OVER BERLIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 116, 13 November 1939, Page 7

OVER BERLIN

BRITISH PLANES

WARM BUT INEFFECTIVE ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE

"FLYING ONIONS" SEEN

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

RUGBY, November 11.

Details beyond the terse account given in official reports concerning R.A.F. flights over Berlin are how revealed.;

The first pilot to make the flight said he was over the German capital. He came down, checked his position, and found he had made no mistake in his calculations. A searchlight picked him up, but there was no active opposition.

The aircraft crews were using oxygen, and the|r special work exposed them to icy blasts. Their hands and feet became numbed and they had to-come down into the warmer atmosphere below. There was a' warm reception. .

The Berlin defence plastered the aircraft with every gun it could, bring to bear. But the organisation must have been badly shaken. Not one shot went home.

Another pilot flew into the beam of a searchlight "to see what would happen." Nothing did. Pilots report the appearance of "flying onions" during the flight over Germany. A string of material of the size and appearance of a string of onions is shot into the air where it remains in the presumed course of the aircraft, with the intention of setting it on fire.