Block-Busters on Genoa

As if to point up the offensive plans of the Allies in the Mediterranean theater, British bombers last week took the high road to Italy over the Alps, blasted the great port of Genoa with many two-ton bombs. They made the 1,400-mile round trip on two successive nights, left 27 acres of the dock area, large parts of the industrial and business sections in flaming ruins. The Air Ministry termed the attacks "Genoa's heaviest of this war."

The raid was the sixth "in force" on northern Italy since Oct. 22 (TIME, Nov. 2). The British lost 18 planes in all six raids. These were the price of heavily damaging 1,000 acres of harbor area, with two drydocks and facilities for handling 8,000,000 tons of shipping annually--shipping which in war has supplied Rommel's Panzers in Africa and Germany's air bases on Sicily. The British airmen, returning through the rain, snow and ice of the Alps after their hazardous flight, had reason to be satisfied.

While the British bombed Italy by night, American Flying Fortresses kept up their steady schedule of attack on Nazi arsenals in Occupied France. They blasted targets at Brest, the Nazis' Atlantic U-boat nest, where they shot down four Nazi fighters, lost one of their own fighter escort. Next day they struck at the factory-studded area around Lille where they had already done much damage in the raid four weeks ago (TIME, Oct. 19). This week, while other Allied bombers pasted Le Havre, U.S. forces made their first raid on St. Nazaire's big submarine base where strong defenses cost the loss of three Fortresses in the longest operational flight yet undertaken by U.S. airmen.

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