Hurribombings

The R.A.F. put on a full-dress, day-&night offensive last week which the British tried to persuade the world was 1) bigger than the Battle of Britain, 2) a second front against Hitler. It was neither -- but it was pretty good, much better than anything the R.A.F. had ever dared before.

In numbers which correspondents computed by hundreds, the R.A.F. swept by day and swatted by night. Italy's faraway golden triangle -- Turin, Milan, Genoa--was bombed nonstop from England. Augsburg in Bavaria, another distant target, was bombed daringly by day. The Ruhr got it two nights. Hamburg was pasted. But the real noise and numbers were the daylight sweeps along the French coast and the invasion ports-Lorient, Le Havre, St. Nazaire, Cherbourg, Dunkirk, Calais, Rouen, carried out mainly by Spitfire-protected Hurricanes, converted to carry light bombs and nicknamed Hurribombers. One day more than 400 planes went over; the next, 600 went.

A U.S. correspondent cabled: "The offensive, in which American pilots and planes are taking a notable part, is larger and more sustained than when the Battle of Britain was at its height in August and September 1940." Colin Bednall of the London Daily Mail computed that 250-350 tons a night were being dropped on the Reich, which compared favorably with the Luftwaffe's droppings over London: on only two occasions were the Germans estimated to have dropped as much as 400 tons a night.

But there were two big differences between the R.A.F. offensive and the Battle of Britain. First the Germans in 1940 concentrated hundreds of planes on a single target in each raid, whereas the British last week fanned out and pecked at scattered targets with relatively small forces of planes on each. And second, the major R.A.F. effort was thrown into sweeps intended to harass the Germans along the invasion coast rather than to cut to the heart of the German war effort.

To make the R.A.F. offensive seem a second front, the Air Ministry issued a communique estimating that 1,500,000 Germans were being kept in the west by the offensive. The London Times claimed: "In addition, half of the entire fighter strength of the Luftwaffe is kept away from the Russian front to meet the R.A.F.'s attacks." Neither the figure nor the claim bore examination. The Air Ministry, in fact, listed only 20,000 combatants in a breakdown of its 1,500,000 total. The Times claim did not fit very neatly with the R.A.F. announcement that on the day 400 planes went over France, only five German planes were shot down; on the day 600 went, only two were shot down.

Not by such victories will Adolf Hitler be defeated in 1942. But he may well be defeated by the spirit which motivated them.

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