The Final Fling

Until the invasion, air power was all that Germany's generals had immediately to fear from the west. Yet in the U.S., ironically, air power was never lower in public prestige. U.S. citizens read the dispatches and were impressed. But they still asked just how much airplanes could accomplish in war, after all.

For much of the excellent job that was being done in Europe to put air power's overblown reputation on a sounder basis, airmen could thank big, lumbering Major General Frederick L. Anderson, 38-year-old West Pointer, native of Kingston, N.Y.

Knowing observers have watched Fred Anderson since 1942, when he left an Air Forces desk job in Washington to command a wing in England. Now he has one of the key air jobs in the world today: operations chief and deputy to Lieut. General Carl Spaatz. As such he plans the biggest raids (from Britain and Italy) with the biggest air force in history.

The Real Air War. Nobody knew just how much damage airplanes could inflict on Europe before the invasion. But last week the men who had long cherished an ambition to knock out Germany from the skies, were getting something like the chance they had waited for.

During the first eight days in May, more than 20,000 airplane sorties smashed at Hitler's Europe, from Cuxhaven on the North Sea to the Rumanian oilfields.

From Italy. When stormy spring gales all but grounded the R.A.F. and the British-based U.S. Eighth Air Force for three days last week, Lieut. General Ira C. Eaker's augmented bomber forces (also under Spaatz's command) struck harder than ever from fair-weather Italy. During the week Eaker's men stepped up their percentage of Europe's bomb tonnage from 30 to almost 50.

During the week Australian and South African pilots, flying P-40s and P-51s as dive bombers, wrecked the famed Pescara dam,* possibly obstructing German communications with the lower Adriatic coast.

From Britain. Not until week's end were the heavy bombers able to get back at Berlin. There they dropped 1,500 of a total 6,000 tons spread over Europe on Sunday. Overcast skies cut the loss to only eight B-17s and 6-24s; the Germans had shot down 63 in a raid eight days before.

On Monday 2,000 heavies were back at Berlin again: the capital took another 2,000-ton blow. Before and after it, U.S. and R.A.F. bombers and fighters, as many as 4,800 a day, swirled into Europe, struck, sped home. Sometimes the Luftwaffe sent its fighters aloft and the Allies took losses. One day last week the Nazi fighters turned out in force over France--for the first time in weeks--and the R.A.F. lost 49 bombers. But for the most part the only big worry for Allied airmen was ack-ack.

Too late, air power seemed again to be set for the Big Opportunity. Most air-power advocates thought they might have to wait until the next war to prove that bombing alone could win. The invasion, where air power would play an important but secondary role, seemed too close.

* Below Rome last week the Germans flooded the Pontine Marshes--possibly to disrupt future Allied communications.

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