NEWS OF THE WEEKS
THE long arm of the home-based Bomber Command has been I stretched far to the South during the last eight days to lend a hand in the combined operations which have their centre in Egypt. In the two heavy blows dealt at Genoa by moonlight, in the bombard- ments of Savona and Turin, and the successful day and night attacks on Milan, the R.A.F. were striking both at the supplies assembled for transpo-t to Libya and the sources of those supplies. The long- range operations on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, inflicting severe damage on Axis material and Italian morale, cost the R.A.F. only eleven aircraft. An immediate result is that the Italians are clamouring for more fighter support for their industrial region, but Germany is already maintaining a larger defensive force in her own hard-hit territory than she can well afford Captain Harold Balfour said last Sunday that the Allied air forces on the western front alone are containing nearly half the operational strength of German air- force fighters. The enemy dare not weaken the defences of the Ruhr, Saar and Aachen districts, where our air attacks are estimated u have reduced steel production by 1,25o,000 tons a year, and coal production at the rate of 29,000,000 tons a year. It was a sound plan to switch the attacks over to Italy's greatest industrial centres, and to time them when there is the maximum concentration of material awaiting despatch to the Egyptian front. The developed bombing power of the Unite 4 Nations is having an effect which will increasingly be felt in Russia, in Egypt and wherever the Axis forces are engaged.
