOAST

With the coming of spring in Europe tho air war has livened and already lieavv air raids have been made on German centres of military importance. In some quarters there have been demands that Germany's ci»il population should bo bombed in reprisal; but few realise that up to the end of December the Royal Air Force had bombed targets in Germany more than 1500 times. The number of individual towns in Germany subjected to raids was 270. The pattern traced by the record of falling bombs follows faithfully trie pattern of the industrial framework ou which the Nazi war effort depends. Ae the heart of Germany's munitions organism—despite frantic efforts to move it eastwards —is the Ruhr, it is the Ruhr which has received the severest attention, over. 500 raids. Coal, steel, arms factories, chemical works, oil plants are crowded in this area', and the accurately-aimed bombs of the R.A.F. have done heavy damage there. This is noteworthy in view of Goeririg's boast before the war:—"l have convinced personally of the: measures taken to protect the. Ruhr against airattack. We will not-expose the Ruhr to a single bomb dropped by enemy aircraft." ' Jjot one bomb, but thousands have •wrought havoc -in the Ruhr and the smashing of the Xazi war machine goes on with growing intensity. ;' Chemical and Oil Objectives.

> A hundred miles higher up the Rhine and stretching from Frankfurt-am-Main to' Stuttgart, with Mannheim as' its centre, is another industrialised region, important' ateo "for chemical works and oil refineries. Mannheim up to. December 31 had suffered 34 raids, paralleled in the Ruhr by Duisborg-Ruhrort (35), Cologne (55) and Gefeenkirchen (40). Germany's other centre of munitions activity and'oil plants'is in the Leipzig arce, 200 miles east of the Ruhr. The great hydrogenation plant at Lcuna, near Leipzig, has a production" capacity of 500,000 tons of synthetic oil per annum. Naturally, it has received some of the heaviest attacks. Berlin, up to the end of last year, had been raided 35 times. '

•Disruption of _ communications is hardly' ress important than the destruction of war materials. Hamm, the great railwaycentre, was raided 80 times up to December 31. On that date the score for Hamburg was 61, and for Bremen 52. Since the New Year both have been visited many times by the R.A.F. bombers.

Naval Ports Attacked. Germany's naval ports have also received attention. At the beginning of this year the R.A.F. could report raids on these as follows:—Kiel 32, Wilhelmshaven 36, Emden 27.

The figures cited refer only to German territory and take no account of raids on invasion ports or on aerodromes and other military targets in German occupied regions. Photographic records have confirmed reports of the heavy damage done and reveal that this form of "reprisal" for the German bombing of civilians is seriously hampering the Nazi effort to produce munitions. It is also destroying much of the Luftwaffe fuel supplies. But the worst feature, from the German viewpoint, is that the raids are growing heavier and more frequent.