Berlin & Back

On Friday the U.S. Eighth Air Force flicked a feint at Berlin with P-38 Lightning fighters. Next day the Eighth threw a half-punch. Heavy bombers raided targets in eastern Germany and one formation of Fortresses dropped bombs on the Berlin district, for the first U.S. raid on the battered capital of the Reich.

Then on Monday Major General James H. Doolittle's air force wound up its heavy bombing arm and struck with full power. Great fleets of Fortresses and Liberators thundered out from Britain, fought their way across Germany through desperate Luftwaffe resistance, dropped their bombs in a 30-minute mid-day assault that left spouting, spreading fires in Berlin.

The attack was one of the greatest air battles of the war. One veteran waist-gunner called it "worse than Oschersleben and Schweinfurt put together." U.S. headquarters made it clear that "divisions" of bombers had taken part (a division can be made up of from 420 to 730 bombers). The German radio bleated that the U.S. fighter force was "of a strength rarely seen before."

Fighters and bombers took their losses, and made the enemy pay. The fighters shot down 83 German aircraft for a loss of eleven. Sixty-eight bombers failed to return--a record eclipsing the old mark of 60 lost over Schweinfurt. One division of U.S. bombers alone shot down at least 40 Nazi planes, making a total of 123, with many a squadron yet to be heard from. The battle had been hard. Said one returning airman:

"When people say there's no more Luftwaffe, you can tell them they're nuts!"

But Jimmy Doolittle is a rough, tough, fighting man, leader of a force that is willing to take a punch in order to land one. Berlin can expect to see more of his men.

Air Talisman. Five days before Sir Archibald Sinclair, Britain's dapper Secretary of State for Air, told the House of Commons that Allied air power was now nearly at peak strength, and declared that air supremacy, "the talisman that can paralyze German war industry and war transport and clear the road to Berlin," is clearly within reach.

But one hard fact remained. Full-scale air attack, of an intensity truly calculated to cripple Germany, has been mounted only within the last two weeks. Many hard blows must still be struck.

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