Diver’s footage of RAF Hampden P2123

‘I pancaked the aircraft on to the surface…

…about 1/4 mile from the coast.’ 
– P. O. Romans, September 1, 1940 –

Photo: Rob Spray/BBC

Last week surfaced that remains of Hampden P2123 of 44 Squadron were filmed for the first time off the north Norfolk coast by sealife diver Rob Spray. This ww2 British medium bomber was lost more than 80 years ago in August 1940 returning from the fourth air raid on Berlin by RAF aircraft.

In 2022 Spray, chair of the Marine Conservation for Norfolk Action Group, whilst diving off Salthouse beach found in shallow water what appeared to be a Handley-Page bomber remains. “I was looking for interesting bits of seabed and this loomed out of the slight murk,” he said, being interviewed by BBC reports. He contacted the Norfolk Research Wreck group to identify the wreck which finally turned out to be the P2123 remains lying there since that summer night. Paul Hennessey, from Norfolk Wreck Research, helped identify it as P2123 bomber, lost in the early hours of September 1, 1940.

Photo: Rob Spray.


August 31, 1940: R.A.F. planes renew attack on Berlin
On the night of 31 August / 1 September, 1940, RAF Bomber Command aircraft overflew and dropped bombs on the Third Reich’s heart again, less than twenty-four hours since the previous raid and for a fourth time in a week. Berliners ran to their cellars and shelters to take cover meanwhile the anti-aircraft defences and searchlights of the city tried to repel the British air raiders. London sent twenty-eight medium bombers to hit military and industrial targets. Bad weather prevented some of the bombers to reach their targets, in this case Tempelhof, the BMW factory and a gas work; most of the crews were somewhere in the Berlin area but failed to see under the cloud cover.

RAF’s only loss on this raid was Hampden P2123 of 44 Squadron: piloted by twenty-year-old Flying Officer Romans, this bomber found adverse weather over Berlin and after delivery the bombs on Tempelhof area the crew faced the return journey running out of fuel over the inhospitable North Sea. Finally, after being airborne for 9 and 30 minutes the engines stopped and Romans skillfully ditched the plane less than two miles off Salthouse others say Cromer on the Norfolk coast at 05.35 hours and the crew, unhurt, took to their dinghy and paddle to shore during more than 3 hours to safety. 

Romans remarked on his report: “It is of interest that the Hampden remained afloat for 2 minutes before making its final plunge.”

Photo: The National Archives of the UK (TNA).

On hitting the water, Sgt Jimmy Mandale (rear gunner aboard) reported that the Hampden bomber fully submerged upon impact and then popped back up again enabling the crew to exit the aircraft. 

[A fine portrait of F/O David Albert A Romans (DFC) and Corporal Harry Logan (W/Op) of No 44 Squadron from Waddington. Romans, a Canadian who joined the RAF was the pilot at the controls of the Hampden bomber lost (P2123) during the return flight from Berlin after bombing the city on the night of 31 August. The rest of the crew was formed by navigator P/O Donald E Stewart (a Canadian too) and Cpl Jimmy Mandale as Air gunner.]

Photo: Williston, GSPH, 1996.

[Cpl Jimmy Mandale (middle) of 44 Sqn poses with two RAF comrades. He was flying as air gunner on Hampden P2123 on this night. Mandale’s logbook, preserved by his grandson Mark, shows that night they had been 9 hours and a half on the air for the Berlin operation. They made it to shore unhurt in a dinghy only to discover they were on a minefield!]

Photo: Williston, GSPH, 1996.

Hampden P2123 wreck has been already found in 1975 after fishermen snagged their crab pots on it, with several parts of one of the 980hp Bristol Pegasus XV nine cylinder air cooled radial engines of the bomber being recovered, which had been at the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum at Flixton, near Bungay, Suffolk, ever since.

Photo: Norfolk Wreck Research.

Photo: Norfolk Wreck Research.

[Sgt Jimmy Mandale’s logbook, one of the P2123 crewmembers who was aboard on the night this RAF bomber ditched off the Norfolk coast in 1940, kindly shared with us by his grandson Mark Mandale.]

Photo via Mark Mandale.

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Bibliography:

  • Berlin LuftTerror, Four in a row: 31 August 1940[accessed December 2024].
  • Chorley, W R. RAF Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War. Volume 1 1939-40. Classic Publications, 2nd edition, 2013. 
  • Donnelly, Larry. The Other Few: The Contribution Made by Bomber and Coastal Aircrew to the Winning of the Battle of Britain. Red Kite/Air Research, 2004.
  • Norfolk Wreck Research. Handley Page Hampden … P-2123. [accessed December 2024].
  • Ward, Chris. 5 Group Bomber Command: An Operational Record. Pen & Sword Books, 2007.
  • Williston, Floyd.Through Footless Halls of Air: The Stories of a Few of the Many who Failed to ReturnGSPH, 1996.
  • Young, Neil. The Role of the Bomber Command in the Battle of Britain. Imperial War Museum Review No. 06, 1991.

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Die Mauer muss weg

Photo: © picture-alliance, Eventpress

Today we commemorate the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but November 9th, known by Germans as Schicksalstag (‘Day of Fate’), is much more than that happy event. For Germany in the 20th century and for the rest of Europe maybe … It is a key date and a turning point in History.

• 9. November • 1918
Saturday, was the birthday of democracy in Berlin. A new revolution led by workers which think in a new world after the disaster of the Great War (1914-18) and the Soviet Revolution (1917), made Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate and that would become the end of the Hohenzollern’s time. The new Republic of Weimar was about to start. 

[Photo: picture alliance / IMAGNO/Votava.]

[Photo: Getty images.]

• 9. November • 1923
Ironically, that newly born democracy and the new Republic would give way in a short time to discomfort of some sectors that would quickly radicalize and led to the uprising of the NSDAP party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) - the Nazi movement, led by Adolf Hitler. Hitler, convinced to be the leader of the change that Germany needed, organized a coup in a brewery in Munich on November 9, 1923, known as “the Munich Putsch”. The rapid reaction of the government forces and the last-minute abstention of several key-members for the assault, would make the coup fail. Hitler would be imprisoned in Landsberg prison, but would return with greater power and with clearer and even more radical ideas for Germany, shown in his book ‘Mein Kampf’.

[Photo: Bundesarchiv / Bild 146-2007-0003.]

• 9. November • 1938  “Night of Broken Glass”
During the night from the 9th to the 10th of November, 1938, known as the Kristallnacht progrom, Nazi-party SA and SS members led by anti-semite doctrines, wielding axes and torches, rampage synagogues, shops and houses of German Jews. This was the worst attack on the Jewry community since the Nazis seized power in 1933. During the 1938 pogroms, Nazi troops tore down nearly 1,400 synagogues. Thousands of Jewish businesses were destroyed. Over 30,000 Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps and around 140 died. Testimonies from those dark days say that the local fire departments did not stop the synagogues and Jewish shops from burning; they merely prevented the flames from spreading to neighboring buildings.

[Flames engulfed the Berlin synagogue located at Fasanenstraße in the Charlottenburg district after been raided by paramilitary Nazi-SA troopers during the Kristallnacht. This big synagogue, at the time the largest one in Berlin, was opened in August 1912 and closed by Goebbles’ orders in 1936. Destroyed in 1938, the remains of the building were again devastated during a British air-raid in 1943.]

Photos: Hulton Archive - AP Photo.

[In this image we see the burned interior of the Fasanenstraße synagogue in Berlin after the Kristallnacht pogrom.]

Photo: Hulto Yad Vashem Fotoarchiv 520/3.

[Berlin: destroyed Jewish shops by Nazis at the Kurfürstendamm the day after the Nazi attack.]

Photo: AP Photo.

• 9. November • 1961 - 1989
On the night of November 9, the Wall built by the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR-GDR) to protect the border that divided the East from the West fell after 28 years, not only in Berlin but throughout Germany, which has been divided into two blocks after the end of the Second World War. Between 1961 and 1989, at least 140 people were killed or died at the Wall in connection with the GDR border regime.

[The actual postwar border line which divided Berlin in four sectors is painted across the Potsdamerstraße by order of the British occupation authorities in August 1948 before the infamous Mauer was built in 1961 by East Germany authorities. This action follows incidents in which the Soviet-controlled German police made illegal entries into the Western Zone, in their raids against Black Market activities.]

Photo: Keystone.

[East German border guards removing Peter Fechter’s dead body from Zimmerstrasse near the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing, August 17, 1962.]

Photo: Polizeihistorische Sammlung/Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin.

[Graffiti artist Keith Haring (1958-1990) painting a mural in a Wall section next to Checkpoint Charlie in October 1986.]

Photo by Tseng Kwong Chi.

[Berliners cheering and climbing during the Fall of the Berliner Mauer on November 1989 at the Brandenburger Tor.]

Photo: Wolfgang Kumm / dpa.

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S-Bahn-Symbole

Photo: still from film, Chronos Media

Walking around the modern buildings at Potsdamer Platz and the immensity of the Sony Center in Berlin, few visitors notice a display case placed a few steps from the access hall of the underground station. Inside the glass façade, an old metal signal stands alone: the white S on a green background, saved from the 1939-1945 period as a reminder of the air bombings and war’s destruction in the city. 

This vintage “S” is the S-Bahn Berlin icon trademark which this year 2024 celebrates its 100th anniversary and the keyvisual logo of the brand image of this blog also.

[The surviving S-Bahn signal from 1945, pictured with the ubiquitous glass reflections from the display case in which is exhibited at DB’s Potsdamer Platz building, 2018.]

Photo by the author, 2018.

This wartime signal is on display at the ground floor of the BahnTower next to the Sony Center. The glass 26-story, 103-metre skyscraper was built in the years 1998-2000, today home of the Deutsche Bahn AG’s headquarters (DB), the new railway corporation founded in 1994. Don’t know the exact date it was placed here but if I remember well during my first visit in 2004 it was already there, so most probably it was when DB established their home at Potsdamer Platz (some other vintage signs are preserved at the Berliner S-Bahn Museum in Berlin too.)

During my last visit in August 2024, the framed old S-Bahn sign, placed a few metres away from the remains of Hotel Esplanade’s Kaisersaal (a survivor of the air raids and the 1945-battle too) was not accessible, surrounded by wooden walls and building works. Potsdamer Platz, the only place in Berlin which was supposed to be rebuilt and finished, right now is a construction site, yes, again. 

[Taken just before the war, this colourised photo shows a street scene at the famous Berliner square. The modernist building Columbushaus (destroyed in November 1943) can be seen as background.]

Photo: The-Life-in-the-Reich Berlin

[I took these pictures of the partly damaged S-Bahn sign in August 2018, safeguarded inside the building’s glass at Potsdamer Platz.]

Photo by the author, 2018.

Photo by the author, 2018.

[Today, the framed 1945 S-Bahn sign next to the Sony Center is not accessible, surrounded by wooden walls and building works.]

Photo by the author, 2024.

Grün-weiße Symbol 
A few years ago, the S-Bahn Museum was finally able to determine the origin of the white S on a green circle background: graphic artist Fritz Rosen created the iconic logo in 1929 at request of DR (receiving 800 Reichsmark as payment) and it was officially introduced in December 1930. Some say that the S stands for „Stadtbahn“, others refer to „Schnellbahn“ (fast train) but whatever the meaning was, it became the trademark of the railway’s urban traffic throughout Germany and an iconic logo.

According to TypeOff (an interesting blog about Design research and history), in 1935 the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft created a new lettering for use on all train stations signs in blackletter “German” style, in line with the National Socialist Germany principles. Its origin may come from the Element typeface, very similar in her Bold style. This lettering, which included the street-signals and the station’s platform walls, can be found at Nordbahnhof, Oranienburger Str, Brandenburger Tor, Potsdamer Platz or Anhalter Bahnhof stops among others.

[Image of the exhibit old S-Bahn sign as seen in 2012. Close study of the image reveals wartime damage including one missing “P” letter.]

Photo by the author, 2012.

[Leipziger Platz in 1939, the recently built Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn entrances seen before the war’s destruction. Note the twin Potsdamer Tor house gates at right and the Mitteleuropaeische Reisebuero building in the background.]

Photo: © Historische Sammlung der DB AG, Max Krajewsky.

S-Bahnhof Potsdamer Platz
The North-South S-Bahn tunnel was built in 1934-36 (already planned by the Weimar Republic) and the Nazi government expanded it in 1936 with this second underground link that included Potsdamer Platz-Anhalter Bhf-Yorckstraße. It was opened in April 1939, a few months before the outbreak of the war. Each of the nine exits of the station was marked by an S-Bahn pylon, as other stations in this route. Following wartime blackout policies, in 1940 the city’s S-Bahn poles and exit stairs were marked with white paint as were curbs and street signs.

[Potsdamer Platz new station exits seen in 1939, looking into today’s Ebertstraße. In the background can be seen the Palast-Hotel (Mitteleuropäisches Reisebüro) at right, with Columbushaus building at left. Part of the New Reich Chancellery at Voßstr is also visible.]

Photo: picture-alliance.

[A German soldier going down the stairs to the S-Bahn station at Potsdamer Platz, 1939.]

Photo: df_ktgrf_0004602

Once described as the “most heavily bombed square in Europe”, the square was badly hit during the 22-26 November 1943 RAF attacks, and during the June 21, 1944 and February 26, 1945 American air raids, a prominent target due to its proximity to the adjacent railway station and the Reich’s Chancellery complex at Voßstr, just one block away. The train service finally stopped in late April 1945 among fierce street fighting (there is no power supply due to lack of coal). 

Close examination of all known pictures taken in the aftermath of the war reveals that of the nine original “S” signs placed at Potsdamer Platz, at least six of them survived the battle with more or less damage.

[22/23 November 1943: Haus Vaterland in flames following the heavy night raid by British RAF bombers. This dramatic picture is framed by the silhouette of the S-Bahn sign seen at extreme left, in this case the one located next to the railway station (Potsdamer Bhf -at right).]

Photo: Ullstein bild/ Archiv Golejewski_1010590618

[These two opposite views of the northern part of Potsdamer Platz taken in early 1945 (by Arthur Grimm before the Soviet assault on the city) show bombing damage and debris, with two of the S-Bahn signs barely intact which could confirm us that the damage taken by those (seen on later pictures) came from artillery shells and subsequent street fighting with the Red Army, not from the 1944-45 air raids.]

Photo: ullstein bild.

Photo: ullstein bild.

[Taken from Potsdamer Platz Nr 3 in early 1945, this picture shows the burnt-out facade of the Columbushaus and two of the S signal poles, still intact. Note at left the sandbags over the entrance railing for bomb splinters protection.]

Photo: ullstein bild_1010590626

[View of the totally devastated Potsdamer Platz in the aftermath of the fierce battle, looking up north into former Hermann-Göring-Straße and Voßstraße, May 3, 1945. Three S-Bahn sign posts can be seen with the Columbushaus as background. Note the smashed ”S” sign and the group of Soviet soldiers gathering around the underground entrance.]

Photo by Elizaveta Mikulina MAMM/MDF

[Leipziger Platz with the damaged Wertheim Kaufhaus as background, pictured on that same day following the conquest of the German capital by Red Army troops. We can see one of the S-Bahn entrances badly damaged (at left).]

Photo by Elizaveta Mikulina MAM/MMDF

[A British soldier took this picture on July 7, 1945, with one of the entrances surrounded by battle wrecks including an old Flak 8,8cm anti-tank gun and a Kübelwagen and debris left behind. Notice the burn-out Columbushaus behind.]

Photo © IWM (BU 8688)

[Close view of the same bullet riddle and torn S-Bahn sign at Leipziger Platz-Potsdamer Platz, July 1945. The destroyed facade seen behind belongs to the Mitteleuropäisches Reisebüro building, former Palast-Hotel.] 

Photo: akg-images AKG55475.

[Ruined Haus Vaterland (designed in 1912 by Franz Heinrich Schwechten) seen some months after the end of the war, fall 1945. Note that both the U-Bahn lettering and the twin Potsdamer Ringbahnhof S-Bahn signs (at right) are missing, lost during the battle.]

Photo: ebay auction.

[Potsdamer Platz has changed a lot since the end of World War II. Already an irregular square in plan, this aerial picture helps us to create a visual guide to point every former building and the original nine S-Bahn exits located there during the war years. It was taken by an British PR aircraft on September 6, 1943, two months before the November RAF heavy air raids which left in ruins this popular place in Berlin.]

Photo: NCAP E/0138.

Divided Berlin: devastation around
By war’s end Potsdamer Platz was border of three of the newly born occupation sectors (British and US at West sideSoviet at East). In 1945 the square became the perfect place for Berliners’ Black Market in those days, with daily police raids, mobs and riots with occupation troops. The S-Bahn service wasn’t reopened until 1946-47 but a few months later the city division made that trains didn’t stop here anymore: Potsdamer Platz station would be closed for nearly 30 years, reopening in March 1992. 

Photo by Henry Burroughs/AP 4808190260

Once a busy and traffic jammed area, by 1950-60 the square, now physically divided by barbed wire, armed guards and walled up, had become mostly an open space, empty, with most pre-war buildings being demolished except for the large train station and the ghostly Haus Vaterland whose ruins remained a few years more (1976). If you look closely at 1950s pictures, some of the “S” signs seem to have been replaced by metal discs. On the contrary, if you look at 1970 and 80s photos the underground entrances are still there (closed, of course) but the circled S signs are missing, just the poles remained.

[Ernst Hahn took this picture of a policeman checking the papers of a man sitting on his suitcase in 1951 next to the S-Bahn entrance. The square became the perfect place for Berliners’ Black Market in those days.

Photo: ullstein bild/ Archiv Hahn/ Weissberg

[With the city divided in two in 1948, Potsdamer Platz became a new border between ruined buildings, policemen and warning signs as seen here from the East sector just before the Wall rising, 1960. Notice at extreme right the empty space left by the demolished railway station.]

Photo: Stadtmuseum Berlin SM 2014-1995,11

With the 1990 Reunification and the DDR-GDR collapse, life came back to Potsdamer Platz. The square suffered a huge redevelopment and much of the surrounding area became the most modern part of the city. The S-Bahn and subway entrances were refurbished and reopened and new “S” signs, reminiscent of those built in the 1930s but in modern style were installed on each output, as well as two new built entrance halls in the middle of the newly born square.

[The Iron Curtain: one of the western Potsdamer Platz underground entrances during the Cold War, circa 1961, and again in 1965 in colour. Note the missing circle-S on top of the pole, the early-style wall and the barbed wire.]

Photo: Central Press Images

Photo: Stadmuseum Berlin SM 2013-2890,141

[Europe’s biggest construction site: When the underground station was reopened (both S- and U-Bahn) in 1992, temporary new signs were placed at the outputs. Here, the Ebertstraße-Voßstr. entrance seen in January 1993.]

Photo by PETERSHAGEN/ Flickr.

[Today, green S-Bahn “S” signs in Berlin look like those in the 1930s, with a reminiscence of the original typography but in modern style and materials.]

Photo by the author, 2018.

This 1945 relic, probably one of the few surviving items from the original Potsdamer Platz, have been witness of the terrific air raids, the bloody battle between the Potsdamer King Tiger and Soviet tanks in May 1945, the end of the Third Reich, the June 1953 uprising, the wall construction in 1961, the no man’s land and finally, the Fall of the Wall and reunification in 1989-90. A true reminder of Berlin’s convulsed 20th century.

Pablo López Ruiz.

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Bibliography and Sources:

  • Berliner S-Bahn Museum. 100 Jahre Berliner S-Bahn. [Accessed October 2024]
  • Ebling, Hermann. Berlin um 1950: Fotografien von Ernst Hahn. Edition Friedenauer Brücke, 2013.
  • Hailstone, Allan. Berlin in the Cold War: 1959 to 1966. Amberley Publishing, 2017.
  • Landesarchiv Berlin: LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 701, Bl. 176; LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 702, Bl. 99 ff.; s. a. LAB, A Rep. 005-07, Nr. 559, o. Bl.); LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 703, Bl. 31 ff.
  • Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011.
  • Potsdamer Platz. S-Bahnhof Potsdamer Platz. [Accessed October 2024]
  • SSB Berlin. Geschichte und Geschichten rund um die Berliner S-Bahn. Potsdamer Platz. [Accessed October 2024]
  • TypeOff. Blackletter signage in the Berlin S-Bahn. [Accessed October 2024]
  • Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013.

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Wittenbergplatz’s back to life

Berlin, Sommer 1945

Photo: US NARA.

In this original colour footage we can see the bombed out and ruined U-Bhf Wittenbergplatz’s entrance hall and its original yellow mustard interior walls (built in 1912), following the end of the war and the reactivation of part of the underground train service in the city.

This soundless footage was recorded on July 9, 1945, by members of the AAF’s 4th Combat Camera Squadron led by Capt. William H. Clothier, which following their motion picture coverage of the war across northwestern Europe had been sent to the German capital that summer to capture the achievements of the air bombardment campaign against Hitler.

Photo: US NARA.

As we have seen before on previous posts (read here the 1945 and postwar history) the iconic Wittenbergplatz in Berlin-Schöneberg district and her underground station cross-shaped entrance building were totally wiped out during the 1939-45 war by Allied bombs and the final street-fighting to defeat Hitler’s regime. The hall was hit several times by explosive air bombs and artillery shells, which left in ruins the entrance and the surrounding area. Two months after the end of the hostilities, US servicemen entering the area found the station badly hit, but back in business and with U-bahn trains in service again.

Photo: US NARA.

Photo: US NARA.

This is a short reel of the original footage recorded on that day by the US camera team during their tour to visit the ruined Berlin streets:

Video source: Source: US NARA.

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The Marks of War

‘Miss U.S. Embassy, Hit Brandenburg Gate…

…Germans Say.’ 
 The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940 –

Photo: Süddeutsche Zeitung.

On September 10/11, 1940 (OTD 84 years ago last night), RAF fliers raided the centre of Berlin again. First air-alarms sounded starting at 23.54 hrs[1] with searchlights and Flak guns scanning the dark skies to repel the intruders. The raid, which lasted one hour and a half, was described as “more intense than any Berlin has yet experienced.”[2] Actually, the air attack was one of the weakest of the entire war, but it produced one of the most iconic photos of World War 2, at least of the early years of the conflict.

The bombers, which arrived over the German capital in small numbers (just six according to German sources of the nearly twenty sent by the British) dropped just a few bombs[3] on that night, hampered by ground haze and clouds covering the city.[4] Intended to hit the Tegel gasworks, Tempelhof and the nearby marshalling yards (including Potsdamer Bhf)[5], several bombs landed at the city centre (Mitte district) damaging famous landmarks including Unter den Linden and Pariser Platz, where both the Brandenburger Tor and the Akademie der Künste were hit by some fire bombs which caused minor damage.[6] Bomb hits were reported also at Wilhelmplatz and immediate vicinity of the Reich Chancellery, the Bebelplatz and Dorotheenstr, and up north in the Charite and Invalidenstraße areas, with small fires caused by incendiaries too.[7] Bombing pattern was scattered with other bombs hitting far areas as were Wilmesdorf or Spandau, and apparently (at least it was not reported) not inflicting damage to the aimed industrial targets of the night. Some reports included the old Reichstag in the list of buildings struck by bombs too.[8]

But without no doubt the image that caught most people attention was the one shot by a German photographer hours after the raid. Taken at Charlottenburger Chaussee, then part of the Nazi triumphal avenue Ost-West-Achse (today’s Straße des 17. Juni) a few metres from the famous Brandenburg Gate and surrounded by Tiergarten woods, Berliners take a look curious and amazed into the huge crater caused by a high explosive bomb dropped by the RAF.

[“Three hundred yards up the “East-West Axis” a bomb estimated at between 500 and 1,000 pounds in weight (sic) smashed into the broad asphalt speedway, rocking buildings in a half-mile radius” reads the original text from the American correspondent in Berlin Percival Knauth which witnessed the raid’s aftermath in the German capital.][9]

Photo: ullstein bild

Photo: Associated Press AP4009110398

Photo: still from film, German newsreel

Photo: still from film, German newsreel

Photo: still from film, German newsreel

Photo: still from film, German newsreel

The image, passed by Nazi censorship to Associated Press, was widely shared and reproduced all across the globe by international press in the next few days, its power and impact were far from evident, especially when it had the Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop. Some US papers even accompanied the picture with the caption “Bomb crater in Unter den Linden” and German press evidenced for Nazi propaganda purposes, of coursethe indignity of the Berliners seeing “hospitals, hotels, residential districts and monuments being bombed.“[10] In the following days the striking scene, filmed by some PR cameraman quickly sent by Goebbels where the bomb crater was, appeared on a German newsreel all across the country too.

The German communique issued hours after the raid stated: “During the past night British planes again flew into North Germany. Several succeeded in reaching Berlin. The English fliers dropped isolated bombs on residential quarters of the capital. They succeeded in striking objectives not only of national importance but to a great extent of international importance. Thus is the house of the Union of German engineers, were students and scientists and technicians reside, was struck. Living rooms and assembly rooms were set afire. In addition the Academy of Art, near the Brandenburg Gate, in the immediate neighborhood of the American Embassy, was struck.”[11]

[Front page of The New York Times the following day describing the British raid on Berlin, September 11, 1940].

Photo: The New York Times

[On the very next day, German authorities placed an anti-aircraft gun (Flak) a few metres next to the crater at Charlottenburger Chaussee (in this case a 2cm FlaK 30 on a Horch PKW heavy car). This solitary small battery was an useless and late effort to show Berliners that the capital was defended, as Berlin was still unable to repel the British air raids in those early stages of the war.]

Photo: bpk | Heinrich Hoffmann

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Notes:

[1] see LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 19 ff
[2] “Raid Nazi capital” by Percival Knauth wireless to The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 4
[3] On that night RAF aircraft dropped just 1 ton of bombs according to Prof Demps’ study in DEMPS, Laurenz. Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Die Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle. Ch. Links Verlag, 2014, p 285
[4] see TNA: AIR-27-543-21. The National Archives of the UK (TNA) © Crown Copyright
[5] see TNA: AIR-27-659A; a brief description of the raid can be seen in DONELLY, Larry. The Other Few: The Contribution Made by Bomber and Coastal Aircrew to the Winning of the Battle of Britain. Red Kite/Air Research, 2004, p 141
[6] see LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 19 ff
[7] “Raid Nazi capital” by Percival Knauth wireless to The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 1
[8] see LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 19 ff; The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 2, AP comunique
[9] “Raid Nazi capital” by Percival Knauth wireless to The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 1
[10] The New York Times, Thursday September 12, 1940, page 2
[11] “CENTER OF BERLIN POUNDED BY R.A.F.The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 4

Bibliography:

  • BRITISH BOMBING SURVEY UNIT. The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 - 1945 - The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. Frank Cass, 1998.
  • Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011.
  • Overy, Richard. The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane, 2013.
  • Tress HB. Churchill, the First Berlin Raids, and the Blitz: A New Interpretation. Militaergeschichtliche Zeitschrift, Volume 32, Issue 2, Pages 65–78. 1982. 
  • Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013.

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Previous post >


Bombenschäden August 1940 - 2024

‘Berlin night raid lasts for 3 hours…

…British bomb populous section of the city - other damage also reported.’ 
 The New York Times, Thursday, August 29, 1940 –

Photo: Archiv Sobotta/ AKG-images (5438572)

Last night 84th years ago (28/29 August 1940), Berlin tasted the bloody and terrible bombing war for the first time. Last week we had the opportunity to visit the streets in Kreuzberg district where those first bombs hit the city centre.

Several RAF bombs fell at the Kottbusser Tor area (see full report and map area at the bottom of the page), hitting buildings at Kottbusser Str, Mariannenstraße and Skalitzer Str. along other areas as Prenzlauer Berg and some residential colonies in the outskirts. The Kottbusser Tor area has changed a lot and there are no tram lines anymore, with new buildings built during the postwar years and the original ones which had survived being refurbished too. It seems that no scars from the air bombings have survived.

Full account of this second air raid can be read on our blog’s two-part post:
Bombing raid on Berlin
Britische Luftangriffe über Berlin

[A view of the dramatic ‘Bombenschäden’(bomb damage) panorama after the RAF’s second air raid on the German capital, Kottbusser Straße 21-17 buildings.]

Photo: private auction

Photo by the author.

Photo: bpk/ Oskar Dahlke.

[A view of the day after the raid at Kottbusser Str. 25-26, where two explosive bombs hit the pavement next to the tram lines causing damage. Note the alert sign behind and the Hochbahnhof U-Bhf. Kottbusser Tor (built in 1928) in the background where many Berliners took shelter after the raid.]

Photo: Associated Press.

Photo by the author.

[Taken a few metres away, this is a warning sign of an unexploded bomb (‘dud’) at Kottbusser Str. 18-19 in the Berlin-Kreuzberg district (notice the U-Bahn highway in the distance). The notice advises the danger with the warning Blindgänger!! Lebensgefahr! which means “Unexploded ordnance”.]

Photo: Sammlung Berliner Verlag/Archiv.

Photo by the author.

[Around the corner, the roof structure of Mariannenstraße number 26 apartment (today part of Kottbusser Str 15) was thrown into the street by explosive bombs, we can see here the severe damage taken by the building’s last floor, August 29, 1940.]

Photo: bpk

Photo by the author.

[An original colour picture of the same bomb damage at Mariannenstraße 26 building, taken following the clearing debris work on September 1, 1940.]

Photo: Archiv Sobotta

[Close view of the roof and facade damage at Mariannenstraße 26 (today part of Kottbusser Str 15), August 29, 1940.]

Photo: Associated Press.

Photo by the author.

[Mariannenstraße 29-10 (at left) Ecke Skalitzer Str. (in front of the famous Astronaut Cosmonaut graffiti painted by Victor Ash). Damage was also inflicted by fires on Skalitzer Str. 122, Mariannenstraße numbers 11 and 9-10 (where the electricity plant was hit) and Oranienstraße 189.]

Photo by the author.

The eastern Kreuzberg district, a very populated residential area, was severely hit by British bombs on 29 Aug. 1940. Several sticks of bombs dropped around U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor caused chaos and large fires there, flying debris shattered the streets, hitting everything around. Almost all the windows between the train station and the Kottbusser Brücke were smashed.

Two high explosive bombs were dropped in front of Kottbusser Str. 25-26 causing severe damage to the pavement and the tram lines there. Another bomb hit Kottbusser Str. 21 destroying the roof structure and the last floor, and number 15’s roof was also destroyed by fire-bombs. Around the corner, the roof structure at Mariannenstraße 26 was thrown into the street by explosive bombs, with roof fires at numbers 24 and 42 Ecke Skalitzer Str. 24. Finally, two unexploded bombs (‘duds’) were located in front of Kottbusser Str. 18-19, next to the tram track.

Source: LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 8 f. Map design by Pablo Minuti

Berlin admitted minor damage to several districts of the capital the following morning: the myth of the Reichhauptstadt’s inviolability had been finally shattered.

_______________

Bibliography and sources:

  • Berliner Morgenpost, Freitag, 30. Aug. 1940. Nr. 208.
  • BRITISH BOMBING SURVEY UNIT (1998).The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 - 1945 - The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. Frank Cass.
  • Demps, Laurenz. Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Die Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle. Ch. Links Verlag, 2014.
  • Der Angriff, 30. Aug. 1940, Nr. 210
  • Friedrich, Jörg. Der Brand Deutschland Im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945. Verlag Ullstein, 2005.
  • Landesarchiv Berlin. Die Kriegschronik der Reichshauptstadt Berlin – Quelle zur Geschichte Berlins in der NS-Zeit. 
  • Landesarchiv Berlin. LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 8 f.
  • Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011.
  • Overy, Richard.The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane, 2013.
  • Shirer, William L. Berlin Diary: Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941. Galahad Books, 1997.
  • Shirer, William L.This Is Berlin. Random House, 2013
  • Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013.

Previous post >


Death of the Kabarett Wintergarten

Step into the roaring twenties and experience the vibrant nightlife of Berlin’s Central Hotel and Wintergarten

The Wintergarten (Friedrichstraße Nr 143-149) was one of Berlin’s best-known variety theatres located in the heart of the city, a popular destination for locals and tourists alike. 

Owned by Hermann Gebers, this important theatre located north of the Unter den Linden boulevard opened originally as a recreational hall part of one of the most iconic hotels in the Berlin-Mitte district: the Central-Hotel (built in 1877-78). The large and cosmopolitan hotel, located very close to the Friedrichstraße Bahnhof (known then as the ‘Central train station’) and similar to London and Paris neo-Renaissance and luxury-style hotels of the time, runned almost 100 meters long from the Dorotheenstraße corner to Georgenstr. In the inner courtyard, the hotel had a palm garden with a glass roof and vaulted ceiling dome, a place for guests to relax and for music concerts (a winter garten, quite popular in Wilhelmine Germany) as well as a café-restaurant.

Photo: Fritz Eschen/ df_hauptkatalog_0034911

[This street map, dated 1940, shows the large property occupied by the Central-Hotel and its close location to the Friedrichstraße train station. The hotel had three street facades (Dorotheenstraße-Georgenstr-Friedrichstr.) with several entrances and two corner turrets topped with cupolas. The elongated inner courtyard which housed the Wintergarten is clearly seen in this plan view.]

Source: Histomap/Landesarchiv Berlin

[The original Wintergarten des Central-Hotels, photographed here by Hermann Rückwardt in 1881, was an elongated room with a total area of 1,700 square meters, a vaulted glass roof, palms and a stage for music performance: a real place for guests to relax.]

Photo: Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Ed.), Denkmale in Berlin, Bezirk Mitte, Ortsteil Mitte, Petersberg 2003

Berliner actor Franz Dorn and Hungarian Julius Baron took over the winter garden and, after heavy renovation work opened as a theatre in 1887: the new Garten hall had a multi-use variety as a venue for concerts adding theatrical performances, shows, revues and operettas through the combination of band, singers and dancers to the famous hotel. The Skladanowsky brothers showcased the first short movie presentation ever here in November 1895, making it the first movie theatre in history too (“the first projections of film in Europe to a paying audience”). Against a background of inflation and depression, Berlin drew the talent and energies of the rest of Germany towards its glittering cabaret shows and burgeoning sex-tourism industry, which attracts artists, writers, and intellectuals from around the world. The hall was rebuilt again in the 1930s under the new direction of Ludwig Schuch, becoming one of the largest and most modern theatres in Europe.  

[View of the large auditorium and stage of the Wintergarten theatre, 1940. Based on an idea by Bernhard Sehring, light bulbs were attached to the ceiling to imitate a starry sky.]

Wintergarten_1940_ Architekturmuseum TU Berlin

Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1988-035-15 / Mäschke, Friedrich

[Some views of the exterior facade of the Central-Hotel and the WinterGarten (note the station’s railway bridge in the background) in the 1930s, when the German capital was run by the Nazi regime.]

Photo: Landesarchiv Berlin

Photo: Stadtmuseum Berlin SM 2012-3765

Photo: Stadtmuseum Berlin/ CronerNeg1937 026

Bombenkrieg 1940-1945
The Wintergarten was hit several times during the war by Allied air raids. Its proximity to the important Friedrichstraße Bahnhof as well as the government district of the capital —where Hitler’s Chancellery was located, caused that this area would be fiercely bombed by the enemy. The train station was marked as ‘primary target of opportunity’ in the case the bombers encountered Berlin covered by clouds or smoke so, not surprisingly, bombs fell close of the hotel on every British and American bombardment. Anyway, the Central wasn’t hit until March 1943, when the RAF resumed its bombing campaign on the Nazi capital. Incendiary bombs dropped on that night by 251 British bombers (1/2 March, 1943) caused minor damage on the building’s roof and left several adjacent houses at Dorotheenstr. in flames. 

[1940: the Wintergarten’s facade of Georgenstraße, running along the train station. Note white-painted kerbs and vertical signs to follow the city’s blackout procedures during the war to ‘protect’ Berlin from air-raids.]

Photo: Architekturmuseum TU Berlin BS 500,105

[Public and workers take cover during an air-raid alarm at the Hotel’s cellar, used as an improvised bomb shelter (‘Luftschutzkeller’) during World War IIDecember 1940.]

Photo: Willy Pragher / Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Abt. Staatsarchiv Freiburg, W 134 Nr. 017005b

Photo: Willy Pragher / Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Abt. Staatsarchiv Freiburg, W 134 Nr. 017005d

Nearly a year later, when the British air offensive reached its maximum level (the so called ‘Battle of Berlin’) the Hotel was hit again by the RAF on 28/29 January 1944 (608 Bomber Command aircraft dropped their bombs on that night over Berlin), causing fire-damage on the building, especially on the roof. City records reported numerous areas of damage on both sides of Friedrichstraße, especially by incendiary bombs.

Finally, the theatre collapsed under the carpet of bombs dropped by the Americans during the last year of the war. After some close calls, the southern part of the building was hit by US bombs and destroyed on June 21, 1944, during a big daylight raid by 606 Eighth Air Force heavy bombers: it was the 211th air-alarm of the war on Berlin and the attack left the ‘Zentral-Hotel’ in ruins and gutted by fire (Friedrichstraße Bhf received a direct hit too). In the spring of 1945 this popular area was totally wiped out during the large US attacks on Berlin-Mitte, especially by the February 3rd and March 18th raids.

Following the destruction of the original Wintergarten by Allied bombers, the Café-Restaurant was briefly reopened a few metres away in the Georgenstraße facade. 

[A wartime Wintergarten advertisement dated September 1941 published in Signal magazine: the Central-Hotel kept the famous Berliner nightlife and pleasures despite the war and the Allied air bombings on the city.]

Photo: Signal, French edition, 2nd year, issue 17, 1941, p. 31

[Zerstörungen in der Friedrichstraße, Frühjahr 1945: this extraordinary series of photos was taken by a German photographer on March 21, 1945, in the aftermath of an Allied air raid. Civilians and soldiers can be seen working on a big bomb crater and clearing debris from the street in front of the destroyed Central-Hotel southern cornerMakeshift signs were placed to indicate the ‘new’ location of the Café-Restaurant at Georgenstraße and other displaced restaurants.]

Photo: Bundesarchiv_Bild 183-J31405

Photo: Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-J31404

Photo: Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-J31399

Wann kommt der Russe? The final battle
Further damage was inflicted during the Soviet armies’ assault on the Third Reich’s capital in late April-May 1945. Howitzer shells, bomb splinters and small-arms fire added more rubble to an already ruined spot, located a few blocks away from the Reich’s Chancellery, one of the main targets of the assaulting Red troops. Surviving pictures show that heavy street-fighting took place all over the Friedrichstraße, one of the several breakout attempts by the last survivors of the bunker started next to the WinterGarten, with around thirty vehicles (with ‘Nordland’ SS troops and numerous civilians) trying to escape northwards across the Spree at the height of Friedrichstraße and the Weidendammebrücke, which left the area full of wrecks and dead bodies on the night of May 1/2. Finally, on the next morning the German garrison surrendered to the Red Army: the war in Berlin was over. 

[Two scenes from a Russian newsreel following the storming battle, the still burning remains of a German truck convoy one of them loaded with jerry cans— lays next to one of the Wintergarten-Central Hotel entrances, most probably at the Georgenstraße side, May 1945.

Photo: still from film, Archive British Pathé 1157.02

Photo: still from film, Archive British Pathé 1157.02

[What was left of the elegant facade of the hotel: the Friedrichstraße with Dorotheenstraße corner had collapsed under the bombs, here seen a few months later following the end of the war, summer 1945.]

Photo: Martin Badekow/AKG10291729

[Götterdämmerung, 1946: an aerial view of the Friedrichstraße Bahnhof area from the northeast, with gutted and roofless buildings everywhere. The red contour marks where the Wintergarten and Hotel were until being flattened by Allied bombs. Note the elevated S-Bahn bridge and Spree river at right.]

Source: still from film, Archive British Pathé 1157.02/ Berlin LuftTerror

[The bullet-riddle and burnt out northern facade of the hotel and the adjacent Café Bauer at Georgenstraße, seen from the Friedrichstraße station a year after the end of the war, Berlin-Mitte 1946.]

Photo: AKG-images (AKG60909)

[Two postwar views of the Friedrichstraße between Dorotheenstraße and Georgenstr. (note Wintergarten ruins at left), where no building was left intact by Allied bombs, 1946.]

Photo: bpk/Max Ittenbach

Photo: Harry Croner/Stadtmuseum Berlin SM 2013-2108

Post mortem and new life
The ruins of this popular hotel and café, now part of the Soviet occupation sector in Berlin, weren’t blown up until 1950. In September 1946 a second Wintergarten (in der Neuen Welt) was opened at Hasenheide in Berlin which mainly showed films preceded by a stage show, closing its gates finally in 1955.

[Life goes on: now part of East-Berlin, rubble and ruined buildings still can be seen at the famous corner where Dorotheenstraße meets Friedrichstr. in May 1950.]

Photo: Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-S95055

Photo: Bundesarchiv_Bild 183-S96696

Following the city’s reunification in the 1990s, a new-born theatre built at Potsdamer Straße Nr 96 took the name of the former Wintergarten Varieté-Theater (the third one), opening in September 1992 with nearly 500 seats and runned by Deutschen Entertainment AG with André Heller and Bernhard Paul. Threatened with bankruptcy in 2008 and closed during nearly a year, since then the theatre has been managed by the owner of the building, Arnold Kuthe Entertainment GmbH. The show must go on.

[The new Berlin: modern buildings stand today where the former Central-Hotel and Wintergarten were located at Friedrichstraße. In the background, the station’s railway bridge —rebuilt after the war— can be seen in its original location.]

Photo by the author, 2024

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Sources and bibliography:

  • Archer, Lee. Panzers in Berlin 1945. Panzerwrecks, 2019
  • Beevor, Anthony. The Fall of Berlin 1945. Viking, 2002
  • Berliner Morgenpost. Berliner Wintergarten-Varieté hat neuen Betreiber. 18 Nov. 2009. (accessed May 2024)
  • Demps, Laurenz. Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Die Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle. Ch. Links Verlag, 2014
  • Jansen, Wolfgang und Leif, Erich. Festschrift 50 Jahre Wintergarten 1888-1938. 2. Auflage. Olms, 1994
  • Landesarchiv Berlin: LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 701, Bl. 34 ff; LAB, A Rep. 005-07, Nr. 559, o. Bl; LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 702, Bl. 99 ff.; s. a. LAB, A Rep. 005-07, Nr. 559, o. Bl
  • Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011
  • Neckelmann, Harald. Friedrichstraße Berlin zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin Story Verlag, 2012
  • von den Hude. Der Bau des Central-Hotel in Berlin. Drei Beiträge zur Berliner Geschichte um 1880. edition.epilog.de, 2022
  • Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013

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Previous post >


The Fifth Raid: 3/4 September

BERLIN BOMBED AGAIN Power stations and armament works attacked

– The Times, September 5, 1940 –

Photo: © IWM (CH 15644)

With the arrival of the new month of September a new phase in the air war was about to begin between Berlin and London. The invasion menace across the Channel forced Churchill and the War Cabinet to maintain the pressure over the enemy, with a vast list of territories and targets to be attacked by the RAF.

After a brief pause of two nights without being on the target lists (you can read more about the previous raid here), RAF’s Bomber Command effort included the ‘Big City’ again on the night of September 3/4, 1940, in what would be the British fifth raid on the German capital. On the first anniversary of Britain’s declaration of war, a mixed force of light and medium bombers from all Groups were sent to “Berlin, Magdeburg, the Ruhr and the German forests, and to airfields in France.”[1] As on previous nights, the bombing effort was hampered by clouds and haze.

Again, the bombing force was sent to destroy “industrial and military targets” located in and around Berlin. Main effort was focused on the western part of the city with the Hampden squadrons (No. 5 Group) being dispatched to bomb the West power station in Berlin-Spandau and the Rheinmetall Borsig factory, meanwhile No. 4 Group’s mission was directed against a transformer station and gasworks in the Tegel area too.[2] The Wellington group for its part was assigned a special task on this night: to raise fires on Grunewald, the largest wooded area in Berlin (For further info see Razzles - Firing the Grunewald Forest) dropping incendiary bombs “where, among other things, it was thought that the Germans had established enormous military storage facilities”.[3][4] Similar raids were made on previous nights (to the Black Forest or to Falkensee near Berlin), but this was the first one of this type on the capital.[5]

[Wellington crews being interrogated by an RAF intelligence officer after returning from a raid, 2 September 1940.]

Photo: © IWM (HU 104660)

Exact figures about how many bombers attacked Berlin on that night are impossible to come by, because known documents (mainly each squadron’s ORB — operations record books) are not so precise as in late war years, but an estimate is between 17-21 aircraft dispatched until more detailed data surfaces.

As with the rest of early raids on Berlin, this one was mostly obliterated by aviation historians and authors. Even the most recent Martin Bowman’s work, a specialized book narrating the RAF’s early years bombing campaign against Berlin published last year, doesn’t mention it.[6] Just brief descriptions can be found in the available literature, for example Bomber Command’s reference book (Middlebrook, 1985) “90 Blenheims, Hampdens, Wellingtons and Whitleys to Berlin…” or in 4 Group’s chronicle by Chris Ward. Former 10 Squadron air-gunner Larry Donnelly writes in his book a more detailed breakdown of the operation, meanwhile author Paul Tweddle gives us a deeper narration of the raid.[7] On the German side, Prof. Demps in his research of the air bombardments on the city lists this raid as been made by just eleven British aircraft.[8]

‘Bombs on Woods’
Bomber Command’s 3 Group assigned the mission to two of its units, both equipped with Wellington medium bombers. Order Form B.259 was received at RAF Marham, Norfolk, earlier that day where Nos 38 and 115 Squadrons were based at the time. Six bombers were prepared to attack the Grunewald woods, with twelve more intended to bomb the Schwarzwald (Black Forest in Southwest Germany). Another four crews would target marshalling yards at Hamm and Schwerte with the north and western forests areas of Berlin as alternative targets.[9]

The bombers attacking the forests would be loaded with six containers of 25 lb parachute incendiary bombs each and several 250 lb light case incendiaries.[10]

Photo: TNA AIR 27/894 © Crown Copyright

At Marham, 115 Squadron put up four bombers from 20.41 hrs intended for Grunewald. Crews reported that many explosions were caused and fires started at the target area.[11] However according to author Steve Smith just two a/c from this squadron were assigned Berlin’s forests on this night.[12] Shortly thereafter No. 38 Squadron’s two bombers took off for their targets (off eleven attacking Germany) to fire Grunewald’s woods too, arriving over target area at 00:34 hrs. The squadron’s combat log recorded that “many fires were started and many white and red explosions were seen, and much damage is believed to have been done.” By 04.43 hrs all aircraft had returned safely.[13]

[A fine study of Wellington bomber X3662 KO-P assigned to No. 115 Squadron RAF seen at Marham, Norfolk, in 1940.]

Photo: © IWM (CH 16994)

For their part, No. 5 Group — then under Air Vice Marshal Harris’ command — sent Order Form B.212 to Scampton and Waddington stations. Attacking orders planned “To destroy power station at X Target B.56.” (the West power station located at Spandau/Siemensstadt) with eight aircraft from Nos 44 and 83 Squadrons, both equipped with Hampden bombers. Loaded with 250- and 500 lb GP bombs, in the case crews didn’t find it they would proceed to target G.69 (the Deutsche Industriewerke AG) and the Rheinmetall Borsig AG factory (coded E.15) at Berlin-Tegel where the company built guns and ammunition among other many things substantial for the German war effort. Another four Hampdens were to attack an oil refinery in Magbeburg with one Berlin target as the secondary (an oil storage coded A.160).[14]

Operating from RAF Feltwell as advance airstrip the Scampton crews (No 83 Sqn) are to lead the attack with five bombers, however results were poor: two of the bombers returned to base early due to engine trouble and the remaining three reached the German capital but just one reported to have identified and attacked the target, with other claiming to drop bombs over a “large factory west of Spandau”, none of them seen their effects.[15] The three 44 Squadron bombers arrived at the target area between 23.45 and 00.40 hrs and dropped their bombs in a swallow dive but results were not seen owing to intense searchlights and A.A. fire. By 04.45 all the aircraft were back at their bases in England safely.[16]

Photo: TNA AIR 27/453 ©Crown Copyright

Finally, No 4 Group’s contribution to that night included just one of its units, in this case No 10 Squadron based at RAF Leeming, North Yorkshire. The night before the squadron had been sent to attack a power station in Genoa, Italy, a very long trip at the limit of the Whitley’s endurance losing two crews. (see Richard Worrall, The Italian Blitz 1940–43: Bomber Command’s war against Mussolini’s cities, docks and factories. Osprey, 2020, for further information)[17]

Earlier that day the crews had been briefed to raid targets in Italy again, but at mid-morning new orders reassigned the Group to Berlin. The seven bombers detailed were to attack targets in west Berlin area, with the power plant as primary target and the coal gasworks in Berlin-Tegel as secondary objective. Their Whitley bombers would be loaded with 2x500 lb plus 6x250 lb high explosive bombs.

Leaving RAF Leeming from 20.30 hours, the seven bombers dispatched by the squadron reached the Reich’s capital, but only one claimed to have bombed the primary target (“one large fire was started”) and another the secondary, rest of the crews attacked targets of opportunity due to total darkness: a marshalling yard, a factory near Stendal, and an aerodrome south of the capital, with the last one dropping bombs over an aerodrome at Magdeburg. Returning crews reported ten-tenth clouds and intense Flak over the target. At 06.20 the last aircraft landed after completing operations.[18] 

[A Whitley bomber from No. 102 Squadron RAF moments before departing to a night sortie over the Third Reich, 1940.]

Photo: © IWM (C 835)

‘crashed against a tree’
RAF intruders suffered no losses over Germany on that night but one bomber crash-landed on the return journey due to fuel exhaustion. This aircraft, bomber Whitley P4967 ZA-J J for Johnny’ of No 10 Sqn, made two attacks on a marshalling yard two miles from the primary target and returned to Yorkshire but ran low on fuel, the pilot (Flight Lt D.G. Tomlinson) was forced to make a ‘wheels-up’ landing at 06.45 hrs five miles of Northallerton in North Yorkshire. All crewmembers escaped unhurt.[19] Another Whitley (serial P4994) from the same unit suffered Flak damage over the target when a piece of shrapnel damaged the bomber’s windscreen but returned without problem to England.[20]

[Whitley P4967 ran out of fuel and crashed in a small field at Hall Farm, 5 miles of Northallerton. The bomber, piloted by Flight Lt D.G. Tomlinson, was a total wreck.]

Photos: © Brian Rapier/yorkshire-aircraft.co.uk

Mass Bombing of Secret Targets
On the next day, press reports and the official Air Ministry communique resumed the operation with high claims: “British planes last night bombed electric power stations, lighting installations and an armament factory. Other planes attacked military objectives in the Harz Mountains and in the Grunewald Forest north of Berlin, starting fires and causing explosions.”[21] Pilots returning reported fierce blazes “seen from 100 miles on their homeward flight” with squadron’s log records narrating explosions and large fires seen too. British and American press highlighted even more the bombing effects on Berlin that night: “a devastating attack with incendiary bombs” wrote for example The New York Times two days after the raid.[22]

Reality was far from that and results were poor. Just nine crews (of 19 that probably reached the Great Berlin area) returned claims of have bombed their primary target, with two others attacking the secondary. Heavy clouds and ground haze over the targets were encountered, which made it difficult to locate them and to observe the immediate effects of the swallow attacks.[23] Almost all returning crews reported intense German Flak and accurate fire, with a high number of searchlights over the target area; one crewmember remembered that “searchlights were very active… two of these were red, but changed to yellow” meanwhile another one stated that “the Black-out in Berlin was very poor.”[24]

On the other hand, the Luftwaffe continued its aerial campaign against the Thames estuary, resulting in heavy air combats over Kent and Essex during the day. On the evening, small German bombing formations attacked the Midlands, the Wash area and Merseyside, offensive described as “widespread over many parts of this country, but reports indicate that the general damage was slight”, losing two to RAF night fighters.[25]

[Bombing news headlines at The Times, Thursday, 5 September 1940, page 4]

Photo: airminded.

As seen before, with the arrival of the new month the air bombing campaign continued, although with less intensity, the Reich’s capital being targeted regularly through the autumn and winter of 1940. This new attack by RAF raiders, overclaimed by the British, left a small tonnage of bombs dropped and minimal damage on the city but achieved its main purpose of keeping the pressure over the Nazi authorities and reminded the German people that they were at war also. 

On the next post we will explore the effects of this bombardment on the city, its people and its terrible consequences… London would soon suffer the power of the German air fleet.

_______________

Notes:

[1] MIDDLEBROOK, Martin. The Berlin Raids. R.A.F. Bomber Command Winter 1943/44. Cassell & Co, 1988, p 79
[2] see TNA: AIR 27/453 and AIR 27/147. The National Archives of the UK (TNA) © Crown Copyright
[3] TWEDDLE, Paul. The Other Battle of Britain: 1940: Bomber Command’s Forgotten Summer. The History Press, 2018, p 195
[4] YOUNG, Neil. The Role of the Bomber Command in the Battle of Britain. Imperial War Museum Review No. 06, 1991 (accessed December 2023)
[5] see TNA: AIR 27/894/2
[6] BOWMAN, Martin W. The BERLIN BLITZ by those who were there. Pen & Sword Books, 2022
[7] MIDDLEBROOKop. cit. p 79; WARD, Chris. 4 Group Bomber Command: An Operational
Record
, 2012; DONELLY, Larry. The Other Few: The Contribution Made by Bomber and Coastal Aircrew to the Winning of the Battle of Britain. Red Kite/Air Research, 2004, p 128; TWEDDLEop. cit. pp 196-8
[8] DEMPS, Laurenz (Hrsg). Luftangriffe auf Berlin: Die Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle 1940-1945. Ch. Links Verlag, 2014, p 238
[9] see TNA: AIR 27/894/2
[10] ibid; SMITH, Steve. Before the Dawn No. 38 Squadron 1935-1940. Aviation Books Limited, 2023, p 200
[11] see TNA: AIR 27/887/22
[12] direct message with the author. [September 25, 2023]
[13] see TNA: AIR 27/397/21 and AIR 27/887/22; SMITHop. cit. p 200
[14] see TNA: AIR 27/453/2
[15] see TNA: AIR 27/686/18
[16] see TNA: AIR 27/453/2 and AIR 27/447/24
[17] Percival Knauth wireless to The New York Times, “RAF RAIDS BERLIN AND FRENCH COAST, Wednesday, September 4, 1940, page 4; TWEDDLEop. cit. pp 195-6
[18] see TNA: AIR 27/147/2 and AIR 27/141/26
[19] DONNELLYop. cit. p 128; CHORLEYWR. RAF Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War. Volume 1 1939-40. Classic Publications, 2013, p 199; Middlebrook for his part doesn’t consider this crash as a “combat loss”, see 1988, p 79. For further info visit Aircraft Accidents In Yorkshire. Whitley P4967 at Nether Silton, Osmotherley (accessed December 2023)
[20] Piloted by W/Co Sydney Osborne Bufton, see Aircraft Accidents In Yorkshire. Whitley P4994 damaged by flak, returned to Leeming airfield (accessed December 2023)
[21] New York Post, “Arms Factory Is Target Of Raiders”, Wednesday, September 4, 1940, page 1
[22] The New York Times, “R.A.F. FIRES GERMAN FORESTS PLANS”, Thursday, September 5, 1940, page 1
[23] TWEDDLEop. cit. p 197. Tweddle incomprehensibly stated that “good, clear weather… and, for once, [the bombers] had no difficulty in locating the targets.”
[24] see TNA: AIR 27/141/26 and AIR 27/141/26
[25] DONNELLYop. cit. p 128; AIRMINDED, Wednesday, 4 September 1940 (accessed December 2023)

Bibliography:

  • BRITISH BOMBING SURVEY UNIT. The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 - 1945 - The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. Frank Cass, 1998.
  • Churchill, Winston. Their Finest Hour. Houghton Mifflin, 1949.
  • Tress HB. Churchill, the First Berlin Raids, and the Blitz: A New Interpretation. Militaergeschichtliche Zeitschrift, Volume 32, Issue 2, Pages 65–78. 1982. 
  • Ward, Chris. 5 Group Bomber Command: An Operational Record. Pen & Sword Books, 2007.
  • Ward, Chris and Smith, Steve. 3 Group Bomber Command: An Operational Record. Pen & Sword Books, 2009.
  • Williston, Floyd. Through Footless Halls of Air: The Stories of a Few of the Many who Failed to ReturnGSPH, 1996.

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The First Raids On Berlin

Our numbers were small and there is no claim that much damage…

resulted from our bombing but it’s very likely these raids had a consequential effect; triggering a most profound change of strategy by the enemy.’

Photo: 115 Squadron Association/ Scottish Saltire Aircrew Association.

On the 83rd anniversary of the first RAF raids on Berlin, it is very interesting to note what remembered one of Bomber Command’s boys (those which some authors call ‘the Many’) years later, in this case Sqdn. Ldr. Andrew Jackson (DFC, AE, MID.) who participated in several of the attacks against the Third Reich capital in August 1940 (see previous posts here).

Jackson, who completed his first operational tour flying Wellington bombers with RAF Nos 115 and 149 Squadrons and volunteered for a second tour (joining No 49 Squadron to fly Hampden and Manchester bombers and later Avro Lancasters with No 207 Squadron), was a major contributor to the memory of RAF Bomber Command and was the author of ‘The First Raids on Berlin’ and ‘Flying 40 missions with Red’ among other books telling his personal eye-witness accounts of the air war. He died in Edinburgh on January 31, 2009, aged 91.

Here is his account of the events and how crucial he thought the Berlin raids were in changing enemy’s tactics during the Battle of Britain:
“On the 28th August 1940, we took off from Norwich Airfield, as an advanced base from Marham to attack BERLIN, on the first operation by Wellington bombers (actually two squadrons of Wellingtons participated on the first raid also, not only Hampden bombers, author’s note). An earlier raid by Hampden aircraft was made on the 25th August 1940. The target was considered to be at the extreme operational range of the Wimpey; hence the use of Norwich Airfield. To further conserve fuel, we began a very gentle climb over the North Sea, which was covered by low cloud. Without warning we were under attack from anti-aircraft fire coming from our own ships below, presumably protecting an allied convoy. Having escaped serious damage, we continued on our long flight to the German capital.

Searchlights and heavy flak were encountered on our flight, but over the actual target there was very little opposition - not what we expected. We had a clear view of the city and the marshalling yards were easily identified and attacked. Two nights later (August 30, author’s note) we returned to be met by numerous searchlights and well-directed and intensive flak. The enemy was learning fast!

The target this time was Templehoff (sic) Airfield. Our numbers were small and there is no claim that much damage resulted from our bombing but it’s very likely these raids had a consequential effect; triggering a most profound change of strategy by the enemy.

In retrospect, it seems the raids destroyed the myth of German invincibility; causing embarrassment and considerable anger against those who had openly boasted that such raids would never happen. It’s widely believed the attacks on the German capital infuriated Hitler and prompted him to seek an alternative strategy. In future, the Luftwaffe would concentrate their bombing on British cities in a renewed effort to achieve a quick victory.

[Wellington Mark IC, R1593 coded OJ-N, of No 149 Squadron RAF, being loaded with 250-lb GP bombs at Mildenhall, Suffolk, for the forthcoming night raid.]

Photo: © IWM CH 2705.

At that time, Fighter Command was in dire straits. Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Manson (sic) and other airfields were being subjected to a terrible pasting. In some attacks, 100 bombs would be dropped on one single airfield and their viability, as an operational unit, was dubious at best. The sudden change of targeting by Goering’s Luftwaffe gave Fighter Command the respite it so desperately needed. A.C.M. Lord Dowding described it as a miracle! The daylight attacks on our cities were undertaken at high level, giving our C.H.L.’s the opportunity to detect the approach of enemy aircraft at an early stage, and to give our fighters enough time to reach optimum height. London was at the extreme range of the deadly Bf109’s and this undoubtedly contributed to higher enemy losses. Historians can regard these early raids on Berlin of immense importance since they resulted in changing the enemy’s tactics from a winning formula - to one that denied them victory. Fighter Command was able to recover from the former onslaught of airfields and aircraft – going on to defeat the Luftwaffe in one of the famous aerial battles of all time.

For the first time in World War Two, Hitler’s rampage through Europe was checked. His plans concerning the invasion of the United Kingdom required an early decision as regards the date of invasion but the heavy losses incurred by the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain raised serious doubt whether a position of air superiority could be attained. Operation ‘Sea Lion’ was initially postoned then later cancelled.

The raids on Berlin helped shape aerial battlefields of the future and helped to shape future strategy and effort. They destroyed the mythology of German invicibility and illustrated the possibility of victory at a time when news and events pointed towards darkness and defeat. It was not achieved without cost. That cost is correctly recorded in the Roll of Honour in the Battle of Britain Memorial Chapel within Westminster Abbey in London.”

Photo: still from film, Blitz on Britain/ Telemovies (Projects) Ltd.

Bibliography:

  • Donnelly, Larry. The Other Few: The Contribution Made by Bomber and Coastal Aircrew to the Winning of the Battle of Britain. Red Kite/Air Research, 2004.
  • Middlebrook, Martin and Everett, Chris. (1985). The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book. Pen & Sword Aviation. Reprint Edition 2014.
  • Napier, Michael. Vickers Wellington Units of Bomber Command. Combat Aircraft 133. Osprey Publishing, 2020.
  • Scottish Saltire Aircrew Association. The First Raids on Berlin, Library Reference Number: 002. (accessed Sept 2023)
  • The Tiller. RTB Mrs. Lavinia Flint - Leonard Ing - Andrew Jackson. Newsletter of 115 Squadron Association, April 2009. (accessed Sept 2023)
  • Ward, Chris and Smith, Steve. 3 Group Bomber Command: An Operational Record. Pen & Sword Books, 2009.
  • Ward, Chris. 115 Squadron Profile. Mention the War Ltd, 2019.

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Razzles - Firing the Grunewald Forest

R.A.F. Fires German Forests

– The New York Times, September 5, 1940 –

Photo: John Frost newspapers.

In the late summer of 1940, while the Battle of Britain was raging overhead, Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command Air Marshal Charles Portal directed a new strategy to his squadrons. So, following the first “retaliation” bombing offensive against Berlin during the last week of August [see previous posts posted here], London tested new ways to strike the heart of the Reich.

The idea behind Operation Razzle, one of the lesser known campaigns of the Second World War, was to burn Germany’s forests and crops with a new —and simple— weapon known as ‘calling cards’ (small treated cardboards) which, once dry ignited in contact with air exposure and burn rapidly with a hot flame. British aircraft would scatter these incendiary ‘leaves’, usually dropped by Whitley or Wellington bombers by night at low level, over areas of the Black Forest and other large forests where it was believed by British Military Intelligence that weapons and other military stores were being concealed, as an Air Ministry communique released on those days related: “are designed to get fire to military stores standing in the open at arsenals and ammunition factories or to supplies in open railway cars or trucks and similar objectives. It is know that the enemy has concealed such targets in woods.”[1] 

In reality, this new tactic was part of the British economic war against the Reich, intended to destroy the enemy’s crops, grain fields and lumber-producing woods. With the imminent German invasion of the British Isles Bomber Command’s number one priority was the struggle against the enemy landing fleet menace across the Channel, however, in directives issued by the Air Ministry throughout the summer attacks were ordered on the Nazi oil industry, communications, forests and crops.[2] Moreover, as early as June the bombing force was warned to be ready to set alight forests and woods using a new incendiary device soon to be available.[3] 

First ‘Razzles’ were dropped on the night of 30 June. That first night nearly ended in tragedy when one of the RAF raiders, after first bombing their primary target, proceeded to the Black Forest area in southwestern Germany and drop the cards. However, some of the leaves caught in the aircraft’s slipstream, were blown onto the tailplane elevators causing minor fires with the bomber returning with severe damage to base.[4]

First specific raid was on 2/3 September night when ten Wellingtons of No 214 Squadron were sent to fire bombings in an area forests between the Havel lake and Falkensee and NW of the Tegel sea outside the German capital.[5] Interestingly, looking into the Group’s Orders a clear recommendation can be found: “attacks on forests areas to be made in such a manner as will be best helped by prevailing wind conditions.”[6] On the next night, six sorties were made attacking the Grunewald Forest in Berlin too, while six others bombed the Black Forest.[7] These fire bombings were repeated again on the next night, September 5th.[8]

[‘Razzles’ were usually dropped through the flare chute of the aircraft, same way that leaflets were on ‘Nickelling’ sorties. Here, one of the aircrew of a Whitley bomber of No 102 Squadron demonstrates how propaganda leaflets are dropped.]

Photo: © IWM (C 826)

Incendiary cards ‘a British weapon’
This new weapon was developed in 1938 by London scientifics (others say it was an American idea) but resulted in a great failure due to German forests and fields were too green and moist, they did not catch fire cause they required tinder-dry vegetation and the northern European weather wasn’t very favourable either.

Three types of these fire raising’ devices were used: ‘calling cards’ (chemically treated cardboard sizing 75x25mm), ‘Razzle’ (small plates of cellulose nitrate plastic) and ‘Decker’ (same but larger size). All of them worked in the same way: after several hours on the ground the phosphorous dried out and ignited the celluloid, which burned for thirty seconds and so set on fire its surroundings. Furthermore, in the case if was dropped during wet weather it was believed that these cards may not ignite until several days after they hit the ground. As long as the cards were immersed in water they were incombustible, so usually were stored in tins of alcohol or water inside the bomber[9] about 450-500 to a tin.

British authorities admitted their use and described the weapon at the time just as a “self-igniting leaf”[10] but we can find a deeper description on the Popular Science issue of October, 1942: “scatter-type phosphorus missiles have been designed by the British to set fire to enemy crops and lumber-producing forests. German patience, so often exhausted, must have plumped to a new low when R.A.F. raiders began sowing these incendiary ‘calling cards’ over the countryside a couple of years ago. A single plane carries as many as a quarter of a million of them. Each three-inch-square card contains a pad impregnated with phosphorus, moistered to delay its taking fire, which it would otherwise do immediately. The resulting flame, about eight inches long, suffices to touch off grain or forest undergrowth within its reach.”[11]

Photo: Popular Science. A Technical Journal of Science and Industry. VOL 141, No 4. Oct 1942. Popular Science Publishing.

[A German propaganda picture showing a pair of incendiary cards dropped by RAF aircraft, September 1940. The original caption reads: “These are the weapons of the British night pirates! Enormous amounts of detonating leaflets dropped over German areas - since August 11, 1940, so-called incendiary leaflets were first scattered and then in enormous quantities by English planes on their cowardly night flights over Germany over long distances of our country.”]

Photo: akg-images/Sammlung Berliner Verlag.

BRITISHCALLING CARDDROPPED BY R.A.F. IN GERMANY”:  the picture was published in some US papers in the following days too, describing the weapon and its effects to woods and fields. It seems however, that the innocent-looking discs caused, according to the Neue Frankfurter Zeitung, much more damage to people than to crops: many souvenir-hunting Germans received an unpleasant shock after placing the leaves in their trouser pockets. In fact, Nazi authorities described the tiny cards as “poisoned” with the admonition to mothers that they should warn their children against picking them up and accused the new British weapon to be “directed against the German youth, the German harvest and the hard-earned property of the German people.”[12]

Photo: The New York Times, September 13, 1940, page 4

On these Razzle sorties British bombers dropped the fire-cards mixed with ordinary incendiary bombs (on some raids only fire bombs were dropped), usually the early 25-lb type parachute bomb as we can read on some of the Squadrons’ ORBs describing the required bombload: “six containers of 25 lb parachute incendiary bombs, the maximum load being made up with 250 lb light case incendiary bombs.”[13] Similar in shape to the 250-lb GP bomb and considered a large incendiary bomb, the 25-lb ‘Firepot’ was very unsatisfactory and quickly replaced after the first year of use by new and more effective IBs as was the 4-lb weapon.[14]

[The 25-lbs (12,5 Kg) incendiary bomb seen here in both German (at left) and British (right) drawing diagrams made during the wartime years.]

Photo: Hilske, M/ Bolan, GT, 1946.

This is an original ww2-footage showing an unexploded incendiary 25-lb bomb (“English fire bomb fell into the open field”)  after being dropped by British bombers during a raid on Germany on September 6, 1940, with the bomb falling on open field. The video was part of German propaganda newsreel which shows bomb damage in the city of Bruchsal following an attack by the Royal Air Force on the night of September 20, 1940. A soldier kneels next to a bomb stuck in the ground and pulls out the unopened parachute of the bomb.

Video source: Haus des Dokumentarfilms. Kinemathek Oberrhein.

Bomber Command’s campaign to drop firebombs over German forests and crops was limited to a few isolated raids during the late summer of 1940. Although British and American press defined the operation as a “mass firing” and “new secret weapon dropped in millions”, describing the effects of the fires during those raids as very successful (“Damp Discs, Dropped by R.A.F. by Thousands, Dry and Ignite–Nazis Incensed” can be read on a New York Times headline)[15] the true was that just a few fields had been burnt and that the fire didn’t spread much and as fast as desired and following the first sorties, London quickly decided that Razzle did not possess war-winning potential, and was consigned to the ‘It was worth to try’ file. The strategy was tried again on 1941 but was disappointed one more time and was abandoned.

With the invasion of England being threatened, Nazi barges in the Channel ports were a much higher priority target and so were the focal point for the Command’s attention during September.[16]

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Notes:

[1] The New York Times, Associated Press, September 11, 1940, page 1
[2] YOUNG, Neil. The Role of the Bomber Command in the Battle of Britain. Imperial War Museum Review No. 06, 1991 (accessed June 2023)
[3] ibid
[4] DELVE, Ken. Vickers Armstrong Wellington. The Crowood Press, 1998, p 28. See also The Battle Of Britain Weather Diary, 11th August 1940 (accessed June 2023)
[5] see The National Archives of the UK (TNA): AIR-27-1235 © Crown Copyright
[6] ibid
[7] see TNA: AIR-27-894_2
[8] see TNA: AIR-27-1235
[9] Command and General Staff School Military Review. “Plastics in new uses”. Volume XXI 1941. Number 83, March 1941. p 55; DELVEop. cit. p 28
[10] The New York Times, Associated Press, September 11, 1940, page 1
[11] Popular Science, “Phosphorus”, Vol 141, No 4, October 1942, pp 108-112
[12] The New York Times, Associated Press, September 11, 1940, page 1; RICHARD, Denis. Royal Air Force, 1939-1945, Vol I: The Fight at Odds. German Blockade, British Bombing, p 238
[13] see TNA: AIR-27-894_2
[14] BOLAN, G T. The development of British incendiary bombs during the period of the 1939-45 World War. Armaments Design Establishment Technical Report. Ministry of Supply.
December 1946; nearly 20,000 of the 25-lb bomb were dropped during the war: BURLS, Nina. RAF bombs and bombingROYAL AIR FORCE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Journal 45. 2009
[15] The New York Times, Associated Press, September 11, 1940, page 1
[16] Britain at War. From First to Last. (accessed June 2023)

Bibliography:

  • Air Ministry. RAF Armament Volume I: Bombs and Bombing Equipment, 1954.
  • Blank, Ralf. Germany and the Second World War. Vol. 9/1, German wartime society 1939-1945:
    politicization, disintegration, and the struggle for survival
    . Clarendon Press, 2008.
  • Bowman, Martin W. Voices in flight: RAF Night Operations. Pen & Sword Aviation. 2015.
  • Falconer, John. Bomber Command Handbook. The History Press, 1998.
  • Hilske, Michael. Beschreibung der englischen Bomben und ihrer
    Vernichtung. http://michaelhiske.de/Wehrmacht/Luft/Luft/LDV_0764_1/Zeichnungen/Zchng_16.htm
  • Middlebrook, Martin and Everett, Chris. (1985). The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book. Pen & Sword Aviation. Reprint Edition 2014.
  • Napier, Michael. Vickers Wellington Units of Bomber Command. Combat Aircraft 133. Osprey Publishing, 2020.
  • Overy, Richard. The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane, 2013.

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