BOMB DAMAGE IN GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 188, 7 May 1941, Page 7

BOMB DAMAGE IN GERMANY

Accounts By American

Observers

LONDON, April 1.

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 has 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 without 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 city, was. along with the Heinkel 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 iiad 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. “When I drove round it recently (in December).” Shirer says, “the great machines were humming and no damage at all was visible from the outside. I have not seen the Krupp plant since the British concentrated on it iu No vember, bur an American correspondent whose judgment I trust, was amazed to find that little damage had been done.”

Shirer'* 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 see as much bomb damage as I saw in an afternoon’s drive round London. I believe that Hamburg ami Bremen had been thoroughly pasted, but I have not seen them. I travelled pretty extensively through the Ruhr, and I was astonished that there was so little visible damage."

If these two accounts are correct, then Germany has not yet felt the weight of the R.A.F. Heavier bombers, able to carry greater bomb loads and with a greater range, and therefore able to stay over their objective longer, are now going into commission, and it still remains to be seen how Berliners will stand up to it when they really sample what London has taken.