SEP 8: LONDON: Messages from Berlin admit that the R.A.F. raid last night was the most severe, the noisiest, and the most spectacular since the outbreak of war.
One agency says that the British pilots appeared to ignore the anti-aircraft fire and descended to 3000 feet.
Guns of all calibres operated.
Pom-poms and machine guns sent streams of fire into the sky without effect. Officials say that 12 planes participated. One bomber was severely damaged, and a member of the crew "baled out". A huge fire was started in a warehouse near the Lehrter railway station. Other fires occurred at a coal storage building north of the city, at municipal buildings in the Weissensee district, and the old Moabit Courthouse in the centre of the city, where Pastor Neimoller was tried.
Another agency says the glare of the warehouse fire illuminated the diplomatic area. Two bombs fell in a street in a workers' district, destroying part of a tram line. One person was killed, and seven were injured. Bombs smashed a searchlight battery at Brandenburg, and several soldiers were killed and others injured. An incendiary bomb also set fire to a wireless apparatus factory, the smoke from which hung over the northern section of the city. The fires continued long after the "all clear" signal.
Crowds lined the pavements silently watching a conducted tour for neutral journalists. It is revealed that three persons were killed and 20 injured, and also that most of the bombs fell close to legitimate military objectives.
A bomb hit the Tegel railway station, not far from the Borsig Arms Factory, and killed one person and injured 10 others standing in a doorway.
British heavy bombers on Thursday night flew 1600 miles, including double crossing of the Alps, to renew the attack on the great Fiat aeroplane and engine factory at Turin. Heavy damage was caused, and, though the raiders were subjected to intense opposition from the ground defences, all returned safely to England before dawn on the following morning.
Other forces of heavy bombers, meanwhile, penetrating deep into Germany, attacked objectives as far apart as the Baltic coast in the north to the Black Forest in the south.
On the Baltic the synthetic oil plants at Politz, near Stettin, were heavily bombed for the second night in succession. The oil storage installation at Regensburg, near the former Czechoslovak border, and the oil tanks at Hamburg were also among the night's objectives in Germany.