Biggest Week

Bombers from Britain gave western Germany and the defending Luftwaffe the hardest pounding of the war. In eight nights the R.A.F. attacked eight times. Its saturation raids fell upon steel and tin mills, munitions works, coal piles and chemical plants in the broken Ruhr, and crews noted that the once-perpetual haze from factory chimneys no longer thickened the night over Germany's industrial valley. Once the night bombers hit the radar works at Friedrichshafen, flew to North Africa over a route free of Nazi fighters, then struck the Italian navy yards at La Spezia on the way home.

The precision bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force paid their first visit to the Ruhr. They found and destroyed the carefully camouflaged plant at Huels where the Germans manufactured a fifth of their synthetic rubber. On other days they flew into northeastern Germany and into Occupied France, had weather trouble and less luck with their ground targets. But against their secondary target, they had better luck: in two great air battles over Germany they reduced the German fighter force by nearly 100 planes.

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