Sorties Into Supremacy

The Allies established what they considered to be final air supremacy above Tunisia last week. American airmen, operating separately and with the British, demonstrated a dash and proficiency which their groundling fellows had yet to match.

It was an almost incredibly active week. On one day 1,000 sorties were made (a sortie is a single attack by a single plane). The next day more than 1,000 were made. The offensive was the greatest the whole North African theater had seen. Allied supremacy advanced with the ground troops, as they captured important Axis fields at Sousse, El Djem and Kairouan.

The tactical air force operating against enemy armed forces, and particularly against the Luftwaffe, had such a week as made the Allied pilots gloat. Said Lieut. Colonel Graham West, describing the destruction of German dive bombers: "It was just the kind of thing every one of our flyers dreamed about but never believed would come--a chance to really tear into a bunch of Stukas and give them the works."

The strategic air force, operating against enemy supply lines, continued to bomb ports both on the sending and receiving ends of Axis supply, but they also bombed and claimed to have put out of action two Italian cruisers, the Trieste and Gorizia, as they sat in La Maddalena harbor, Sardinia.

The week did not mean that no more German planes would fly over Tunisia or that no more Allied men would be killed by German bombs. But it did mean a happy reversal of the refrain of France, Crete and Burma: "Where are our planes?"

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