"First True Use of Air Mass"

In six thundering days over Europe, the combined air power of the U.S. and Britain struck a fateful blow at German air power. In the war's heaviest air battle, it inflicted injuries on the enemy's basic sources of aircraft production from which the Luftwaffe may never fully recover.

The blow was delivered in a series of coordinated day and night attacks which Robert A. Lovett, U.S. Assistant Secretary of War for Air, called: "The first true use of air mass; the beginning of the type of strategic air war that airmen have been advocating all the while."

The Take-Off. On the first day a fleet of U.S. heavy Fortresses and Liberators, covered by 1,000 fighters, roared out from Britain to launch the big push against the aircraft centers of Leipzig, blasted the night before by 1,000 R.A.F. bombers, Oschersleben,. Gotha, Bernburg, Brunswick, Halberstadt, Tutow, and even faraway Posen in conquered Poland. That night the massive Lancasters and Halifaxes of the R.A.F. trundled out to shower down 2,240 tons of bombs in a raid on Stuttgart over 450 miles from London.

Swiftly through the week Allied air fleets hammered at the targets. On Monday the U.S. heavies were out again. On Tuesday they were joined by bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force, based in Italy, which flew north to strike at Regensburg, and followed the next day with a raid on Steyr. in Austria. In balanced rhythm the R.A.F. followed the Americans in smashes at Augsburg and Schweinfurt.

The Pay-Off. Results, from any point of view, were terrific. In 13 major assaults on at least 15 aircraft centers, the Allies dropped 18,000 tons of bombs. In furious air battles over Germany the Allies lost 387 bombers and 37 fighters. But they shot down 644 German planes--153 more than the enemy lost in the costliest week of his air defeat in .the Battle of Britain three years ago.

The U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped a greater weight of bombs in six days than it had hauled to Germany in the entire first year of its operations from Britain (beginning in the summer of 1942).

Photo reconnaissance indicated that 80% of Germany's twin-engined fighter-plane production had been knocked out; 60% of her single-engined production is gone. In addition the raids destroyed 25% of the Reich's heavy-bomber building capacity, and 60% of transport production. Strategic bombing officials believe that if the victory is followed up, the Luftwaffe cannot make up its losses.

The Paymaster. In all England no one was happier about the results than a wry, freckled Pennsylvania Dutchman, Lieut. General Carl Spaatz, commander of U.S. strategic bombing forces. "Tooey" Spaatz is a hardboiled, able airman who has fought the battles of air power all the way from Washington to Britain to Africa and back to Britain again, shrugging off every disappointment, every setback, with the glumly philosophic phrase: "That's a helluva way to run a railroad."

Now finally he had seen air power in full-scale action. Undoubtedly he would see more of the same as his men go on with the two-way process of grinding the Luftwaffe down in the air and strangling it in the battered factories.

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