Evening star., 1943-04-29
'Round-CIock Bombing
Of Germany Assured
Major Eliot Insists
New Air Force Policy
Is Bad News for Foe
By Maj. George Fielding Eliot.

By Maj. George Fielding Eliot.
The speech of Air Vice Marshal w. F.
MacNeece Foster, Royal Air Force, before
the Canadian Club of New York on
Wednesday, should be widely noted 1t
is the best possible reply to the hasty
and ill-informed criticisms of the day
bombing policy of our Army Air Forces,
which as remarked in my article of
yesterday, have been all too prevalent in
the American press.
1t should be remembered that Air Vice
Marshal Foster speaks as the acting head
OF the Royal Air Force delegation in the
United States, and that he is in that
capacity a member of the combined
chiefs OF staff. His public utterances
must be considered as rejecting the
views of the Air Ministry and the chief
OF the air staff.
He is, therefore, making statement
of the greatest possible significance when
he says: ITO sum up the air staff con-
ception of the night and day bombing of
Germany is that they are both essential
and complementary; and that If carried
out on the necessary scale, they are
capable OF producing decisive results
which may well greatly shorten the war
in Europe. Civilian observers in
both countries have sometimes misun-
derstood the real problem which con-
fronts the American Air Force and the
Raj. 1t was not, as some supposed, the
question of whether daylight precision
bombing was better than night bombing.
The real question was whether they
could both be effectively undertaken
under the conditions obtaining in the
European theater; and recent experience
has shown that this question can now
assuredly be answered.
Some months ago the American Air
Forces held the belief that they could
bomb effectively by day over Germany;
at the same time the Raj held a corre-
spending belief that they could do the
same by night-both these have come
true. They are not contradictory, they
are vital and essential to each other
without each other they cannot achieve
supreme success; they have now been
welded together in common doctrine"
This is the first public statement on
the part OF any responsible officer of the
Royal Air Force that such an identity of
viewpoint and doctrine has been reached
by British and American air command
ers. 1t goes much farther than observers
in this country who believed in the day.
bombing policy had yet dared to go.
Only yesterday, for example, l was
writing that much of the proof OF this
policy still lay in the future. Its outright
acceptance by the Royal Air Force is the
very best of good news for all the United
Nations, and the very worst of bad news
for the enemy.
1t leaves no question that from this
time forward the round the clock bomb
ing Of Germany will 60 ahead in greater
and greater volume and with greater and
greater results. 1t is just as good to hear
that our air forces have become increas-
ingly impressed by the possibility OF
accurate night bombing" as it is to learn
that the RAF is now sold on precision
bombing by day. These two techniques
will now form part of common policy,
policy which in its execution will go
far to reduce the German capacity for
further resistance and to prepare the way
for those decisive blows by land, sea and
air forces, which will crush once and for
all the evil power with which the Nazis
and their Prussian military masters have
menaced the liberties of mankind
Already Germany is hard pressed to
Df CT ~
showered upon her from the air by day
and by night.
Already German soldiers are perishing
miserably in the foxholes of Tunisia
under the pitiless rain of Allied bombs,
while their despairing eyes search the
sky in vain for the sight of wings bear
ing their own black crosses Already
German soldiers are being slaughtered
in hopeless attacks on strong Russian
positions in the Kuban attacks, which
fail largely for lack of air support The
Germans are calling their best fighter
squadrons home to protect the industries
and communications upon which all their
war effort depends; and even these
fighters are not enough, either in num-
6Sio VI III CllSiCliSy w odFC tiiC NAtdi
centers of Germany from the effects of
round -the-clock bombing
With the Lutfwaffe thus definitely on
the decline no worse news for Germany
could be imagined than the announce
ment of a common Anglo-American
bombing policy. We Americans are doing
little grumbling about rationing and
other wartime restrictions, but at least
we shall have occasion to rejoice during
the coming summer that we are not
inhabitants of the hell that will be
Germany.
Copyright, 1243, N. Y. Tribune, In4)