3,000 Sorties Smash Nazi Defence Plane Plants
Title
3,000 Sorties Smash Nazi Defence Plane Plants
Description
A newspaper article about bombing several aircraft factories. It is annotated 'No 7 17/18 Aug 1943'.
Temporal Coverage
Spatial Coverage
Language
Type
Format
Three newspaper cuttings
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
SWilliamsonF1311249v10003-0011
Transcription
[inserted] No 7 17/18 Aug 1943 [/inserted]
3,000 sorties smash Nazi defence plane plants
GREATEST ANGLO-U.S. MASS ATTACK IN 24 HOURS
By BASIL CARDEW
[indecipherable rubber stamp]
IN the first full-scale two way attack on Europe, aimed primarily at destroying Germany's fighters, their airfields, and factories producing the planes, the Allied air forces have just made between 2,500 and 3,000 sorties in the space of 24 hours.
[map]
This tremendous air offensive covers the day and night of August 17-18, and was mounted both from Britain and the Mediterranean.
Taken in conjunction with the American raid on the great Messerschmitt factory at Weiner Neustadt, 30 miles from Vienna, at the weekend, the latest Flying Fortress assault on the Regensburg factory in southern Germany is believed to have partially stopped production of the very types of aircraft the Germans will need to repulse a Second Front.
REGENSBURG BLAZES
Short-range fighters are the spearhead of defence.
Reconnaissance pictures taken four hours after the Regensburg attack show that the Fortress bombs were accurate and caused great havoc.
At least four large buildings were still on fire when the spy plane passed over. All the six main workshops were destroyed, five of them severely.
The main assembly shop, the gun-testing range, large new shops that had recently been erected, the boiler house, office buildings, and several other small unidentified buildings or the great plant have been damaged or burned out, in some cases completely destroyed.
The target at Regensburg was Germany's second largest aircraft factory, makers of the latest type of Messerschmitt single-engined fighter planes. It was to have been the main production unit left to the enemy for its fighters after the plant at Weiner Neustadt, which was producing a third of the Messerschmitt programme, had been partially knocked out.
MIGHTY BLOW
Bomber Command's contribution to this onslaught on Germany's first-line defences against an imminent Allied invasion followed a few hours after the Regensburg raid, when a mighty force of home-based, long-range aircraft heavily attacked in bright moonlight the armament and radio development establishment at Peenemunde, 60 miles north-west of Stettin, on Tuesday night, and dropped 1,500 tons of bombs.
This large, secret factory produces the equipment for the German fighters that are at the moment No. 1 target for the Allies.
The bombers had to fly on as long a route as that to Berlin to hammer the factory, and they encountered many of the night-fighter squadrons and ground defences that have been greatly strengthened recently for the protection of the German capital. But the raid was devastatingly successful, although it cost 41 aircraft.
The rest of the 2,500-3,000 sorties
[page break]
OUR Stirling dropped on its starboard side and began to lose height. Luckily the bomb-aimer had just come up from his position and was sitting by me, so that he was able to help me to drag on the control and pull the Stirling level.
"All the way back it was difficult to control the aircraft. The bomb-aimer and I would get the Stirling level on its course and then down would slip the starboard wing and we would swing off our course.
"The flight-engineer helped matters by running three engines off the starboard tank, so lightening the starboard side of the aircraft. When we were near base I lowered the under-carriage and flaps and tried out how I could handle her like that. She answered to the control perfectly, and I glided down to a safe landing on the runway."
The Lancasters which attacked transformer and switching stations in North Italy on the night of July 15-16 did not return to England immediately, but, as before, when a force of Lancasters bombed the radio-location factory at Friedrichshafen, they used airfields in North Africa as an advanced base.
On Saturday night they returned
3,000 sorties smash Nazi defence plane plants
GREATEST ANGLO-U.S. MASS ATTACK IN 24 HOURS
By BASIL CARDEW
[indecipherable rubber stamp]
IN the first full-scale two way attack on Europe, aimed primarily at destroying Germany's fighters, their airfields, and factories producing the planes, the Allied air forces have just made between 2,500 and 3,000 sorties in the space of 24 hours.
[map]
This tremendous air offensive covers the day and night of August 17-18, and was mounted both from Britain and the Mediterranean.
Taken in conjunction with the American raid on the great Messerschmitt factory at Weiner Neustadt, 30 miles from Vienna, at the weekend, the latest Flying Fortress assault on the Regensburg factory in southern Germany is believed to have partially stopped production of the very types of aircraft the Germans will need to repulse a Second Front.
REGENSBURG BLAZES
Short-range fighters are the spearhead of defence.
Reconnaissance pictures taken four hours after the Regensburg attack show that the Fortress bombs were accurate and caused great havoc.
At least four large buildings were still on fire when the spy plane passed over. All the six main workshops were destroyed, five of them severely.
The main assembly shop, the gun-testing range, large new shops that had recently been erected, the boiler house, office buildings, and several other small unidentified buildings or the great plant have been damaged or burned out, in some cases completely destroyed.
The target at Regensburg was Germany's second largest aircraft factory, makers of the latest type of Messerschmitt single-engined fighter planes. It was to have been the main production unit left to the enemy for its fighters after the plant at Weiner Neustadt, which was producing a third of the Messerschmitt programme, had been partially knocked out.
MIGHTY BLOW
Bomber Command's contribution to this onslaught on Germany's first-line defences against an imminent Allied invasion followed a few hours after the Regensburg raid, when a mighty force of home-based, long-range aircraft heavily attacked in bright moonlight the armament and radio development establishment at Peenemunde, 60 miles north-west of Stettin, on Tuesday night, and dropped 1,500 tons of bombs.
This large, secret factory produces the equipment for the German fighters that are at the moment No. 1 target for the Allies.
The bombers had to fly on as long a route as that to Berlin to hammer the factory, and they encountered many of the night-fighter squadrons and ground defences that have been greatly strengthened recently for the protection of the German capital. But the raid was devastatingly successful, although it cost 41 aircraft.
The rest of the 2,500-3,000 sorties
[page break]
OUR Stirling dropped on its starboard side and began to lose height. Luckily the bomb-aimer had just come up from his position and was sitting by me, so that he was able to help me to drag on the control and pull the Stirling level.
"All the way back it was difficult to control the aircraft. The bomb-aimer and I would get the Stirling level on its course and then down would slip the starboard wing and we would swing off our course.
"The flight-engineer helped matters by running three engines off the starboard tank, so lightening the starboard side of the aircraft. When we were near base I lowered the under-carriage and flaps and tried out how I could handle her like that. She answered to the control perfectly, and I glided down to a safe landing on the runway."
The Lancasters which attacked transformer and switching stations in North Italy on the night of July 15-16 did not return to England immediately, but, as before, when a force of Lancasters bombed the radio-location factory at Friedrichshafen, they used airfields in North Africa as an advanced base.
On Saturday night they returned
Collection
Citation
“3,000 Sorties Smash Nazi Defence Plane Plants,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed May 23, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/38139.
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