Berlin Tries New Defence Tactics

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 209, 3 September 1943, Page 5

Berlin Tries New Defence Tactics

LONDON, Sept. 1. It was the Bomber Command's tremendous success in recent attacks on Germany that led the Luftwaffe to try an astonishing new defence device during the great raid on Berlin last night, when enemy fighters, flying at a great height, dropped scores of flares, forming lanes of brilliant light over the clouds. As R.A.F. machines flew into these illuminated avenues German night fighters swooped down. It was a clever plan, de-igned to take the bombers by surprise, but failed because the flares illuminated the lighters also and several interceptors were destroyed. The aviation correspondent of the Daily Express says the Germans apparently scraped up every available night fighter to defend Berlin. About 1000 must have been operating on the 400mile route over enemy territory and Berlin. The No. 75 (New Zealand) Stirling Squadron was in last night’3 Berlin raid. It was the second time the squadron has been to Berlin in eight nights, this time coinciding with the fourth anniversary of the Germans’ invasion of Poland. “The gunners were reporting enemy fighters, some with their lights on and some without, from the moment we crossed the enemy coast,” a wing-com-mander reported after the raid, states the Official Wireless. “It wasn't until we got to the capital that I personally saw any of the new flares the Germans are using. About a dozen were dropped at a time. They fell slowly from a good height and burnt with a brilliant white light. They were coming down in parallel lines, and I saw at least six. My navigator a't one time counted about 40 going down even more slowly than a leaf falls through the sky. “The Germans were obviously using them to illuminate us as we went in and the whole aim of the enemy aircraft dropping them was to form a lane oi flares through whieh we would have to pass on our way to the target.”