AIR POWER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25473, 1 March 1944, Page 5

AIR POWER

BATTLE OF EUROPE R.A.F. READY TO STRIKE (Rec. 1.30 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 29. The growing might of the Royal Air Force aiul the preparations for the Battle of Europe were reviewed by the Secretary for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, introducing the Air Estimates in the House of Commons. “The R.A.F. is preparing to play its part in the battle for the liberation of Europe,” he said, “ and to that end we have made our dispositions." Speaking of the battle of Berlin, the Air Secretary said that in January of this year the German capital had received as great a weight of bombs as had fallen on London from the beginning of* the war until now. The German defences, he added, were much greater than those with which we had

fought the Battle of Britain. Last year our bomber losses had been over 2400 planes and nearly 18,000 airmen killed or missing. The losses, however, were progressively less compared with the effects being achieved.

The raids on London, he said, were difficult to counter because the raiders flew high and fast,' scattered their bombs over a wide area, and then dived steeply at maximum speed until they crossed the coast. In the last two months British night fighters and antiaircraft and searchlight crews had inflicted a higher rate of casualties on the enemy than had been suffered by our much bigger bomber forces, which had to penetrate far more deeply into enemy territory. “The period between the February and March moons” Sir Archibald said, “ may as well come to be looked back upon as one of the decisive stages of the whole war. There lies before us the glittering prize of air supremacy, the talisman that will paralyse German industry and transport and clear the road for the Allied armies in their march on Berlin.”