THE BLIND SPOT ON THE BOMBSIGHT
The Blind Spot On The Bombsight DOUGHBOYS on the Western Front have come to the cynical conclusion that the Norden bombsight has a blind spot. Picking their way through the rubble of what were...
...The growing cynicism of the GI's in the light of these and other developments is giving Army officials a real headache...
...The doughboys are getting suspicious and a lot ' of sarcastic remarks like the one about the Norden bombsight are floating around...
...Virtually all factories around them lay in ruins, but Ford and Courtald were going full blast, turning out materials to be used against our troops...
...Recently The Progressive reported that 2 great war plants in the Cologne area, the American-owned Ford works and the British-controlled Courtald textile plant, stood unscarred in the otherwise complete devastation...
...Shortage of newsprint, you know...
...A Chicago Sun man reported that "a rumor is circulating that the reason the Allies did not bomb the Wagonfabrik plant is because 6 members of the company's board of directors are Englishmen...
...This, of course, is impossible to verify here and seems extremely unlikely, but the rumor nevertheless is important because the Yanks believe it...
...The correspondent talked with a combat officer who had led his riflemen into this area...
...If they find the Ruhr Valley across the Rhine in the same condition there's really going to be a stink...
...Hiking through the labyrinth of worksheds the GI's could find no signs that they had been touched by Allied explosives, although the war materials produced by the plants gave them top target priorities...
...In one region, the correspondent reported that there were dozens of war factories which appeared to be in good condition...
...The general belief is that these factories are partially owned by British and American capital...
...and the Uerdingen plants of the Krupp and I. G. Farbindustrie empires...
...the daily papers...
...There have been other equally damning reports, which have been kept out of...
...A group of GI's recently stumbled on to the great Wagon-fabrik-Uerdingen (comparable to our Pullman Standard Car Co...
...It is one of their chief topics of conversation...
...The doughboys are asking: what about all those stories in the newspapers that Nazi production had been smashed ?" he said...
...He said his men are wondering about what they found...
...Describing this plant, the correspondent said there are 20 to 30 buildings, "each about 75 yards long and filled to capacity with machinery, unfinished tanks, and railroad cars...
...There are hundreds of drills, lathes, giant power presses, dies, furnaces, cranes—all machines of mass production, all well-oiled and in excellent condition...
...This was the stuff of the Nazi war effort and there was plenty of it...
...Picking their way through the rubble of what were once German cities they have come upon wide areas untouched by the air-borne blockbusters...
...These areas are occupied by large war industries turning out materials for the German Army...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 15
