OVER BERLIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 November 1939, Page 5

OVER BERLIN

FLIGHT BY BRITISH AIRMEN INEFFECTUAL GERMAN GUNFIRE. USE OF "FLYING ONIONS." (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, November 11. Details beyond the terse account given in official reports concerning the R.A.F. flights over Berlin are now revealed. The first pilot to make the (light 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. Aircraft crows were using, oxygen, and their special work exposed them to icy blasts. Their hands and feet became numbed and they had to come down into 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 searchlight beams “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 in the air. where it remains in the presumed course of the aircraft, with the intention of setting it on fire.