Gathering Storm

As the war of nerves raged on, General Dwight D. Eisenhower launched a new air campaign against Germany. He assigned officers of his staff to broadcast his first direct orders to the underground fighters of Occupied Europe. Patriots were warned to listen carefully to their speaker's voice, to recognize it in the future, and never to by fooled by Nazi announcers.

As his first operational instruction, the Allied Supreme Commander told underground workers to be prepared to give Allied troops the fullest possible information on German troop movements, the numbers of men and the specific organizations involved. Other items: the location of supply and ammunition dumps, the districts that have been mined or booby-trapped, the bridges that have been prepared by the Germans for demolition.

In his message, booming out to the enslaved Continent in six languages, General Eisenhower told the men & women of the underground that he was counting on them "as part of the great force now being marshaled to inflict the final defeat on the Germans and bring about the final liberation of your countries."

Interim Threats. Meanwhile the Nazis-were busy announcing to the world that Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol and the Port of London were "bristling--positively crammed to the bursting point--with all manner of invasion equipment." The German radio also threatened to bomb all these concentrations into oblivion.

German planes did venture over England four nights running. But their mission was seemingly reconnaissance in force rather than wholehearted attack. Fifteen out of 100 Nazi raiders were shot down in the biggest of the operations. Whatever information these reconnaissance raids could bring in was gratefully received. The Nazis were up to their ears in guessing games about the gathering invasion storm. Their Paris radio said that the Allies were massing "50 divisions and 80,000 airborne troops" for the invasion. Neutral Swedish sources went into even greater detail, presumably on German information. They said that the Allies had piled up some 50 British and Empire divisions in the United Kingdom, 40 to 50 U.S. divisions, front-line air strength of nearly 10,000 planes, 10,000,000 tons of shipping.

Interim War. If the great invasion storm was still a threat, however imminent, war in the west was real enough to the men already fighting it.

After a lull during vile weather, the air war against Germany picked up in full force as 1,500 U.S. planes attacked Berlin and Brunswick, forcing the Luftwaffe fighter command into a savage battle which cost 125 Nazi fighters against 26 U.S. bombers and 19 fighters.

The Allies immediately followed up with the biggest day yet: 6,000 planes dropped more than 8,000 tons of bombs in invasion territory along a 150-mile strip from Brittany to Belgium. A force of 250 U.S. Fortresses and Liberators, assigned to hit airfields around Paris, took along an unprecedented escort of 1,000 fighter planes, spoiling for a fight; almost no Nazi planes took to the air. Next day, while all but a few bombers stayed at home, 3,000 Allied fighters swirled out over western Europe, striking primarily at Nazi transport facilities. The fighters piled up a record of destruction that included 300 railway locomotives, ran into almost no German fighters, but lost 57, chiefly to AA. The thinned-out Luftwaffe was still trying to hoard its reserves--and waiting.

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