AERIAL WARFARE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13772, 15 October 1942, Page 3

AERIAL WARFARE

DESTROYING ENEMY STRONGHOLDS

‘‘War waged with modernweapons is unutterably dreadful. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, when they embarked upon it, no doubt hoped to spare themselves the horrors that they were prepared deliberately to inflict upon others. German bombs on the capital of Poland opened hostilities in Europe in 1939; the aerial devastation of Rotterdam and Belgrade followed to celebrate the extension of the German “new order” to the north-west and the south-east respectively. The establishment of the German front against Russia at once rendered the old Hanseatic ports in the Baltic vital for the equipment and reinforcement of that front. For this reason solely the Royal Air Force h.as carried out the great expeditions which have laid Lubeck and Rostock low. For a year Britain endured the impact of the Luftwaffe’s full fury, and the ruins of churches, hospitals and monuments are still heaped on the soil. The difference now is that the overstrained Luftwaffe, to make an impression with, the more limited forces now available, has to concentrate its attention upon smaller places of beauty and renown and of no military importance whatsoever. The response to this new assault can only be a reinforced eagerness through Great Britain for news of assaults of growing power upon the military and productive strongholds of the enemy.”—The Times. London.