CRIPPLING RAIDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 40, 16 August 1944, Page 5

CRIPPLING RAIDS

ENEMY COMMUNICATIONS LONDON, August 15. The story of the- past week's concentrated strafing by Thunderbolts, Mustangs, and Lightnings in an effort to cripple road and rail communications over north-east France and Belgium so that the Germans could not bring supplies and reinforcements to their hard-pressed army west of the Seine is told by a senior officer of the Eighth United States Air Force Fighter . Command. , Fighters a week ago switched from the strategical work of escorting heavy bombers to tactical tasks. From the morning of August 7 • till the night of August 13, excluding ona day when they operated strategically, they immobilised 900 locomotives and destroyed 1800 railway cars, 515 oil- ' cars—their principal objective—and 572 motor-trucks, including 269 on Sunday. ' • "The net result was that not a wheel was turning on Monday in the area over which we operated," said the officer. "It was a> large-scale effort organised and dealt with in a large-scale way," he added. "There was no fighter opposition during the week, but flak, an enormous danger to our pilots, ,was great. 'It requires courage, determination, and high skill—more than in aerial combat—to do what they did." The officer said it was known in the first week in August that the Germans' position at the front was critical for ■ some forms of supply that they planned to reinforce through Paris. Reconnaissance showed marshalling yards chock-a-block with locomotives and trains. The first operation was to wipe-'' off traffic in the western part of the Pas de Calais. Six groups comprising about 300 aircraft flew two missions daily. "Group leaders found lots of business," said the officer. "The primary target was' anything containing oil or suspected as 'containing ammunition. After a few days nothing moved in the area. Reconnaissance then showed traffic banked up in the Brussels area, so the^effort was switched thither. After two days, nothing moved in' the daytime. On Saturday we turned our full strength -"on- the r congested lines from Brussels to Strasbourg. We flew 1300 sorties, averaging „ fpur hours each, bombing railway . -tracks and strafing traffic .both,, moving and in tha marshalling yards. The week finished with road strafing, south-west of Paris*."