A RECORD DAY

Evening Star, Issue 25172, 11 May 1944, Page 5

A RECORD DAY

4,000 PLANES OUT TWENTY-SIX TARGET AREAS PLASTERED (Rec. 1.25 p.m.) LONDON, May 10. The Allied air forces continued their devastating attacks from Britain today after a,night of widespread activity in which Mosquitoes carried out highspeed bombing of Berlin and seven powerful separate forces swept over France and Belgium. The people of English south coast towns again had a wakeful night due to explosions which made the houses rock " as if in the throes of an earthquake." Heavy gunfire from .the other side of the Channel again shook the towns late this afternoon. For the first time since the big air offensive from Britain began, the official figure is available of the total number of planes engaged in a single day. The Air Ministry stated that 4,000 British and American bombers and fighters of all types operated from Britain yesterday. Of these ony 21 were lost. It was probable that the day as a whole was a record for the offensive against German-occupied territory. The Press Association's aviation correspondent says it would take many thousand words to describe the devastation in detail. At least 26 target areas were plastered with thousands of tons of bombs A-military targets, railways, aerodromes, bridges, river locks, transshipment sheds, and coastal targets. Marauders-and Havocs this morning dropped over 450 tons of bomibs on four of 10 targets attacked. Approximately 100 Marauders made the strongest attack against the railwards at Creil. 2-5 miles north-east of Paris. Havocs first, then Marauders bombed the railyards at Tournai (Belgium), reporting good hits. Columns of smoke rose 12,000 ft when Mons railyards ivere hit. Two Marauders did not return from these operations. Thunderbolt fighter - bombers later bombed the railway bridge at Mantes, the Garriscourt railway yards, and a , power plant at Valenoiennes, and strafed an airfield north of Rheims. Bostons, Mitchells, and Typhoon fighter-bombers attacked other targets in France and Belgium. Spitfires, Mustangs and Typhoon fighters and fighter-bomibers kept up the attacks against military targets in France all day. The Luftwaffe resisted the onsluaght more vigorously than lately. Three German fighters were shot down. Five of our planes are missing from these operations. , Marauders late in the afternoon bombed a railway bridge near Rouen, railyards at Douai Tourcount, and military objectives in the Pas de Calais area. AUSTRIAN TARGETS.. Italy-based Fortresses and Liberators to-day attacked the Wiener Neustadt aircraft plant for the sixth time. The purpose of the mission was to hit hitherto undamaged buildings and to stir up debris and damage the factory's aerodrome. Another formation of Liberators attacked the railway centre of Knin in Yugoslavia. Algiers radio announced late to-night that heavy bombers to-day attacked Steyr in Austria.

THE CROSS-CHANNEL EXPLOSIONS The ' Daily Mail's correspondent at an unnamed English coastal town, referring to the effect of cross-Channel explosions, says there is hardly a shop or a house without some slight damage. Windows fell in. ceiliugs caved, crockery broke, and pictures fell. Shopkeepers

found their window displays in chaos. Many people waking up hurried to shelters thinking that an air raid was in progress. The ' Daily Telegraph's ' Stockholm correspondent says that the gradual destruction by the Allied air offensive of the Nazis' administrative system is a more serious threat to Germany's war effort than the effect of the bombing on the nerves of the civilian population.