Montgomery County Sentinel

Decisive Air Battle Underway

The next few months should produce something of a decision in the great struggle that impends over Germany where the Nazis are making every effort to break up the crushing aerial offensive that is steadily blasting industrial and other vital areas.

For some time German aircraft factories have been concentrating on the manufacture of fighter planes which they hope will retard the war program of the Allies.

American airmen, on a recent air raid over Germany, describe a new air weapon, which is apparently a rocket gun or concussion-firing apparatus which shoots strings of twenty-two to thirty black balls about the size of a baseball.

First Lieutenant Joseph Armanini, of California, tells of a German plane firing the strange objects "like chains." He says that "all twenty-five or thirty black balls would explode together," and while his ship was not hit, he thought it possible they "may have hit some of the other Fortresses we saw spinning down or exploding."

The string-of-balls, it is said, are fired by a rocket gun slung under the wings of Messerschmitts but their effectiveness is unknown. Our planes have met them only once.

Another innovation, put into defensive use by the Nazis, is the flying gun platform, mounted on Junkers-88 and carrying two 37-mm. or 40-mm. shell firing cannon. These twin-engined fighters fly on the fringe of Fortress formations, well out of range, and pop away without danger of return fire.

There are signs that the Reich has not been able to build fighter planes in sufficient number to meet the increasing aerial offensive. Consequently, returning bomber crews report a great variety of fighter types in use against them.

The Luftwaffe, it appears, is in the position of the RAF in the late Fall of 1940 and much depends upon the ability to develop adequate defense against the terrifying bombardment of German vital areas.

There is a decided difference, however, in that the British had the industrial resources of the United States backing them, and it was out of the reach of enemy planes.

-V.