BATTLE OF EUROPE: The Lull Ends

“At scores of muddy British airdromes, pilots of the U.S. Army Air Forces glowered at the grey sky that fingered down into the feathery treetops. On puddled runways ground crews tested, adjusted and retested the four motors of their B-17s. Navigators, bombardiers and gunners sloshed through the sticky gumbo to ground classes, listened to daily lectures on the fine points of aerial combat. In the long English twilight, which lasts until 11 p.m. in the summer, airmen lazed around the stove-warmed Nissen huts, playing blackjack and cursing the conditions which kept them idle.”

From a bomber base of the U.S. Eighth Air Force in Britain, TIME Correspondent William Walton last week sent this description of the weather-bound bomber crews. What he saw on this U.S. airdrome was duplicated on the airfields of the R.A.F.’s big night bombers. There, too, the pilots and crews were killing time in barracks and canteens, while outside the big, black Stirlings and Lancasters gleamed wet on the runways. Over the Dover Strait, on the route to Germany, the fog lay thick and grey. At 10,000 feet, the operational altitude for the big planes, the long summer twilight never ended: the bombers flying on night missions now would fly by daylight when they reached that height.

The Battles. But it was not only the weather that was keeping the heavy bomber forces of the Allies on the ground. Both the U.S. Eighth Air Force and the R.A.F. were gathering strength for new blows in the systematic reduction of German industry and defenses. Said Major General Ira C. Eaker, the Eighth’s commander: Since March the Eighth has more than doubled its strength (mostly in heavy bombers for the strategic bombing of Germany), is now increasing at the rate of 15 to 30% each month. The day after General Eaker spoke, the lull ended. More than 200 U.S. heavy bombers soared out over Germany to attack Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven. That same night the R.A.F. sent out its greatest force of four-motored bombers to blast Dusseldorf and Munster with four-ton blockbusters and incendiaries.

The Americans’ next major blow was a double raid from which 26 bombers did not return—the heaviest loss yet suffered by U.S. bombers in Britain. One force was sent out over Kiel. This raid drew off most of the Luftwaffe’s fighters and precipitated one of the greatest air battles of World War II. The other, larger force raided Bremen comparatively unhindered.

The Test. The U.S. raids were a test of General Eaker’s theory that simultaneous attacks against different targets are more effective and bring fewer losses than single thrusts of massed bombers against one objective. The big bombers flew unescorted by fighters—one reason, perhaps, why the losses were so heavy. It was too soon to say definitely whether General Eaker was right, but the attacks proved that the Germans are still able to muster heavy defenses against points threatened by daylight assaults.

The British learned the same lesson in a heavy night raid on Bochum. which followed close on the heels of the American attacks. In the Ruhr Valley they found German anti-aircraft defenses greatly strengthened since the bombing of the Mohne and Eder dams (TIME, May 31). They brought back reports of ack-ack guns apparently massed miles deep along the industrial center’s rim.