BARRAGE DEFIED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 December 1940, Page 5

BARRAGE DEFIED

GALLANT WORK OF BRITISH AIR CREWS ONE PLANE HAS NARROW ESCAPE. SHELL BURST JUST UNDERNEATH (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, December 21. The weather steadily improved during the night in the raid on Berlin and soon after 10 o’clock some pilots found it fairly good, while others had their work made more difficult by ground haze. But at 5 a.m. there was no cloud and the moon shone brightly. Visibility could not have been better. The chief objective of the night were factories, goods yards and railway stations in the capital. Early in the night an aircraft factory was attacked. Fires were left by the first bomber and its successors and a very satisfactory list of fires and subsequent explosions were caused by the pilots who came low over this target during a period of well over an hour. In order to attack this factory it

was necessary to penetrate a particularly heavy barrage. A burst came just below one aircraft and as a member of the crew said, “gave us a deuce of a shock, as our last bombs were still in the rack.” Shrapnel was bursting around and the target was now at its best. The captain kept control and and held the plane on its course till the bombing was finished. He turned for home and landed without further trouble. It was only when the aircraft was on the ground that he and the crew realised what a narrovv escape they had had. BERLIN REPORT BERLIN, December 21. The radio stated that the main feature of the R.A.F. raid on Berlin was damage to residential districts, in which some buildings were entirely destroyed and the front and back of a cathedral damaged. “We shot down two planes,” the radio claimed.