HIGHLY CONCENTRATED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 4, 5 July 1943, Page 5

HIGHLY CONCENTRATED

THE RAID ON COLOGNE

Rec. 11.15 a.m. RUGBY, July 4. R.A.F. bombs sent smoke clouds rolling up two miles in the Kalk and Deutz districts of Cologne by the end^of last night's very heavy attack. This morning, eight hours after the raid, the ! pilot of a reconnaissance aircraft reI ported clouds of smoke from, fires which were still burning. Night photographs also confirm the crews' reports that the bombing had been highly concentrated. i Kalk and Deutz are on the east bank of the Rhine, and, with Mulheim, form a compact area of about five square miles, fully half consisting of industrial railways. Some of Germany's most important factories are in this area. One Halifax pilot said that the black, unburning shape of the river looked I as if someone had drawn his foot across the fires, making a distinct line. Others said that the glow from the Cologne fu'es was like a false dawn which they could see many miles away. The Germans began by defending the city fiercely. "They had massed their searchlights into three big cones," one pilot said, "and were pouring, a curtain of flak up into the spaces between them." Later arrivals found that the defence had slackened off considerably, and by the end of the attack it was comparatively ineffective. "We ! simply pounded them and flattened them out," said a pilot. Many night fighters were out, though perhaps not as many as on recent nights: A German fighter which : attacked a Halifax broke up in the air after, being'hit repeatedly.- The attack lasted three-quarters of an hour. Pilot Officer H. Taylor, an experi- , enced Rhodesian pilot, who was on his 56th trip, said he had never seen such a wonderful concentration of aircraft. "When we were on the way to the target," he said, "there were bombers 'above and below and in front of us, and the rear-gunner could see still more following." , -