Air Attrition

British and American flyers steadily pushed up the tempo of air combat over Europe. The Luftwaffe fighter command showed further symptoms of anemia. German air power was far from being knocked out, but its defenses could no longer be stretched out to cover all the vulnerable targets.

In three days' operations last week, U.S. bombers and fighters, flying from Britain and Italy, shot down 268 Nazi planes. By midweek a major American sweep over Nazi airfields and "mystery targets" in France sent hundreds of heavy and medium bombers out and back with out ever sighting an enemy aircraft.

Next day a fleet of 1,100 heavy bombers attacked the great naval base of Wilhelmshaven by daylight, plastered it with more than 1,600 tons of bombs. The attackers had to struggle through snow, rain and high winds to reach the target. Antiaircraft fire was heavy but Nazi fighter opposition was puny; only four U.S. heavy bombers were lost on the raid.

Next U.S. target was the city of Frankfort on the Main. The Germans set up a terrific flak barrage; 21 bombers were lost. But again fighter opposition was negligible. At week's end Allied air fleets, 1,200 planes strong, staged a savage, two-day mauling of the Luftwaffe's important French air bases around Paris. Weather apparently was holding Britain's heavy night-flying bombers in check, but the speedy Mosquitoes were out nightly, at tacking German targets as far inland as Berlin.

The R.A.F. Bomber Command, adding up its operations for the first month of 1944, reported that it had dropped 16,500 tons of bombs on Germany (U.S. bombers probably added another 5,000 tons). Dying Berlin had caught the heaviest load, approximately 10,000 tons.

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