World: Invasion Pitch

The air assault on Europe reached its fiercest pitch yet. In seven days more thark 25,000 sorties (one mission by one plane) were hurled against Hitler’s Fortress from bases in England. More than half the planes were four-engined U.S. and R.A.F. bombers: they laid better than 32,000 tons of bombs.

From Italy and England, Lieut. General “Tooey” Spaatz’s heavies blasted hardest at enemy airplane plants, but they also struck heavily at German fortifications on the coast, presumably in the spots where lighter craft had not done the job. Major General Lewis Brereton, boss of the Ninth (tactical) Air Force, which will give close support to the invasion, sent his mediums against the coast, airfields, railroad centers. Swarms of his fighter bombers also hacked from dawn to dusk, bored deeply inland.

With few exceptions, the day raids and the massive night assaults by the R.A.F. (biggest: 5,040 tons in one night) met with little or no German fighter opposition. This week, in a joint statement, the British Air Ministry and Tooey Spaatz gave their interpretation of this phenomenon.

Their considered opinion: the German aircraft industry, scheduled to quadruple its fighter output of two years ago, could no longer even make up for combat losses. By this estimate the precision-bombing Eighth U.S. Air Force, assigned a year ago to the job of knocking out Nazi aircraft plants, had won one of the war’s greatest victories. Said the statement: in one week in February, the Eighth (plus the newly formed Fifteenth, operating from Italy) had bombed factories producing “more than 60% of known single-engine fighter manufacture, more than 80% of the known two-engine manufacture.” “For three successive months,” said the statement, “the German fighter force has lost more planes than its plants could manufacture. In March their production was below the rate of August 1942 . . . for April, instead of being quadrupled, it will be lower still.”