HEAVY STRAFING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 294, 11 December 1943, Page 5

HEAVY STRAFING

Allied Activity Over Entire

Italian Front

EFFECTIVE TEAM WORK British Official Wireless Rec. 12.30 p.m. RUGBY, Dec. 10. Further details of air activity on the Italian front recorded in to-day's Allied communique are given by a correspondent at Allied Headquarters. He says that shipping, bridges, railway intersections, troop concentrations and gun positions were bombed and strafed with regularity 3'esterday by half a dozen different types of Allied aircraft operating in team work on the Fifth Army front.

Although the Strategic Air Force was grounded owing to bad weather, the Tactical Force operated in strength, meeting little or no opposition. Bostons on Wednesday night left a ship burning in the outer entrance to the harbour at Civitavecchia, on the west coast, and hit another vessel lying at the mole opposite the harbour. They also attacked chemical works.

Mitchells bombed the harbour bridge and road junction at Givilianovia and railway yards at Terni, while Bostons and Baltimores were kept busy bombing concentrations of troops and gun positions beyond the Eighth Army front.

Warhawks flying through low clouds attacked the twin bridges near Mignano and a bridge near Stefano. Invaders bombed a viaduct and highway crossing approach in the Rome area.