The Long Arm Grows

The weather was right, the R.A.F. was ready, and Bremen caught 75 minutes of bombers' hell. On aircraft plants, dockyards and submarine works fell the same destruction which blanketed Cologne and Essen earlier. The British said that the 52 planes which did not return were less than 5% of the armada; ergo, more than 1,000 bombers had assaulted Bremen.

Twenty-three nights had passed since the R.A.F. sent as many planes over a single objective, and the Bremen raid was no proof that the British were yet able to sustain the night-by-night, city-by-city offensive which they had promised. But the fact that the R.A.F. could do it at all was proof enough that still more can be done, more often than British airmen believed possible a bare six months ago. Britain's tricky weather, its restricted airfield space, the short nights of summer and the foggy ones of winter--these and other limitations had once seemed formidable enough to prevent a single 1,000-plane raid. It will take less ingenuity, aggressive forethought and experimental courage to double and treble the 1,000 than it had taken to get off the first 1,000.

U.S. bomber forces will join the R.A.F. over Europe sooner than the British had dared to hope. London censors last week passed the first specific reports of U.S. air activity in Britain: a growing U.S. air staff in London, U.S. squadrons already taking over some British airdromes, soon to take more. Well under way was the enormous task of coordinating R.A.F. and U.S. operations in the tight little island.

The R.A.F.'s heavy bombers were designed primarily for night operation. The U.S. Air Force is not telling its plans, but a well-known fact is that many U.S. bombers were designed for day-&-night assault. Soon on the air front, where World War II may yet be won, there will be no rest for the Germans.

Pershing's Mantle?

The man who may wear the mantle of Pershing in World War II landed in England last week and took over a new command: U.S. forces in the European theater. Whether trim, bald Major General Dwight David Eisenhower would indeed command the invasion when it came off, or whether he would later become chief of staff to a higher ranking officer, Army men cried "Amen" to his appointment.

A colonel only nine months ago, 51-year-old, Texas-born "Ike" Eisenhower is no flash in the pan. Since he left West Point in 1915 he has been pushing along. Made a lieutenant colonel in 1918, he was dropped back to a captaincy after the war. The big chance came when he went to the Philippines as Douglas MacArthur's assistant in 1935. The reputation he made there and in the 1941 Louisiana maneuvers (as Chief of Staff of the Third Army) carried him to Washington, where he soon became head of the vital Operations Division of the General Staff (TIME, April 13). From there, England was less than 18 hours away.

Paddy Up

"Positively no alcoholic beverages," says a sign in a U.S. officers' club, "will be sold to Air Corps lieutenant colonels under 21 unless accompanied by their parents."

The U.S. Army Air Forces' accent on youth (which has brought up two brigadier generals at 36) had not yet made this jest a verity last week. But Britain's R.A.F. came close to it.

Upped to the rank of Acting Wing Commander, with permanent promotion to follow, was Britain's top fighter pilot, wavy-haired, blue-eyed Brendan Finucane. With a rank corresponding to lieutenant colonel, Paddy Finucane (pronounced Fin-YOU-kin) was 21.

Finucane's Spitfire has a thorned shamrock painted outside the cockpit and the letter "W" (for his first Spitfire, "Wheezy Anna") near the shamrock. Such small personal idiosyncrasies this great fighter pilot permits himself. For the rest, like U.S. Brigadier General Claire L. Chennault, he insists on team play in the air and will stand for no Hell's Angels antics from his fighters. Officially credited with 28 German ships. Finucane for months has led a squadron made up of Australians, Czechs, French, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Canadians, South Africans, Hollanders and Britons.

A crack shot, Finucane got his start as a unit commander when he took over a squadron of unruly Australians, adjusted himself to their helter-skelter ways as no Briton had ever been able to do. Few R.A.F. men doubted that, as lead man in a wing (two or more squadrons), Paddy Finucane could still make his elders hop to his command.

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