RAIDS ON BERLIN

Hokitika Guardian, 26 September 1940, Page 5

RAIDS ON BERLIN

PILOT’S ACCOUNT. TWENTY Bid FIRES STARTED. (Per British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Sep 21. Broadcasting on Tuesday night, v 21-yea r-o.d bonnier pilot of the K.A.E. described his experiences in mst night's raids in and around Derail. tie biew up part of a gasworks m the north-east district'of tne city, ne said; “Tins ;s my twenty-filti raid over Germany, ft is about the most successful of the whole 25. Our squadron has been at Berlin before, uut I hadn't. They had sent me to •Hamm instead, and my crew was mt fed up about that. We were told about' o o'clock yesterday that the Berlin show was on, and we knew it was going to be on a pretty large scale.- Our particular target was xne largest gasworks to the north-east t i Berlin, about four or five miles from the centre of the city. •

“There is a railway running right alongside it with a large open space to the east and a lake about a mile to the north-east of it. 'Those were oiu three landmarks. As we neared Berlin, a cloud beneath us closed up. and over the city itself was quite clear, in fact, conditions were pretty well ideal for night bombing. The trip out vva-,3 entirely without incident. We were _ absolutely on our course, because, through gaps in the cloud, vve were able to pin-point ourselves on a number of places along the route. There was some gunfire round the towns to the south of the . course, but nobody bothered us. The first sign of any real activity came as we approached Berlin. We got within twenty miles of it, and. suddenly live flares appeared in the sky. They were being dropped by other bombers that got there before us. No sooner iiacl that happened than up went the barrage. As vve got nearer, the number of flares increased I counted ten, but as vve were coming away after the bombing there well over twenty.

“We. could judge roughly the shape of the city from the gunfire around the outskirts. Even before vve got over Berlin the flares made it light enough to pick out important features. We could see some of tho others bombing, and, to the east there was a small chain of fires buin-

Ulg ' • ' “I. said to my navigator, we will make for those and see vvliat is to be seen there. As we approached, wo could see these fires vyere just a little south of our actual target, which was the large gasworks on that side oi Berlin. 'That was a bit of luck for us. It meant that wo were able to make our tracks in the actual run up on the target. One usually has to make a dummy run first, but on this occasion, were were able to bomb the first Lime with only a few minor corrections. At first, vve thought vve had missed because vve saw on-.v normal bombing bursts. About ton seconds later, there were violent explosionis in the centre of the stick, j, think the wireless operator noticed it first. He was looking out through the Astro hatch, and called out, “it’s a beauty, it’s blown everything ‘ up He said later that he saw a flash, then a great pillar of fire seemed to come up in the air. “All this time we had been getting a certain amount of fire from heavy guns on the ground, but nothing to worry us much, although away through the cloud we saw another ol our bombers caught in the searchlights and come under very heavy fire.' As we left, vve could see cKior people bombing our fires. There were practically continuous salvoes of bombs iailing in various parts of the city. It was the biggest show I have ever

seen. “The bomb aimer said that he counted as least twenty fires burning. You could j still sec them 35 miles away, after which we ran into cloud again, and the view was obscured. We were second back at the base on return, but all the others returned within an hour or so. Everyone reported he had dropped his bombs.”

RAID ON BERLIN. BERLIN, September 25. An air raid alarm, which lasted tor 170 minutes, sent Berliners scurrying to the shelters. High explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped, resulting in civilians falling victims. The raiders were, apparently fewer than they were last night. AMERICAN PRESS HIT. (Received tin's day at 10.10 a.m.) NEW YORK, September 25. The Associated Press of ’America announced that it is believed the buildings housing their London office, was struck during the night raids. Members of the staff were not injured, hut sent a message advising that they were operating temporarily under extreme difficulty. Communication, was out off for forty-seven minutes.