The Evening Star TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1945. THE HEAVY BOMBERS.

Evening Star, Issue 25472, 1 May 1945, Page 4

The Evening Star TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1945. THE HEAVY BOMBERS.

The role of the heavy bomber in the European war is virtually ended, and the roar of hundreds of mighty engines flying over London will probably be heard only once more, when the It.A.F. pays its victory salute to the capital. With the end of saturation raids on German targets, some figures have been published revealing what bombing has cost the British and American air forces. Since Bomber Command, with inadequate forces, began its attacks against Germany in May, 1940, that organisation lost 8,000 planes, and some 48,000. men, many of whom, fortunately, wore not killed but were taken prisoner through being shot down or through forced landings. The American Eighth Air Force, which got into its stride three years later, lost 6,700 bombers and fighters, and about 47,200 men. The losses were proportionately very much heavier when the raids were carried out in smaller numbers than when the saturation attacks were at their height, and this improvement resulted partly through the. nature of the attacks", which swamped the detfences, partly through the increased protection afforded by long-range fighters, and partly through the decline in the strength of the Luftwaffe. One of the subjects of greatest dispute has been the value of these great raids and to what exteut they could assist in winning the war. Judgment in many cases was reserved, largely because'the worst the Luftwaffe could do failed to knock out Britain or her industries, but Britain never experienced anything of bombing to compare with Germany's lot. In five years of intensifying operations Bomber Command dropped one million tons of bombs, and the United States Eighth Air Force, in thirty months, dropped 030.000 tons. largely on static targets. First-hand effects o>f this terrible rain of destruction have been witnessed and reported by the forces overrunning Germany. Tli3 great Krupp's works, for instance, were found in ruins, and in such a state that it will take years to restore the factories. _ Leading armament experts and technical directors of German steel industries have testified to the extent to which the It.A.F. helped to smash the German war machine. One source proclaimed that German steel production, as a direct result of bombing, dropped from 20.000.000 tons a year, to nil between 1942 and 1945. A director in Dusseldorf said: "If you had started bombing a year later the West Wall would never have been pierced for several years." Not only were factories smashed, but German plans for defence and for the construction of powerful new weapons were frustrated. Long ago it was recorded that the intervention of the R.A.F. delayed the start of the flying bomb menace, a development that could have changed the course of the war. The effects of Allied bombing will' be felt by Germany tfar into the future, for obviously it will be years before her industry recovers from the blows indicted. On top of all this, which proves irrefutably the value of the bombers, German communications —road, rail, and water —have been throAvn into chaos. Air Force bombing may have been costly in machines and men, but, considering the way in which it has indisputably shortened the war, the cost has been light, and thousands of lives off ground forces have been saved. There would seem to be no longer any argument about the bomber's value. It may not have won the war, but it lias contributed substantially to victory, and without it there can be no shadow of doubt that the struggle would have lasted much longer. Let Japan take what comfort she likes from the thought that Germany's imminent collapse is releasing vast fleets to dose out the " mixture as before," this time on the Son of Heaven's territory, which, as an additional point of comfort, is much less in extent than Germany.