Shifts & Advances

Russia. For the retreating Germans, the battle of Russia became a battle for Hitler's Europe.

Italy. Men in the Mediterranean theater sensed a new reason for the slowness of the Italian campaign: their fight might be a gigantic diversion, a holding attack designed to keep as many Germans as possible engaged there while other invasions are devised and mounted. It appeared that the center of strategic gravity was beginning to shift to Western Europe.

Air. The U.S. Eighth Air Force maintained its attacks from Britain at the un precedented rate of one mass raid every two and a half days. In an attack on Bremen, Thunderbolts and P-38 Lightnings made their longest escort penetration of the war (900 round-trip miles). Lost: 15 heavy bombers. U.S. and British heavy bombers from North Africa and the R.A.F. Bomber Command in Britain attacked the Germans' rail lines between France and Italy, reported that the most important of them had been severed at least temporarily.

Pacific. Protagonists of naval aviation hailed a milestone in the South Pacific. Substantial U.S. carrier forces had twice attacked Rabaul in support of land operations on Bougainville, twice shielded the carriers from land-based Japanese aviation. If carriers could safely count on such self-protection--a possibility yet to be proved--the mobility and effectiveness of the naval air arm would be enormously increased, and the way to Tokyo might be drastically shortened.

Atlantic. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill confirmed what Navy men have known for weeks: the Nazis have failed miserably in their autumn "comeback" in the Atlantic. In August, September and October approximately 60 U-boats were destroyed. Of these at least 21 were sunk by U.S. carrier-based aircraft. In the last six months the Nazis certainly have lost 150 of their 400-500 submarines, probably many more.

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