TERRIFIC BLITZ

Grey River Argus, 21 March 1945, Page 5

TERRIFIC BLITZ

AGAINST LIFELINES Behind German Front RUHR RAILWAYS CLEANED UP WIDESPREAD RAIDS YESTERDAY. (Rec. 12.5). LONDON, March 20. Berlin radio went off the air at 3.40 o’clock on Tuesday, morning, after announcing that enemy bombers were over the capital. Other German stations reported raiders over Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg. R.A.F. Mosquitoes on Tuesday night attacked Berlin. The Allied Air Forces on Monday flew more than seven thousand sorties. Pilots reported every marshalling yard north of the Ruhr to be either aflame or smouldering. The U.S.A. Ninth Air Force alone destroyed or damaged more than tour thousand vehicles of all kinds, though mostly in the Moselle-Saar-Rhine triangle. Allied and Russian fighters fought side by side for the first time on Sunday during the record daylight attack on Berlin. A squadron of Mustangs, providing fighter cover for heavy bojnbers, found they were flying with six Russian Yak fighters. Russian and American pilots waggled the wings of their planes in mutual recognition. The Mustang squadron went on patrol over the Oder River and ran into a Russian-German dog-fight over a Russian airfield. An American! captain shot down one Fockewulf, while Russian planes drove off three others. ,

Targets bombed in Germany by American Fortresses and Liberators on Monday, included new factories at Jena. Some opposition was experienced and at least 34 enemy planes were shot down, including a jet-propelled Ardo. One squadron alone shot down 14. The bombing at Baumenheim and Leipheim was visual. More than 1,200 Fortresses and Liberators of the United States Bth Air Force, escorted by over 600 Mustangs, were also over Germany on Monday. The Allies are now bombing Berlin from an airfield in Germany, from which the Nazis once bombed London. Heinkel and Junker bombers used the base in the great blitz raids on London in 1940. It was cantured by the American Ninth Army in its advance to the Rhine, and is only 45 minutes by air from Berlin. The Germans used 45 000 slave labourers from Holland to build the airfield which has » miles of runways. . -r-. T On Monday morning, R.A.F. Lancasters carrying 22,000 lb and lb bombs, attacked the railway viaducts. at Arnsberg, south-east of Hamm, and another viaduct m the area of Bielefeld. Bombers were escorted by R.A.F. Mustangs A Mediterranean air communique reports 12 Allied aircraft are missing from yesterday’s operations, involv in° over 1.500 sorties. Two enemj aircraft were destroyed in the air. LONDON, March 19. The all-out Allied bid to destroy ( the German lifelines in the Northern Rhine front and Rey rocket installations in Holland reached a-new perm of ferocity to-day, state correspondents with the Second Tactical AnForce. In a three-minute attack, pilots left in an inferno of flames and smoke, some 500 vehicles, including tanks and armoured cars in a large German repair depot, 12 miles north of Emmerich. The attack opened with a roof-top level wave; after which the following squadron hit the yard with 10001 b of high-explosives and fire-bombs. The pilots left the yard a' mass of burning rubble. Another low-level attack blasted a castle in Holland used as an ammunition dump, which two hours later was still in flames; buildings believed to house German Battalion Headquarters, east of Dortrecht, were wiped out in a few seconds; railways leading to V weapon sites in a large area, including Arnhem, were cut in 26 places. ■ , n 1 A small number or jet-propelled planes attacked two Tactical Air Force aerodromes, and some civilians were killed when bombs landed in a nearby village. ' Medium bombers hammered communication centres, and American planes joined in the general assault on everything jnoving in the Osna-bruck-Munster area. Pilots of one squadron over a group of Rhine airfields, found 12 Messerschmitts landing and destroyed three without loss. The Luftwaffe on the Northern front, put into the sky: one of the largest reconnaissance air forces for many weeks, mostly jet-propelled planes. It was the biggest “look-see” expedition since the British and Canadians drove the Luftwaffe across the Rhine. The Lancasters which carried out another attack on the Arnsberg viaduct, found clear weather, while a bomb-aimer who dropped a 10-ton-ner on the Beilefeld viaduct said he was able to watch the bombs all the way down. Both viaducts carry main lines between the Ruhr and Central Germany. While targets in Yugoslavia in the area opposite Tolbukhin’s new offensive were pounded for the third successive day, 15th Air Force Lightnings and Italy-based Liberators and Flying Fortresses to-day resumed operations with attacks against two railways in Southern Germany, reports the Exchange Telegraph Agency's Rome correspondent. Lightnings flying, at a high level bombed Warazdin railyards, and strafed the area. Liberators and Fortresses bombed the yards at Landshut, 55 miles northwest of Munich, on the line to Regensburg. Other Liberators bombed the yards at Mulhdorf, 15 miles east of Munich, where previous reconnaissance had shown large quantities of rolling stock. Mitchells flew their five-thousandth sortie in the battle of the Brenner to-day, in attacking railbridges. Other Mitchells flew over Austria to attack a railbridge at Muldorf, 27 miles north-west of Villach, on the Salzburg-Sp'ittal line. Fighterbombers simultaneously, strafed communications all the way from the Western Po Valley to Northern Yugoslavia.

The Allied bombers’ campaign against the Brenner railway is “starving out” Kesselring’s three hundred thousand troops in Northern Italy, says the British United Press correspondent at Allied Headquarters in Italy. There is only one major route for German supply traffic through the hundred-mile corridor flanked by the rugged towering mountains between Switzerland and the Gulf of Venice. As many as 11 cuts in the vftal Brenner railway were made in the operations during the past week. Good results were reported in the attacks yesterday against the Brenner line, when the Salerno cutting, 15 miles north of Trento, was pounded. Seventy-eight cuts were also made in Northern Italv’s railway network yesterday. Besides the attacks on rolling stock, factories, and supply dumps, a number of bridges were also destroyed. A submarine 290 feet long capsized alongside the quay in the German occupied shipyards at Monfalcone, North-east Italy, after a raid by R.a.lr Liberators on March 16. This was shown by photographic reconnaissance. Another submarine previously damaged is now completely submerged.