AMAZING ACHIEVEMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 151, 28 June 1943, Page 5

AMAZING ACHIEVEMENT

RECENT RAIDS ON GERMANY Rec. 12.50 p.m. LONDON, June 27. "The considerable' strengthening of the defences of western Germany and the great evacuation of the same area show the severe effects of the R.A.F. raids. The Germans are putting the night-fighter into the air for -; every bomber we are sending over the Ruhr —a standard of defence which was not dreamt of six months ago," says the aviation correspondent of the British United Press. "Twelve major raids on the Ruhr and the Rhineland since May 23 add up to the most amazing bombing1 achievement. It is estimated that more than 17,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on targets where the population totals 5,000,000. Field-Marshal Goering, to secure this effect, would have needed to bomb London on 54 nights successively on the scale of his biggest raid— the one in which 500.tons of bombs ! were dropped on 8,000,000 people. | "We have lost 334 aircraft in 12 raids. This is a considerable loss, but the fact that we are able to employ such forces and suffer such' losses and yet maintain the bombing indicates the rate ol ; production of our factories. The losses were due mainly to the enormous concentration of fighter-planes over the Ruhr." Washington observers believe that the 1000 fighter planes which Mr. Elmer. Davis says Germany has assembled in the Ruhr in an effort I,u check the R.A.F.'s blows comprise more than half the Germans' total fighter strength. Observers consider that the Allies are well on the way to winning the Battle of Europe. They say that the weight of the Allied air blows is greater than the most optimistic forecasts of two months ago. Predictions of victory have been revised sharply upwards because of the devastating results of the Allies' systematic and scientific aerial bombardment. "