WASHINGTON: The Commanding-General of the United States Army Air Force, General Henry Arnold, in a report to the Secretary of War declares: “It is now plain that for us the beginning has ended; for our enemies, the end has begun. To destroy the will to fight is one of the secondary objectives of our air offensive against Germany. Our primary concern, simply stated, is to make the coming invasion of Germany as economical as possible by drastically reducing the war potential of the Third Reich and its satellites.”

Illustrating to what degree this has been accomplished, General Arnold says that one Authoritative evolution characterised the effect of the attack by Fortresses on the reconstructed work in April last as equivalent to a loss of 3,000 lorries by Germany. This was accomplished with a loss of four B.17, while the German casualties came to 47 fighters destroyed, 13 probably destroyed. As a result of the almost complete destruction of the plant at Hulls in June 22 last by bombers of the Eighth Air Force three months of synthetic rubber production is estimated lost by the Axis and supplies of synthetic rubber to Sweden have altogether been stopped.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2019