South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 29 May 1943
The Merry Month
The merry month becomes more and more of a mockery for the Axis as the Royal Air Force, with its American partner lending a precise hand, continues to increase havoc in Germany and Italy. It is revelry for which the Nazis and Fascists have little stomach, and the blithely scattered “petals” from the day and night bombers of the Allies make a carpet of mournful ruin throughout the proud cities of the foe. This sort of Maying is vastly different from that of 1940, when the German army was rampaging almost at will through Europe. It carries not only weight, but promise. These things are not haphazardly done. They fit into the Casablanca plan, though neither Hitler nor Mussolini can yet descry exactly how.
It would be bad enough for them if it were sufficient to count the slain and clear the debris, but graver affairs lie behind this maelstrom of bombing. In the face of this grim prospect they can only make uneasy defensive dispositions; moves in the game ordered without conviction and giving no compensating sense of security. Goebbels plays up once more the somewhat threadbare story of the Atlantic Wall to bolster German morale, while in Italy attempts are made to infuse something of Britain’s post-Dunkirk spirit into a people whose heart has never been in the war, and who have still less liking for the undertaking now that it has become so real, earnest and depressingly near.
It is a tribute to British resilience that we can now repay with so much interest the air warfare which the enemy visited upon us at the height of his power. The aircraft industry responded splendidly to an extremely critical call, and the Service itself has never looked back since equipment was provided to enable it to expand on the lines so shrewdly laid down before the war. The R.A.F. is now raiding on a scale which makes the efforts of the Luftwaffe (and they were bitter experiences for us at the time) seem paltry. As Sir Archibald Sinclair has said, these great raids attain the scope and dimensions of battles, and so far Bomber Command seems to have done a good deal more than hold its own in these heavy offensive clashes. The assault on Dortmund, a classic, even according to the R.A.F.’s impressive standards, was quickly followed by a new and crushing blow at Dusseldorf. These mounting bomb tonnages must be the despair of the German defences. Even when they inflict losses which are actually if not proportionately heavy, the Nazis purchase no relief from the hammering. And on top of this ordeal Mr. Churchill, never a maker of idle promises, undertakes that greater punishment is to come. To our present mastery is evidently to be further emphasised until “by the end of a certain period” our superiority is decisive.
In the meantime, with the Americans playing a leading part, in the Mediterranean theatre we have, for the time being at any rate, gained the whip hand. Italy is getting a merciless drubbing which is doing much to make up for her long enjoyed immunity from all but long distance raids by planes based in this country. From the wholesale destruction of Axis planes in Sicily and Sardinia it is clear that the first counter to our assault has been beaten down. But it is doubtful whether this means that Hitler is leaving southern Italy in the lurch. Self-interest will impel the Luftwaffe not to concede such an advantage without another challenge. The Axis is fighting for its life now and the Luftwaffe must soon show its hand or go down in the general debacle.