PILOT’S STORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 September 1940, Page 5

PILOT’S STORY

PART IN RAID ON BERLIN TARGET ACCURATELY LOCATED. LARGE GASWORKS BOMBED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 24. Broadcasting tonight, ?. 21-year-old bomber pilot of the Royal Air Force described his experiences in last night’s raids on and round Berlin. He blew up part of a gasworks in a north-east district of the city. He said: “This was my twenty-fifth raid over Germany, and it was about the most successful. Our squadron had been over Berlin before, but I hadn’t. They had sent me to Hamm' instead, and my crew were a bit fed up about that. We were told at about 5 o’clock yesterday that the Berlin show was on, and we knew it was going to be on .a pretty large scale. “Our particular target was a large gasworks to the north-east of Berlin, about four or five miles from the centre of the city. There is a railway running right alongside it, a large open space to the east, and a lake about a mile to the north-east of it, and those were our three landmarks. “As we neared Berlin a cloud beneath us closed up, but over the city itself it was quite clear; in fact, the conditions were pretty well ideal for night bombing. The trip out was entirely without incident, and we were absolutely on our course because through gaps in the cloud we were able to pin-point ourselves on a number of places along the route. There was some gunfire round towns to the south, of course, but nobody bothered us. FLARES AND BARRAGE. “The first sign of any real activity came as we approached Berlin. We had got within 20 miles of it when suddenly five flares appeared in the sky. They were being dropped by other bombers that had got there before us, and no soon had that happened than up went a barrage. As we got nearer the number of flares increased, and I counted 10, but as we were coming away after the bombing there were well over 20. “We could judge roughly the shape of the city from the gunfire round the outskirts even before we got over Berlin, and the flares made it light enough to pick out important features. We could see some of the others bombing, and to the north-east there was a small chain of fire burning. I said to my navigator, ‘We will make for those and see what is to be seen there.’ “As we approached we could see that these fires were just a little south of our actual target, that was a bit of luck for us, as it meant we were able to make our tracks in an actual run-up on the target. One usually has to make a dummy run first, but on this occasion we were able to bomb the first time with only a few minor corrections. “BLOWN EVERYTHING UP!’’ “At first we thought we had missed, because we saw only normal bombing bursts, but about 10 seconds later there was a violent explosion in the centre of the stick. I think the wireless operator noticed it first, he was looking out through the astro hatch and he called out, ‘lt’s a beauty. It’s blown everything up!’ He said later that he saw a flash, and then a great pillar of fire seemed to come up in the air. “All this time we had been getting a certain amount of fire from heavy guns on the ground, but nothing to worry us much, though away through the cloud we saw another of our bombers caught in searchlights and come under very heavy fire. As we left we could see other people bombing our fires. There were practically continuous salvos of bombs falling in various parts of the city. “It was the biggest show I have ever seen. The bomb-aimer said he counted at least 20 fires burning, and you could still see them 35 miles away, after which we ran into the cloud again, and our view was obscured. We were the second back to the base on our return, but all the others returned within an hour or so and everyone reported that he had dropped his bombs.”