Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1943 AIR WAR HOLDS SWAY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 30 June 1943, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1943 AIR WAR HOLDS SWAY

AIK war still holds sway as the prelude to great events on both the Russian front and in the west and south of Europe. It is having a longer and more fruitful innings than might have been expected considering how far the northern fighting season is advanced- Russia has been able to make more use of the bombing weapon as a preliminary destroyer than previously. For weeks each side has been striving to gain air supremacy on the Eastern front while concentrating ground troops. The Germans’ summer land offensive hangs fire. They may still be the first to strike but it is evident that their plans are being disrupted by forebodings about what is likely to happen on the western and southern flanks of Hitler’s “fortress-” Moscow radio, however, declares that 3,000,000 Axis troops are in battle order along the Russian front so the presumption must be that the Nazi High Command is resolved to have one more fling there.

Britain and United Slates are allowing airpower to exact its full toll ol destruction before they proceed with the next phase- There is no precedent to act as a guide about what its maximum effect could be. Bombing of the frequency and intensity now going on might bring a nation to its knees though the prevailing opinion is that it could not clinch the issue. In the battle of the Ruhr conclusive results are being achieved in destruction in those areas where bombing has been heaviest and most sustained-. The Germans are now packing their defences and fighting back to take substantial toll of the raiders. According to Mr Elmer Davis, director of the United States Office of War Information, more than 1000 enemy fighter planes and 30,000 anti-aircraft guns have been assembled in the Ruhr. Last week the Allies lost 173 bombers, of which 38 were American, together with 1500 highly trained men. The German losses in the same period are rated at even more than this so, in the contest for supremacy, very much depends on which side has the bigger reserves to draw upon. There is little doubt about who has them- Far from slackening their share of the air effort over Germany the Americans are planning to step it up. Major-Gen-eral Henry Miller, who commands the United States Air Force in Britain, has said he is ready to support a 45 per cent, increase in bomb loads to be dropped on enemy territory. Supplies for doing this are more than adequate, he adds. It is just a question of organising them. He thinks a 45 per cent, advance in the United States’ part of the bombing war is not only possible but very probable. The experiment now being conducted in disintegration by bombing is well worth pressing to its limit. Complaining bitterly of what they are being made to endure by a form of war which they began the Germans are now busy organising sympathy. This

has even found an echo among some misguided people in England, but it is inconceivable that any official notice should be taken of their representations. We have battled long and hard for air superiority. *To neglect any opportunity now to exploit it to the full would be to betray the efforts of those Allied airmen who have fallen in the fight and to leave the way open for sacrificing thousands more Allied lives- The shortest way to victory is the best way. Would the Germans have desisted from fullest use of the air had superiority there not been wrested from them? When Mr Churchill said nothing would turn the Allies from maximum employment of the bombing weapon he was expressing what many thought was a truism but which he knew to be necessary as a public declaration of intention. “Softening tactics” is a phrase which is daily being invested with a more significant meaning. In specially selected parts of the Ruhr it is becoming almost synonymous with obliteration. There is a school of thought which believes that the war could be won by the bomber if we had enough of them and used them skilfully on the widest possible scale. This could only be proved by trial. The Allies are not pinning their faith on it alone, though they are wisely allowing the greatest scope for the air arm to inflict maximum destruction on the enemy’s military machine and morale before the stiff task of invasion is begun. That zero hour on land has not struck does not mean it has been postponed indefinitely, if at all. A time schedule which did not count on ousting the Axis from Tunisia before about August might well need some readjustment in face of the quick surrender there- The air War of disintegration now proceeding is a deliberately-planned and integral part of Continental invasion.