BERLIN’S WINTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 August 1941, Page 6

BERLIN’S WINTER

OPENED BY BRITISH BOMBERS DETAILS OF TREMENDOUS ONSLAUGHT. EXPLOSIONS AND FIRES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.18 a.m.) RUGBY, August 3. Berlin’s winter began in earnest last night, for there were already enough hours of darkness to bring a really strong force of four and two-engined bombers over the German capital. The German radio described this heavy attack as the work of only a few isolated aircraft.

“Cloudy over the North. Sea, the sky was clear over Central Germany, states the Air Ministry news service, “and though the moon was setting and gave no help to our aircraft as they approached their target, the crews ; dropped flares, saw many landmarks and aimed their heaviest bombs at the ' heart of Berlin. The attack was made . from all directions and as soon as the ’ first bomb had fallen the gunfire began. Berlin had a greatly increased number of searchlights. The pilot of a Stirling bomber said: “We saw search- , lights when we were about thirty miles from Berlin. When we got nearer, ■ we reckoned there were about three hundred. We sneaked in between them, arrived over the outskirts' of Berlin at , 1.30 a.m. and bombed at 1.54 a.m. In that time we had made a circular tour;' over most of central Berlin. There were a good number of bombers over . the city at the same time as ourselves, so the ground defences could not concentrate on one aircraft. While we were flying round, vze saw a lot of incendiary bombs go down in the west of the city. Our own bombs burst on the meeting points of two sets of railway linos. My rear-gunner said he could see the lines quite clearly in the light of bomb flashes. As we were coming away, we saw one of the new bombs go off. I had never seen one before. I caught sight of the explosion out of the corner of my eye and when I first saw it I thought it was a flare about a thousand feet away. Then I realised that it was far below, on the ground. My rear-gunner called me to tell me he had a full view. It was terrific.” An official communique issued early in the afternoon stated: “Enemy aircraft dropped bombs on a place on the south-east coast. These did some damage and caused a small number of casualties. An enemy bomber was shot down in the Channel by one of our fighters this afternoon.” HAMBURG’S SHARE ATTACKED AS FIERCELY AS BERLIN. KIEL SHIPBUILDING YARDS BLASTED. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 11.25 a.m.) RUGBY, August 3. One of the new bombs was carried in an aircraft piloted by a wing commander who went to Berlin last night to celebrate, as he put it, the conclusion of five months in command of a bomber squadron. A few hours after the attack, .he handed over to his successor and took up the new job of group captain in command of a bomber station. The captain of a four-engined bomber—a flight lieutenant who holds the D.F.C.—said he, had no difficulty in finding the centre of the city. “Shells were bursting only a few feet beneath us,” he said, “but we got through. My rear-gunner told me he could see clouds of black smoke coming up after our bombs hit their mark. Our flares had lighted up the buildings at which we were aiming.” _ „ Other crews reported a fire which “heaved like a volcano,” and “three high explosions, with a deep red glow over the city, when we were already eighty miles away.” Hamburg was as fiercely attacked as Berlin and great damage was done to docks, railways and industries. There are good reports of an equally heavy attack on shipbuilding yards at Kiel.

In all it was a night of hard and sustained effort by the Bomber Command. rewarded by all the familiar signs of widespread destruction in three of the main centres of Germany’s strength.