FINLAND AT WAR WITH GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24366, 19 September 1944, Page 5

FINLAND AT WAR WITH GERMANY

RETIRING FORCES DESTROY TOWNS (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) ' IONDON, S«pt. 17 "The Finnish press has declared that a state of war exists between Finland and Germany," says Reuter's Stockholm, correspondent. "A formal declaration may come almost without notice." It is officially announced in Helsinki that the Germans are burning numerous small towns and farms as they withdraw from cast and central Finland. They have burned flown the monastery of SUomussalmi. , ■ Finnish sources in Stockholm report that two brigades of Finns are in action against the Germans in northern Finland. "TOKYO WILL BE BOMBED AGAIN" BIG RAIDS AGAINST JAPAN FORECAST WASHINGTON, Sept. 17"Tokyo will be bombed again, but Japanese war production targets at present are given prior consideration in the employment of Superfortresses, said Brigadier-General Lauris worsted, the tiew Chief of Staff of the 20tq| United States Air Force, at a press conference. „ ~ - -J Brigadier-General Norstad predicted that Superfortresses will soften up the Japanese homeland in a far shorter time than it took the combined Allied air forces to do the same job in Europe, due to the cumulative experience gained in Europe. He added: "It is difficult/for a military expert, and impossible for a civilian, to visualise the wreckage wrought by the Superfortresses. Roughly speaking one Superfortress can do the jpb of, three Flying Fortresses." Brigadier-General Norstad refused to disclose whether additional Superfortress bases would be established nearer Japan, for example on Guam and Saipan, or in the Philippines, when they were liberated. "Daily raids against Japan are already possible," he said, "but more likely there will be gaps between the attacks which will soon be carried out with increasingly large forces and greater frequency." "The production of super-bombers and the development of super-bomber bases is gaining momentum, and the army air forces have already completed plans to make the Japanese feel the full weight of air power on a scale beyond anything they have imagined," said Lieutenant-General B. M. Giles, at a press conference. "No Complications are anticipated in shifting the vast aerial operations from the European theatre to the Pacific. The Far Eastern operations will be enormously stepped up after Germany's defeat. We will have a vast air power in being which we mean to de-| ?loy as soon as possible against Japan, 'ou have seen the strides made towards the Japanese home islands by softening up and seizing Japanese-held positions, establishing our own airfields, and at the same time reaching out hundreds more miles." Lieutenant-General Giles revealed that between June 6 and September 11 the American air force in Europe lost 2870 aircraft and 10.284 men killed or missing in combat. Lieutenant-General Giles, according to the New York "Herald-Tribune," hinted that Japan may feel the effects of robot aeroplanes which are better 1 than the flying bombs used against London. He said: "We consider this a most imoortant weapon of the future." > He declined to comment further.