BERLIN PARALYSED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 December 1943, Page 4

BERLIN PARALYSED

BY LATEST R.A.F. ATTACK FACTORY & OTHER DISTRICTS HEAVILY HIT IN SPITE OF DESPERATE DEFENCE EFFORTS (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.15 a.m.) LONDON, December 3. Berlin is completely paralysed after last night’s great raid, says the Stockholm “Allehanda.” No daily paper has appeared and street traffic is blocked. At least 30 block-busters are stated to have been dropped. Many bombs fell around the Potsdammerplatz and the Anhalter Railway Station. Northern and southern districts, where many factories are situated, were also badly hit. The “Aftonbladet’s” Berlin correspondent reports that big fires burned in the city following on the raid, but the attack was not apparently on the scale of that of last week. Official quarters in Berlin claim that the raid was a heavy defeat for the attackers. German night fighters, they say, formed a veritable curtain between the outskirts of Berlin and the Elbe, fiercely attacking along the whole route. The British this time met quite a different opposition as compared with their last attack and paid a much heavier price, chiefly owing to the fact that the weather favoured the defenders.

(Earlier reports have made it clear that the attack was effectively pressed home, that over 1,500 tons of bombs were dropped on Berlin and that the number of British aircraft lost in the night’s operations was 41). The pilot of a Lancaster said that towards the end of the attacks, which began a few.minutes after 8 p.m. and lasted just Over half an hour, huge fires were burning fiercely and smoke reached a height of three miles. Another Lancaster pilot said that cloud covered about half the area of the capital. The wireless operator of another Lancaster, taking part in his sixth flight to Berlin, said that five minutes after his plane dropped its bombs, orange flames shot through the clouds like a huge geyser. By the time he left there was a huge area of fire buring dark red, with black smoke rising to 15,000 feet.