ALLIED AIR ARMADAS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 63, 11 September 1943, Page 7

ALLIED AIR ARMADAS

LUFTWAFFE OVERWHELMED

LONDON, September 9. Ihe greatest 30 hours in the history of aerial warfare ended tonight. Huge Allied air armadas which have been operating from the British Isles since midday yesterday smashed all previous bomber and fighter records for any of the world's fighting zones. The Press Association says that the day s sorties aimed blasting a breach in Hitler's west wall. Gun emplacements, beach defences, aeroplanes, and airfields were shattered by a non-stop rain of hundreds of tons of bombs. The Luftwaffe in France was overwhelmed and literally driven from the skies by the ferocity of the Allied offensive.

Targets of United States heavy and medium bombers arid R.A.F. medium bombers included an aircraft engine factory near Paris, when Flying Fortresses shot down 15 enemy fighters. IMPUDENT CHANNEL EXERCISE.

A correspondent aboard a destroyer off Boulogne, describing the amphibious exercise in the Channel, which coincided with the air sorties, said: "The most impudent combined exercise of the war reached a climax — right under the nose of the Germans. Our destroyer and three sister destroyers screened a formidable line of troopships with assault landing craft hanging from the' davits, while away to port was a long line of troop-cram-med barges. The great armada headed straight for France, but just as the ship's clocks clicked to 9 a.m. both lines of invasion craft and the escorting destroyers made a great sweep to starboard round a buoy and returned' across the Channel.

"There was a look of dejection and resignation in every seaman's face. All had hoped this was the real thing, but the Navy achieved its aim. Employing 300 naval craft, it brought the armada faultlessly, swiftly, and on schedule from a multitude of ports and embarkation beaches within .10 miles of the enemy coast, proving that it can be done. That is the great lesson of the exercise. "For four hours we steamed in daylight along what was once the world's most treacherous stretch of water, in full view of the enemy, and not a single enemy weapon was turned against us, nor did we see a single German plane, submarine, or even an Eboat."