STREAM OF PLANES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 47, 24 February 1945, Page 7

STREAM OF PLANES

.110 MILES LONG

LONDON, February 23. Yesterday's great daylight onslaught against communication targets 5E F^any cost us 34 bombers and 40 fighters. The Germans lost 63 aircraft.

The "Daily Telegraph" says: "Indications are that our final total ?? rjy£s jesterday exceed the record of 11.500 flown on June 7, 1944, the day after D Day." The "Telegraph's" military correspondent says: "We are witnessing a repeat performance of the bombing which preceded the Normandy invasion and the collapse of the whole German army in France. Given a spell of good weather, the arc enclosed by the Rhine and the German frontier will be sealed off exactly as was the box contained by, the Seine and the Loire." ( Th t

c great air assault was still in progress last night. The German Ach tung radio at 7.55 p.m. reported a bomber stream 110 miles long over Brandenburg province. - The Germans reported at 4.23 p.m. that the bombers were leaving in a westerly direction, at which stage the spearheads were over the Zuyder Zee, where the tail of the procession was still over Osnabruck, more than 100 miles to the east.

Mustang pilots escorting the heavy bombers saw a stream of refugees 40 miles' long travelling in every imaginable conveyance. "There must have been 10,000 people strung out on the roads of north-western Germany between Emden and Munster, moving north-eastward," said one pilot. "It was an eerie sight—4o miles of people in battered; old trucks . and wheezy carts, and on bikes and horses. Hundreds were just walking." The Allied air fleets operated yesterday on a plan laid down months ago, with the object of breaking down the secondary communications system of the Reich at a moment when it is becoming clear that the primary system is collapsing, says bßeuter's correspondent with the Tactical Air Force.