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Posts tagged with 1940

The Fifth Raid: 3/4 September
2023-12-13 19:52:00 UTC
‘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…

The First Raids On Berlin
2023-08-30 18:02:00 UTC
‘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…

Razzles - Firing the Grunewald Forest
2023-06-26 09:02:00 UTC
‘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,…

Bomb shelter in Prague
2023-03-09 13:37:42 UTC
‘We were impressed by the absence of flak on the bomb run.’ – Howard Pinner, Pilot, 603rd Bomb Squadron, USAAF – Photo: praguemorning.cz During our recent trip to Prague last week we had the opportunity to visit a very interesting air-raid shelter, part of a guided tour itinerary about…

August summary - The early days
2023-01-09 13:54:00 UTC
‘In case there is an attack on the centre of Government in London, it seems very important to return the compliment the next day upon in Berlin. I understand you will have by the end of this month a respectable party of Stirlings ready. Perhaps the nights are not…

Luftangriff – 1 September 1940
2022-09-02 10:45:00 UTC
‘Berlin has Alarm in new R.A.F. raid’ ‘British Formation Reported Broken Up at Elbe Before Reaching the Capital.’ – The New York Times, Sunday, September 1, 1940 – Photo: ullstein bild. On the night of 31 August / 1 September, 1940, RAF Bomber Command aircraft overflew…

Heart of Berlin Bombed
2022-04-28 15:18:00 UTC
‘British Bombs set Big Fires in Berlin. Nazis Blast London’ – New York Journal-American, Saturday, 31 August, 1940 – Photo by UMBO/ ullstein bild. On the night of August 30/31, 1940, the air alarm sirens and the anti-aircraft bursts woke up Berliners from their sleep again, who hurried…

British third raid on Berlin
2022-04-03 14:56:00 UTC
‘Two nights later we returned to Berlin… …to be met by numerous searchlights and well directed and intensive flak. The raids must have destroyed the myth of German invincibility, thus causing considerable anger to Hitler and Goering who had boasted that such raids would never happen.’ – Squadron Leader Andrew…

Bomben auf die Kottbusser Straße
2021-11-30 11:51:00 UTC
The photogallery we shared here show the damage inflicted by RAF Bomber Command air raid on the night of 28/29 August 1940 on Berlin, all captured in the Kottbusser Tor area within Berlin-Kreuzberg district. These pictures were taken on the following days of this second bombing, an air attack which…

Britische Luftangriffe über Berlin
2021-05-14 15:59:00 UTC
‘Ten killed in Berlin raid’. ‘Berlin gets a taste of bombs… …British bombers took a toll of ten killed and about thirty wounded in a workers’ section less than two miles from the Government offices in Wilhelmstraße. All the casualties were civilians. Preliminary reports gave no word of death or…

Bombing raid on Berlin
2021-05-02 18:01:00 UTC
‘Aircraft drawn from two R.A.F. squadrons made a special attack on an objective only four miles from the centre of Berlin early yesterday morning’. – Daily Herald, Friday, August, 30, 1940 – Photo: © IWM CH 10246. As we have seen in previous posts, the first bombing on Berlin by…

𝐅𝐫𝐨̈𝐡𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐢𝐡𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐧, 𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬
2020-12-24 16:32:00 UTC
It was a few years ago, December in Berlin and I was with some friends at a celebration at Alexanderplatz next to the typical Weihnachtsmarkt. When the fireworks began, explosions of colour, noise and lights fell in the middle of the intense cold and the first snowflakes. Around me, everyone…

Berlin unter Bomben • Steglitz
2019-10-28 19:46:00 UTC
‘steht nichts’ [Photo: Trustees of the IWM / Tony Redding. Life and Death in Bomber Command. Fonthill Media, 2013.] [Berlin 1/2 March 1943: this night oblique taken by an RAF bomber during the raid shows smoke drifting from fires in the Steglitz area (A) and a concentration of fires around…

Bombers over Berlin!
2019-05-20 09:43:00 UTC
‘Bombers over Berlin, London… …while Hitler’s bombers were making another raid on the London area early today, R.A.F. bombs shook Berlin.’ – Daily Mirror, Tuesday, August 26, 1940 – Photo: Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung (00011855). So far in the war, Berlin has not been attacked; there have been…

“Back from Berlin”
2019-05-02 20:04:32 UTC
‘The sporadic raiding of London towards the end of August was promptly answered by us in a retaliatory attack on Berlin. The War Cabinet were much in the mood to hit back, to raise the stakes, and to defy the enemy. I was sure they were right…’ – Winston S…

The first one: August 25th, 1940
2019-05-01 17:50:00 UTC
‘They had bombed London, whether on purpose or not, and the British people and London especially should know that we could hit back. It would be good for the morale of us all’. – Winston S Churchill – Photo: © IWM (H-3514). The prelude: LondonDuring the early…

Bombensturm! (Part III)
2018-06-12 21:51:42 UTC
MC Bombs: [Armourers from No 97 Squadron preparing MC-bombs on their trolleys to be loaded onto a Lancaster bomber on July 1943 at RAF Waddington.] The limited and inadequate arsenal of bombs composed of the high explosive GP (general purpose) bombs (10-15% detonation failure rate) made British Bomber Command to…

Bombensturm! (Part II)
2018-05-03 12:37:08 UTC
The Incendiary Bombs [Haus Vaterland (“Fatherland House”) burns following a night raid on 22/23 November 1943 by British RAF bombers. The building was a pleasure palace on the southwest side of Potsdamer Platz. At left, a S-Bahn signal post.] [Photo: Ullsteinbild / Archiv Golejewski.] Incendiaries (IB), usually small-sized…

Bombensturm!
2018-03-18 20:20:39 UTC
When British Bomber Command went to war in 1939 it found itself equipped with a very limited and inadequate arsenal of bombs. General Purpose GP Bombs: The high explosive GP (general purpose) bombs, developed from 1935, were the initial arsenal Bomber Command had to carry destruction to Third Reich soil…

The Swiss House
2017-10-30 23:21:17 UTC
In the corner where Unter den Linden meets Friedrichstraße, there is a house with more than 85 years of history in Berlin. Today, this building stands as one of the original places of the city and a survivor of the Allied bombing campaign and the Luftangriffe of the Second World…

The Whitley
2017-07-12 10:09:31 UTC
The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley was one of the three ‘strategic’ bombers types with which Britain went to war in September 1939. The Whitley was conceived as a night ‘heavy’ bomber and was RAF’s first monoplane bomber and the first one to penetrate on Germany airspace. With a crew of five…

The Flying Suitcase
2017-06-01 15:05:31 UTC
One of the three bombers types beside Wellingtons and Whitleys which participated on the first British attack over Berlin in August 1940 was the Handley-Page Hampden, model HP 52. [A two-ship formation of Handley P Hampdens from No 44 Squadron RAF over England.] [Photo: LIFE images.] That first night…

Les Marins français Bombardaient Berlin
2017-05-01 16:36:00 UTC
7 June 1940 Actually, the first bombing raid over Berlin was a French affair. [Photo: AMMAC du Fumélois.] On Monday, June 3, 1940, the Germans launched “Operation Paula” with a Luftwaffe force of some three hundred bombers attacking Paris and causing several hundred civilian casualties. The French decided to…

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