BOMBS ON REICH

Auckland Star, 12 May 1941, Page 6

BOMBS ON REICH

DAMAGE TO INDUSTRY WHAT U.S. OBSERVERS SAW LONDON, May 2. According to two Americans who were recently in Germany, British bombing of Germany has not been on anything like the scale of the German bombing of Britain. William Shirer, European radio commentator for the Columbia Broadcasting Service, writing in the "Sunday Express," says that Berlin itself lias received comparatively little damage. When he left, the British had not made any concerted attack upon the heart of the city. A stranger arriving, for the first time, he says, could walk for hours through the business and residential sections with-out seeing a damaged building. Probably no more than 500 dwellings had been hit.

Most of the British attacks had been on factories which skirt the city, but, with the exception of two or three small plants, none seemed to have been seriously crippled. The great Siemens electrical works, north-west of the citj% was, along with the Hcinkel and Henschel aeroplane works, the most important target in Berlin and one which the R.A.F. had repeatedly tried to hit. On a few nights it had been hit and damage done to a machine shop here and a storage room there, but it was doubtful if armament production had been lowered by more than 5 per cent in any one day.

Shirer's views regarding the bombing of Germany are supported by another American who has just arrived in England from Germany. He said: "Though I was able to drive through Germany, Holland. Belgium and France unescorted, I did not sec as much bomb damage as I saw in an afternoon's drive round London. I believe that Hambm-g and Bremen had been thoroughly pasted, but I have not seen them. I travelled pretty extensively through the Ruhr and 1 was astonished that there was so little visible damage."