INTENSIFIED ASSAULT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 May 1944, Page 4

INTENSIFIED ASSAULT

BY ALLIED AIR FORCES FROM BRITAIN BIGGEST BOMBING OPERATION OF WAR. 4000 PLANES TAKE PART. (Bv Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, May 9. ' (Received This Day, 11.40 a.m.) Under a cloudless blue sky, the Straits of Dover today throbbed and vibrated with the roar of hundreds of Allied planes engaged in an increasingly intensified blitz on the Continent. Front line English towns this morning were rocked by a series of explosions across the Channel, whether from our blockbusters or from German blasting operations is not known, but the concussion shook coastal houses for fifteen minutes. The British United Press aviation correspondent says a “great bomb corridor” is being established in northwestern Europe by thousands of Allied planes, which are now shuttling forth day and night in the biggest continuous air offensive of the war. A ring of targets stretching from Liege in the east to Brest in the west has been hammered unmercifully in the past 24 hours by Lancasters, Halifaxes, Liberators, Fortresses, Mitchells, Bostons, Marauders and Havocs, as well as by a host of fighter-bombers. A steady rain of high explosives poured down almost without ceasing on vital German communication points, airfields and ammunition dumps.’ No area of this size in the world has yet been subjected to such an intense air bombardment. The correspondent estimates that over 4,000 bombers and fighters in the past 24 hours participated in the attacks on German communications and airfields in northwestern Europe. Between them, they .dropped nearly 5,000 tons of bombs. Possibly the conditions for bombing have been better in this 24 hours than ever before, which means that no bombs paid better dividends. Our bombers last night could see in the brilliant moonlight the hangars at the Brest airfields so plainly that they did not need flares. The Berlin radio stated that flying battleships are operating with American bombing forces over Europe. They are Boeing four-engined planes, carrying two guns and thirty heavy mach-ine-guns, but no bombs.