The Times THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1945. The Red Air force

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 45, 22 February 1945, Page 4

The Times THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1945. The Red Air force

With the Luftwaffe reduced to less than one-fifth of its 1940 strength, and further weakened by necessary economies in the use of fuel, und with the Royal Air Force tnore than twenty times stronger than it was four years ago, the war iu the air has undergone revolutionary changes. In a single month the R.A.F, has dropped 100,000 tons’ of bombs on Germany, or more than the Germans, counting in the flying bombs, have delivered against Britain in the whole course of the war. In thirty-six hours last week it dropped 16,000 tons, mainly in support of the Russian advance. In the present coordinated battle plans the Russians are drawing heavily on the bombers of their western Allies to blast strongpoints in the path of the Red Army’s advance. The Russians lack the heavy bombers to do this job for themselves. They have never had time to build them. When the Germans first struck they caught the Russians in the midst of their aeronautical change-over. The existing types of machines were largely outmoded; the new ones had not yet been delivered. Appalling numbers of Red Army aeroplanes were destroyed in the air and on the ground. The Russians’ urgent need was for fighters and combat bombers that could meet the opposition. Even at Stalingrad the Germans still had air superiority. To an extent, supplies from the Allies relieved the immediate peril, but the difficulties of transport ■were a bar against adequacy of supply from this source. Early in 1943 the Russians made some tentative long-range raids into East Prussia and Ploesti, but the projected programme for the building of big bombers had to be abandoned. Russia was obliged to concentrate all her energies on making up the leeway in essential battle-front machines. “Wo want aeroplanes that will fly and shoot,” said Marshal Novikov, chief of the Red Air Force, in rejecting the plans for big bombers. To produce such machines, to train crews in navigation, radio and bombing, was a job for which Russia did not have tlie time. She could and did produce fighters to deal With the enemy bombers and fighters, ancl she could and did produce attaek’aeroplanes to deal with tanks, troops und other front-line targets. She had, perforce, to leave the production of big bombers to Britain and America while her Stormoviks dealt with the imminent peril Incidentally, Htormoyik does not refer to a particular aircraft design, but to the entire class of “storming” machines.