Evening star., 1944-03-10
New Air Struteoy

With American heavy bombers
attacking Berlin in great force for
the fourth time in six days, it has
become clear that q new phase of
aerial strategy is being put to the
acid test in the bitterly contested
skies above the shattered cities of
Germany.
In this epochal struggle the Ameri-
can concept Of daylight precision
bombing Is coming into full flower.
In each Of the last three Of these
assaults on the German capital-it
Is a misnoner to call them raids
upward Of thousand heavy bomb
ers, escorted by an equal, or even
greater, number Of fighters, have
fought their way through the stern
est enemy opposition to dump their
loads on carefully selected targets.
Then, turning homeward, they have
had to fight their way out against
the most intensive antiaircraft fire
and enemy fighter opposition of the
war.
The primary purpose of these day.
light assaults is not to pile more
ruins upon burned and blackened
Berlin. The destruction Of vital
military targets in the Reich capital
is important, Of course. But these
might be reached less expensively by
night. The first objective of our
Myers In these hazardous daylight
invasions is to compel the enemy's
air force to come up and nsht, .s6uA
it y an etsecttv6A 6Atrategy, fprsH Hitler.
cannot afford to keep the Luftwaffe
under cover while his own capital is
being pounded in broad daylight
beeore The eyessaof the German
peorlE l5e n1ust send his, fighters
up and isee them destroyed, knowing
full wen that every plane he loses
now means that there will be one
less plane available for the defense
OF his European fortress when the
great invasion that will spell his
downfall gets under way. One of
our high officers, discussing the
systematic humiliation OF the Luft-
waite, explained it this way: There
are two ways to destroy German
lighting planes. You can murder
them in the air or you can use what
we call the BIRTH control method OF
bombing them in the factories before
they can fly. We are using both
methods"
No one can say how long this
attritional process will take. for the
evidence indicates that German
fighter output is still large, with
probable strategic reserve pools for
a supreme emergency. The process
will undoubtedly be expensive, and
it is fortunate that we can stand
heavy losses of planes and per-
sonnel. The lessons to be drawn
from the Italian campaign indicate
that Allied air superiority must be
overwhelming before Luftwaffe op-
position to invasion from the sea is
reduced to negligible proportions.
The job must be a thorough one.
Another deduction from recent
months is that the air offensive
against Germany should be viewed
as a straight military proposition.
Former hopes that it could knock
out Germany psychologically with
out the necessity of all-out ground
operations have been pretty well
discounted, especially by reports
from American observers just freed
from internment. who unanimously
believe that German morale has
stiffened rather than sagged since
the Allied air offensive got fully
under way. The German people are
reacting much as the British did
three years ago during their ordeal
from Goering's blitz. Perhaps the
Germans have their cracking point,
but 1t is not yet visible. Hitler's
embattled and fanaticized Reich pre-
sumably will have to be smashed in
the traditional way, and the current
bombing assaults are an essential
first step in that process.