GARDEN SPRINKLER TO TIDAL WAVE

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23699, 25 July 1942, Page 4

GARDEN SPRINKLER TO TIDAL WAVE

BRITISH BOMBING

The flood of aircraft which will come from the mammoth new plants in the United States, such as that recently opened by Henry Ford. and of air crews that should result conference on training at Ottawa, should have the effect of swelling to torrential dimensions a stream which began as a tiny trickle two years agoThe assault on the Reich which then beean in a very small way will become torrent. Bearing m mind the sources of its latest tributaries, one is justified in . I . lk fP in T^:^ t h {° Niagara, for are not those eighty falls the joint heritage of Canada and the great Republic to the south? American participation m our' alr offensive against Germany will be a further stage in the process of the building up of a Western Front (from Germany's point of view) to which we in Britain set ourselves rather audaciously in mid-1940. We really had not the means of doing anythmg of the sort at that time. We; were impudent, reckless, gloriously right in our dsregard for the odds against us. Ou air striking force was a eontempt ble one when measured in size against that of Germany. By all the rules of logic we should not have gone out, David-like, to challenge the German Goliath. But we did and boldness paid. Bomber Command went roving far and wide over Germany. In spite of its quite inadequate resources it attacked nightly dozens of objectives. The audacity of its activities heartened us here at home in our own sore time of trial. We imagined that our Air Force was hitting Germany as hard as hers was hitting us. "Show, of Raiding” We were really doing nothing of the kind. We were making a great show of raiding. We seemed to be delivering punishing blows, but we can say now that they did not hurt Germany very much. Our bombers were too few then and their bomb loads too small We certainly covered a great deal of ground and the record on a chart of the places visited by our Wellingtons Whitleys, and Hampdens in 1940 was impressive. We read the chart issued officially toward the end of that year, with all the places bombed in Germany marked on it, with great relief and satisfaction. The man in the street was left with the impression that Germany was being devastated and, in particular, that her oil refineries and synthetic oil plants were being systematically wiped out. In fact they were not. The chart and its accompanying commentary were, if one may be forgiven the expression, largely “eye-wash.” . That first stage of our air offensive might be called the stage of the gar* den sprinkler. It .was followed by the hose-pipe stage in 1941. Then we began to do something really worth while. Bigger loads of bombs began to be carried into Germany. Our fourengined aircraft, the Stirlings, with their bomb-loading capacity of eight tons, and the Halifaxes, came into action, to be followed by the Lancasters. The twin-engined bombers, the Manchesters, and the faithful trio of 1940, now rejuvenated, carried on the good work. And our bombs—the new “high-duty" bombs — were far more destructive than the old. Change of Method OUr 'assault began to be formidable In the summer of 1941. We still hit at military objectives —it is waste Of good bombs to hit at anything else—but with a difference in method. emphasis was now not so much on individual targets as on target areas. Note how the latter term creeps into the communiques in 1941. The wider blast ‘ effect of the more powerful

[By J. M. SPAIGHT, in the “Aeroplane."]

bombs made it possible to ensure the destruction of an intended objective by perimetrical bombing. The Germans had done something of the same kind in their night raids in 1940. We merely followed where, they led. No longer after mid-Sep., tember, 1940, do we read m the official report of our bombers returning from raids with their bomb racks full. Our hands were freer after the German assault on London and then our other cities. It was another of Hitler’s blunders. . Perhaps he is sorry for it now. He certainly does not like this kind of war. That is clear from the repeated attempts of the Nazi .propagandists to induce us to call off Bomber •'Pafc. mand’s night shift. The air arm, Vfley urge in effect, should never be out at night, arid in any case is only respect-; able when chaperoned by its elders. Unfortunately they found support Ini this country in some quarters in which': it had long been the practice to be. little our air offensive. Indeed, it ii often difficult to distinguish the German from the British propaganda -in this matter; the arguments are iden., tical. When Sir Stafford Cripps mad#' his statement on bombing policy in the House of Commons on February 25 it was hailed as meaning that w# , were about to abandon strategic; uombing—which we were not. The 1 faute-de-mieux label which some of these people hastened to attach to the policy of long-range bombing was not in the least appropriate to it. Greater Offensive to Come Actually, as we know from subsequent statements by Mr Churchill and Sir Archibald Sinclair, our bombing offensive is going to be continued and to increase in magnitude. “All the summer, all the autumn, all the winter, all the spring, all the summer, and so on,” was the Premier’s forecast of its duration on May 10. We have been hitting Germany hard, Sir Archibald Sinclair said on May 8, but What we have done "only foreshadows the* force of the Anglo-American bombing effort to come.” The very fact that the Americans are joining in the assault should have an enormous psychological effect in Germany. Most Germans know what America is—the land of the endless assembly lines, the land of steel, the land which in a war of machines must win in the end. The Liberator: and Flying Fortresses may not carry as big loads as our Stirlings, but then there Will be an : appalling number of them; and larger American bombers still are to come. “Last night a powerful force of British and American bombers made a heavy and concentrated attack on objectives in the Berlin area. Prellminary reports Indicate that the results were highly satisfactory and : that as a centre of manufacture and communication the City may be regarded as destroyed.” Well, perhaps we shall not hear all that, but there will be something of the kind in the news some fine morning before this, war is over. The Ruhr, the Rhine-, land, the north-west ports, nay, every : centre of Germany T s capacity for making w,r are going to be plastered , with H.E. as no spots on this planet, have ever been plastered before. A tidal wave of air ass ult is going to inundate the Reich. It will Sheer up from the west, but it ill not be all a trans-Atlantic roller. On the efMtof it, we may be sure, there ,wltt found those unrivalled surf-riders off the sky, the pilots -and air crews or| the Air Forces of Great Britain and|; the Dominions. ‘They were in thft| impudent assault of 1940. They wills be in the forefront to the end, taking! 1 their part in the majestic swfi«o anij • splendour of the grand assault that id* to come. I ii r.M