BLASTING OF BREMEN

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 280, 23 August 1944, Page 6

BLASTING OF BREMEN

New Zealand Lancaster Squadron’s Part

DAYLIGHT RAIDS ALSO . (Official News Service.) A BOMBER COMMAND BASE IN BRITAIN, August 19. As the dawn light creeps in from the North Sea over the new-mown fields that surround tins bomber station, intelligence officers are checking, analysing and summarizing eyewitness reports on the unhappy state of a certain city in the Third Reich. Their findings and those from stations in many other parts of England will very soon become the basis of today’s first Air Ministry communique—a terse, unemotional statement of fact which is likely, anyway, to be buried deep down in the pages of the newspapers because so much is happening in France. But to the scores of men who supplied those eye-witness reports and who are now falling asleep in huts that look like big corrugated iron rainwater tanks cut in half, this has been the whole war for one night." Bremen, which was the object of their attention a few hours ago. is many hundreds of miles away from the spectacular drama of events arouud Paris, but the long haul there and back is none the easier on that account. Neither was the Germans’ determination to defend their second largest port any less strong by reason of the disaster their armies are facing in France. But our bombers carried the war to Bremen and while it lasted it was as terrible as anything the Wehrmacht has known on the western frout. Most of the men now drifting into, sleep are New Zealanders. This base is the home of our oldest operational squadron known by the Bomber (Jommand as No. 75 and flying four-engined Lancasters, the heavies of the R.A.F. More often than not. when you read in a communique that the Bomber Command has been out over Europe in strength, it is reasonable to assume that No. 75 was in the main stream. If it was not, you can still be certain that New Zealand was represented by anything from scores to hundreds of our young mon flying in other squadrons throughout the command. There were hundreds of them in this battle of Bremen just as there were hundreds in the Battle of Berlin and every other grand assault of the R.A.F. Busier Than Ever Before.

I spent a day W’ith Squadron No. 75 talking to men from one end of the Dominion to the other and at night watching them take off for Germany and awaiting thejr return. They were busier these days and nights than the squadron have ever been before and at the present pace they are likely to have flown a record number of sorties by the end of August. Designed as a heavy night bomber and for a long time used solely in night operations. the Lancaster is fast becoming a kind of matron of all work. Now that the German Air Force has been beaten into a bad second place in the European skies, she ventures at will in broad daylight over wide stretches of enemy territory and goes as far abroad as the Atlantic coast of France to blow U-boat oil storage dumps to bits. She wins London’s close personal affection by hunting flying-bomb sites and smothering them in high explosives. She gains the respect and admiration of the Allied armies in France when they watch her unload on enemy positions in front of them. Nobody appreciates this profound versatility of the Lancaster more than the men who fly her —such men as the New Zealanders of the 75th Squadron. Day-bombing, they told me, is a pleasant change from running the loug night gauntlet of searchlights, flak and fighters that is the road to Germany. It is pleasant because the trips arc usually shorter, because the crews can sec what is happening all around them and because now and again they get a job that gives them a specially deep personal feeling of satisfaction. An instance was the time they went out in daylight to crack down on their worst enemies, the German night fighters. They caught them on the ground with a terrific weight of bombs. The 75th Squadron had a fine time that day. bringing home photographs showing a Belgian airfield hidden under dust, smoke and" debris and bringing home the knowledge that the next night trip to Germany would be that much easier for them and sister squadrons of the Bomber Command. For these men of the heavies know as well as anybody that their main battlefield is still the grimly-defended heart of Germany. They know that as long as there is fight left in the land of the enemy, as long as there are factories pouring out. weapons for war, there are jobs to be done in the dark of night far from home and places to be left as Bremen was left, tonight—burnt and broken.