LONDON, June 3, 1944 (UP) -- United States Flying Fortresses and Liberators twice hammered the Pas de Calais and Boulogne areas of the French invasion coast Saturday while at least 2,000 other Allied warplanes swept over Northern France and Belgium in the greatest Nazi hunt since the pre-invasion blitz opened nearly two months ago.
These attacks were part of a great twenty-four hour offensive by some 4,000 Allied planes to smash Nazi Atlantic Wall defenses.
In a thirty-six hour period, Adolf Hitler's fortifications and installations along and behind the French invasion coast were ripped and torn with an estimated 8,000 tons of bombs.
Nearly 1,000 heavy bombers and fighters took part in the great double United States Eighth Air Force blows to blast gaps in Nazi coast defenses for Allied invasion armies. Only one fighter was lost.
In their explosive dragnet, American, British and Allied fighters and fighter bombers caught railway tracks, highway bridges, radio stations, fuel dumps, airfields, warehouses, military convoys and lone dispatch riders.
As the Air Ministry announced that British planes were completely wrecking the entire German radio network in Northwest Europe, Allied planes, some with rockets, roamed over hundreds of square miles of France and Belgium attacking isolated German targets.
The mighty United States Eighth Air Force assault followed a 3,000 ton RAF night attack on the French invasion coast, on the great Trappes freight assembly yards on the outskirts of Paris and on the German chemical center of Leverkusen. Seven Nazi planes were downed in the Trappes attack. Seventeen British aircraft were missing from all operations.
