World War: IN THE AIR: New Arc

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The R. A. F. undertook its longest operational flight of the war last week—nearly 1,800 miles to and from Cracow and Katowice, Poland, where leaflets were dropped. Hard-boiled Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal does not have many illusions about winning friends and influencing people with pamphlets. The raid had more tangible fruits in the way of experience.

For one thing, the communiqué announcing the raid did not specify what type of bomber was used. The latest Vickers-Armstrong Wellington bombers claim an effective range of 2,000 miles, with 2,500 pounds of bombs, but if they actually can make such a range, it is curious that they have not been used on missions to Austria, whither many of Germany's war industries have been moved. This raid may have been pulled off by U. S. Flying Fortresses.

Whatever the planes, the lesson of the raid was simple. Its radius described an arc which included all of Germany proper, part of Poland's once-vaunted "industrial triangl," all of Polish Silesia, with its iron and coal mines and munitions factories, all of Bohemia-Moravia, the whole of Austria, Hungary as far as Budapest, and, at the very edge of the arc's lower end, Rome.