R.A.F. OFFENSIVE

Grey River Argus, 30 March 1943, Page 1

R.A.F. OFFENSIVE

RAID ON BERLIN 900 Tons of Bombs NINE PLANES LOST. LBritish Oincial Wireless) RUGBY, March 28. The R.A.F. last night dropped over 900 tons of bombs on Berlin, which suffered its heaviest attack yet. Lancasters, Halitaxes and St.iT.ngs, in clear weather made a concentrated attack. The tonnage of bombs dropped was about that dropped on London in the heaviest German raid. ' We lost nine bombers last night, which is the second lowest loss from any largescale operations the R.A.F. has made against Berlin. The raid was the sixth on Berlin this year. It is officially described as a heavy one but no details have been released. The official German News Agency sajp that the bombers converged from the west and the south and at-' tacked in two waves. The agency admits damage to buildings. The Berlin-Stockholm telephone circuit was broken at 10 p.m., and was not 'restored for an hour and a half. The Berlin radio says that a few Royal Air Force bombers reached Berlin’s metropolitan area. High explosives and incendiaries caused some damage, mostly in residential areas. | A German transport aeroplane was shot down by a Belgian typhoon pilot this afternoon, not far from the house in which he used to live, says the Air Ministry News Service. R.A.F. fighters were over occupied Europe on Friday afternoon. Whirlwinds attackel a transformer statidn in Normandy with bombs and cannon fire. Pilots saw buildings collapse in smoke and debris. Other pilots hit the lock gates at Uistreham, where the important canal from Caen joins ino sea It is now known 'that buildings in the Krupps works covering 196.000 square yards were destroyed or badly damaged in the raid on Essen on February 12, when the devastation was considerably greater than that in the raid earlier in the same week, when buildings over an area of 136,000 square yiards were damaged. About 48 shops and ■ administrative buildings were hit in the second raid. Twelve of them were main shops, th? largest of them, the locomotive shop, covering 85,000 square yards. American heavy bombers attacked railway yards at Rouen in daylight to-day, with strong Allied lighter cover.

Results were good. Several enemy fighters were destroyed bv our bombers. We lost one bomber and four fighters. — R.A.f'.~ Venturas,: with'”‘fighter es-' cort to-day attacked shipping ann shipbuilding yards at Rotterdam. None of our planes is missing. The terrific destruction being wrought by the R.A.F. and American bombers on German factories, U-boat bases, and ports in the continuous and increasing air offensive is. as a well-informed London observer points out, the link between the Tunisian campaign, the approaching invasion of Europe, and the struggle on the Russian front. The Allied purpose is not only to deprive the German force of weapons, detain forces from going to tne east, cut down U-boat production, and pin down in the west at least enemy fighter aircraft, but also to gain increasing air superiority in order to effect a strategic softening of the enemy’s western front as a pr°linvnary to invasion. The great dry dock called “forme ecluse” at St. Nazalre, the largest dry dock on the Atlantic seaboard available to the Germans and the only one capable of holding the Tirpitz, the most powerful unit of the German fleet; <is {still completely useless a year after the British combined raid on St. Nazaire. This was revealed in a broadcast from London by a United States air officer now serving with the combined operations command. He said that recent air photographs show that the dock is dry. The wreck of the destroyer Campbelltown, which blew herself up on the dock gates is visible on the bottom, and where the gates stood is a mass of banked-up sand. New Zealanders in the recently reformed Lancaster squadron include Flying Officer A. L. McGrath. ChristChurch'; Flying Officer R. E. Milliken, Springfield, Canterbury: Sergeant F. A. Partridge, Cromwell; Sergeant D. K. Atkinson, Rotorua, and Sergeant L. A. Towrow, Dunedin. Asked by boj(s at Harrow School what had become of the 1000-bomber i aids, the Air Minister (Sir Archibald Sinclair) said: “At the time <)t the 1000-bomber raids last year it. was vitally important to. do everything we could to help the Russians and compel Germany to keep ns manv resources as. possible in Western Europe. It was of immense importance not only to knock Germany about as hard as we could, but in give the impression to the German High Command that we meant business. The 1000-bomber raids macle an enormous impression on the Germans, and incidentally had the most heartening effect on the Russians. " Sir Archibald Sinclair explained that whereas the majority of the bombers in the. 1000- bomber raids were medium bombers, Britain was now employing a far greater proportion of heavy bombers. “In the 1000-bomber raids we dropped between 1200 • and 1500 tons of bombs,” he said. “Ln a great many of the recent raids we have dropped ..well over 1000 tons.” Sir Archibald Sinclair said the Germans now had not much more than a quarter of their fighter squadrons on the Eastern Front.

FAKED FOOD CARDS. LEFT BY R.A.F. AT BERLIN. (Rec. 9.10) LONDON, March 29. The German radio said that R.A.F. planes dropped faked* food rationing cards over Berlin. The “Morgen Post” says: “The enemy, thereby hopes to muddle the German food planning. The finders must .surrender the cards to the police. Anyone attempting to use them is liable to the death sentence for sabotage

NEW ZEALANDERS IN RAID. (Special to N.Z. Press. Assn.) (Rec. 8.10) LONDON, March 28. Among New Zealhnders participating in the raid .against, Berlin cn Saturday, March 27, were Flight Lieutenant J. L. Williams (Gisborne), P lot , Officers A. M. Singer and P. L. Singer (Gisborne), Sergeants K, J. Johnson (Timaru). T. C. Somerville (Tainui) and J. B. Price (Grey Lynn).

Tribute to R.A.F,

25th. ANNIVERSARY BROADCAST. (Rec. 9.10.) LONDON, March 28. Paying a tribute to the Royal Air Force in the first broadcast commemorating Ihe forthcoming twentyfifth R.A.F. birthday, the Minister of Air (Sir Archibald Sinclair) recalled that between the wars Lord Trenchard and the Air Staff had concentrated on high quality. However small the quantity—training, aircraft, equipment and organisation were the best in the'world. Now British and Dominion airmen with .superb British aircraft, and' equipment>-Spit-fires, Mosquitoes, Typhoohs, Lancasters, Halitaxes, and S underlands—had established/ascendancy over the Axis airmen. The'Bomber Command in its shattering assault on Berlin on Saturday dropped double the weight of bombs the Luftwaffe ever dropped on London which was nearly 451) tons on the night of April 16, 1941. NEW TRANSPORT COMMAND. RUGBY. March 11. • The Government decision to establish an R.A.F. { Transport Command was announced by Sir A. Sinclair, on introducing the Air Estimates in the Commons. The new command will control the operations of the'R.A.F. transport squadrons at home, and be responsible for organisation and control of strategic, air routes for all overseas ferryihg, and for reinforcement moves of squadrons to and between overseas theatres. The Minister said that the British Overseas Airways would continue as a civil organisation, and work in close collaboration with the Transport Command. He also spoke of the scope of the widespread R.A.F. op-pc-rations in the past year from North Russia to the east coast of the United States, from the South-west Pacific Lo Iraq, as well as the main theatres. In the past two years the R.A.F. in all theatres had sunk or seriously damaged over one and a-quarter million tons of enemy shipping. There was no doubt also that, the now mines, of which nine times as many wore laid in 1942 as in 1941, were doing a great deal more damage than we knew.