GREAT RAID ON BERLIN

Waikato Times, Volume 193, Issue 22203, 24 November 1943, Page 3

GREAT RAID ON BERLIN

2300 TONS OF BOMBS DROPPED TERRIFIC BARRAGE MET BY AIRMEN

TREMENDOUS DESTRUCTION—CITY “HAMBURGED”

LONDON, Nov. 23 Berlin was still burning today after a great air raid last night in which the record weight, for Berlin, of 2300 tons of bombs was dropped. Twenty-six bombers were lost on this raid and other activities which included Mosquito raids on western Germany and minelaying operations. The Press Association correspondent at a Royal Air Force base said: “ Berlin was a great sea of flames and explosions, which returning planes saw for seventy miles through solid cloud.”

The Press Association’s aviation correspondent estimates that with last night’s raid about 10,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on Berlin this year.

Royal Air Force crews are telling the story of the great assault. They say that few night-fighters were seen but the barrage was terrific. Pathfinders clearly outlined the targets with flares and only one 4000-pound bomb was seen to fall outside the flares. One explosion was the largest ever seen to be caused by a bomb dropped on Germany. Germany admits that heavy damage was caused. A greater tonnage of bombs has been dropped on Berlin in the past year than the total the Germans dropped on London all through the “blitzes.”

“Berlin is being ‘Hamburged.’ That is the meaning of German reports on the heaviness of the Royal Air Force raid last night,” says the aviation correspondent of the British United Press. “If the Royal Air Force is able to maintain the rate of attack during the winter, using as large a number of planes as at present is available, Berlin should be wiped out as an administrative and industrial centre by the spring. It will not be an easy task but another 20 or 25 raids of the magnitude of that of last night should do the job.”