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Meanwhile the British Air Command started something it had not tried in all the eight months of World War II: night bombing of military and industrial objectives in Germany. British Wellingtons, Whitleys and Hampdens raided far into Germany. Oil storage tanks in Hamburg and Bremen were destroyed, communications bombed up & down the Rhineland.
In one raid the British claimed to have wrought havoc over a 200-mile stretch of Rhineland between Dusseldorf and Mann heim. Their special objectives were gasoline tanks and refineries, the fuel supply which Germany needs for her planes and motorized equipment. Such attacks in vited retaliation, but the British knew they would soon be bombed anyhow.
British bombers did their raiding from England, instead of basing in France. This kept a force at home to bomb German troops that might be landed in Britain, and made the problem of supplying them easier. But the longer flights imposed extra strain on pilots and cut down the frequency of their raids.
Doing most of their bombing at night and having fewer planes in air, the Allied losses of ships were probably fewer than those of the Germans. They officially claimed that their losses were only a quarter to a third of the Germans'. The German claims reversed the relative losses. Opposing claims: Allies, 1,000; Germans, 1,500.
Double Duty. The job of the R. A. F. in France was directed by Air Marshal-Arthur Sheridan Barratt, and his two Vice Marshals, Charles Hubert Blount (pronounced Blunt) and Patrick Henry Lyon Playfair.
Baldish, pug-faced "Ugly" Barratt has been chief of the R. A. F. in France since last January, when, as a sop to Army chiefs who demanded control of the air arm, the Air Ministry picked him as the best expert on Army cooperation problems. Under him are two commands, Army Cooperation and the Advance Striking Force. One cooperates with the British Expeditionary Force, the other with the French Air Force.
Last fortnight, as Germany's fighting machine swept into the Low Countries, the Army Cooperation components under Vice Marshal Blount went into long awaited action, speeding ahead of Lord Gort's advancing columns, searching out German mechanized units and dropping the light bombs they carry in the stub wings below their main wings, pbo" ∧Traphing, ground strafing with their L.ree machine guns although Messerschmitts and Junkers blackened the sky. Their chief targets were the dive bombers which systematically strafed advancing columns of Lord Gort's Army and sometimes machine gunned refugees to slow up the advance by littering the roads with dead, wounded and the wreckage of their belongings.