Evening star., 1945-01-28
Huge Aerial Assault
Al Germans in BuIqe
Described by Engineer

The concentrated bombing OF
Nazis in the Ardennes offensive is
described by Maj. Reid A. Dunn
son of Mrs. Emmett G. Dunn, 504
Duke street, Alexandria, Va.
Maj. Reid, who has been with an
engineers outfit in the European
theater for the past 16 months
wrote his wife and children, who
live in Richmond, Va, the following
letter concerning the "awe-insplr-
ing" Allied airpower he witnessed.
II have just seen the most tre-
mendous and awe-inspiring thing
in the world-concentrated Allied
airpower in battle. For an hour I
watched the haze and fog dissipate
in sparkling, ice-blue sky. And
then it began.
From the whole semicircle of the
horizon rose the sharp and pointed
fingers of vapor trails-thicker and
thicker, higher and higher they
climbed. When the first planes had
reached the zenith, the horizon be-
hind them was a solid white wall
from which thousands of tiny
streamers traced inexorably forward,
to the north and south.
Like a Mighty Symphony.
"The steady drone of motors in
creased and swelled to a chorus of
power. Their organ-tones were
drumming, vibrating the very earth
below, with feeling of unspeakable
volume, as if this was a mighty
symphony sounding only family in
human ears.
LAS the mighty organ swelled I
could still see the solid mass of va
por trails rising upward, from the
west, from the north, from the
south, from the three corners of
the sky to the east, funneling in a
single mass over the black hills of
the Ardennes. For over an hour,
this pattern held in the sky. When
the first trails dissipated, they were
replaced with new ones; the drum
ming, felt a thousand times more
than it was heard, swelled and sub
sided, indescribably.
Nov, could see the silhouettes
of the planes against the solid white
mass of vapor trails-graceful Fort
resses in tight and shining forma-
tions, masses of Liberators, Thun-
derbolts and Lightnings. the square
wing tips of Mustangs and, below.
the Marauders, the Havocs and
Avengers. Then came the RAF-
great Lancasters and Halifaxes, not
in groups or formations-bu in
swarms, spreading half across the
sky, their black bodies contrasting
strangely with the cleaning silver
of the day bombers, moving slowly,
ponderously.
Spitfires Comb" the Sky.
"Then lines of Spitfires, stretched
across the sky, tracing their paths
in parallel trails, as if a giant many
toothed rake was being dragged over
the blue They were all there-the
dark, vicious Black Widows, the Mos
quitoes, the Typhoons, the Hurri-
canes, the slow, twin-motored We'll
lingtons, night fighters and night
bombers, strange and sinister in the
sunlight-in tight formations, in
great loose swarms, in groups of
threes and fours, in lines and col
umns, singly, in pairs, in hundreds,
in thousands, and yet all in a vast
pattern, covering three-quarters of
the sky, converging to single point
in the east.
1.-THE power of it is unbelievable,
men are shaken by just the seeing
of it. 1t staggers comprehension; it
is not manmade. 1t is the power of
nations, of whole peoples, of races
of men. Man, men, individuals, they
do not exist = This is the terrible,
elementary force of the universe,
inmutable, unchanging. And still
they come!"