The Cost Goes Up

The sweep and tempo of Allied air attacks on Axis Europe increased last week. Bombers from Britain were over France and the Low Countries; over Czecho-Slovakia, East Prussia, the Baltic seacoast, southern and northwestern Ger many; over factories making planes, tanks, dyes, submarine parts, aircraft motors, artillery, ammunition. Russian four-motored bombers roared out of the dark ness over Poland to batter the power stations and railroad centers at Koenigsberg, in East Prussia; and the machine-tool plants, warehouses, chemical factories and shipyards at Danzig on the Baltic.

As the attacks increased in weight, the cost rose. In night raids on Pilsen and Mannheim, the R.A.F. lost 55 bombers--nearly 10% of the raiding force. The R.A.F. is pleased when losses run as low as 3% to 5%, as they recently have. It begins to worry when losses approach 10%, the officially accepted dividing line between profitable and wasteful operations. At points which the Germans chose to defend strongly, they demonstrated last week that their ack-ack and fighter protection was sufficient to cause the R.A.F. real concern.

In a daylight raid on Bremen, American losses were also high--16 bombers. The percentage was not announced, but up to last week no more than 133 American bombers had ever been over any one target in Europe. A few London correspondents noted that the U.S. Air Forces in Britain were training their daylight crews in night flying, deduced that daylight bombing was to be abandoned or subordinated to night bombing.

The fact: Army airmen are more than ever convinced that daylight, precision bombing is worth while, plan to intensify the day raids with more and bigger bombers. The crews are brushing up on flying in the dark so that they can approach their targets in early dawn or leave them just at dusk. American crews thus can keep the advantages of bombing in daylight, have darkness to shield them from enemy fighters during half the round trip.

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