Beginning of a Mission

The weather cleared in Britain and in western Europe. By night the moon was full and by day the mists were gone from R.A.F. and U.S. airdromes. Earthbound for many days, four-engined U.S. Fortresses and Liberators soared up from Britain and flew 180 miles into France--to the Nazi air and railway center at Romilly-Sur-Seine, 65 miles southeast of Paris and the farthest into German Europe that U.S. bombers had yet ventured.

So clear was the afternoon that some of the crews, passing well to the south of Paris, had their first sight of the Eiffel Tower. But most of them were too busy for rubbernecking: all the way in from the Channel coast, despite a strong escort of Allied fighters, the bombers were bedeviled by clouds of Focke-Wulf 1905 and Messerschmitt logs, based in great force in western France and manned by skillful pilots.

One tail gunner thought that he counted 106 German planes in two hours; half a dozen often bored in at a single bomber. Some of the Germans did insolent, casual "slow rolls" as they came in, wheeling their planes wing over wing and then straightening out to fire. Their daring and determination cost them dearly. The bombers (each carrying a tremendous wallop in thirteen .50-caliber machine guns) flew in close formation, which caught the Germans in murderous crossfire. The bomber crews claimed 44 German fighters certainly destroyed (six crashed. 23 fell in flames, 14 disintegrated in the air, one was abandoned by a parachuting German) plus 20 or more probables. But the Americans had their heaviest loss to date: six bombers shot down, several more badly shot up. The reward: stick after stick of high-explosive bombs and incendiaries dropped from 20,000 feet on the Romilly airdrome, which with its charred and heaving debris looked to one pilot "like flypaper on a July day."

Munich's Fifth. The R.A.F.'s higher-load Lancasters and Stirlings bored deeper into Nazi Europe. On a bright night they gave Munich's railway shops, grenade factories and submarine-engine plants the city's fifth R.A.F. raid. Through broken clouds the crews saw great fires. Aloft they met Nazi night fighters "in some strength" but got surprisingly little ack-ack. Lost: twelve British planes.

Duisburg's Fifty-Sixth. On Duisburg in the Ruhr the R.A.F. made its 56th raid. Target: railway and river port facilities in the Rhineland's heart. Luftwaffe night fighters were again up in force and the R.A.F. lost eleven bombers.

Open the Veins. By day and night Hurribombers, the R.A.F.'s light, fast Mosquitoes and American-built Douglas Bostons bombed and gunned locomotives, other rolling stock, railway lines and stations, gasoline dumps--anything anywhere in the coastal belt of France and The Netherlands whose loss would drain Germany's transport and supply machine.

Italy had a momentary respite from new bombings but not from the aftereffects of earlier raids and the certainty of more to come. Every report from Italy testified to the progressive disintegration of internal morale, the difficulties of defense and to the prospect that beyond the Alps the R.A.F. had found its softest target.

Of Things to Come. Major General Henry J. F. Miller, new chief of the U.S. Eighth Air Force's ground services, said in Britain last week: "An all-out [air] offensive against the Axis is being prepared, and we will be able to accomplish this mission very soon."

Britons heard last week that their Gov ernment had agreed. -- or was about to agree -- to declare Rome an open city, immune from R.A.F. (and presumably U.S.) bombing raids.

No one knew where the report originated. The dispatch to a London news paper from Switzerland indicated an Axis source. A New York Herald Tribune dis patch from London surmised that the suggestion came originally from Pope Pius XII. Said the London Catholic Times: "If a sound agreement could be reached for claiming Rome an open city, it would be welcomed by the mass of Europeans, but no such agreement has been announced to date and there is no evidence of one being negotiated by the Holy See." No earthly power could guarantee safety for Pope Pius if bombers ever swarmed over Rome and Vatican City. A mistake in the night, a faulty bomb release or an Italian trick might ruin any hope or plan to spare the Vatican while raiding Rome itself.*

Whatever the source, few Britons liked the proposal. The argument that the Eternal City was rich in monuments and relics of a nobler Rome carried little weight with Britons, who had lost many of their own national shrines to Nazi bombs. Also unimpressive to most Britons was the suggestion that Rome might be saved by a trade: in return for Rome's immunity, Mussolini might move himself and his unhappy Government to some other city. If such a move would disrupt Italian life and resistance sufficiently to make it even worth discussing, bombs on Rome would do immeasurably more.

One argument against sparing any Italian city was produced last week by the Italian press. Mussolini's own Popolo d'ltalia reported that the people of ravaged Turin welcomed the arrival of the city's first German ack-ack units. Already, in short, the R.A.F. had made Italy a minor second, front.

*No. 10 Downing St. issued a statement last year that the Italians had threatened to dump captured British bombs on the Vatican if the R.A.F. raided Rome.

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