The Worst, and Worse to Come

London had its worst 24 hours and its worst week of robot bombing.

The explosions sometimes thundered seconds apart as the bombs arrived in groups, like artillery salvos. Some of the things sputtered in power dives, a few circled, but many drove silently for whatever was in their paths. Londoners did not know what to expect. They were warned to expect worse.

In a U.S. Air Forces' record week of bombing Germany, the targets of some bombers were factories producing pilotless bombers and their fuels. How effective it would be in stopping the scourge, no man yet knew. In their sixth week of suffering from the Germans' Vergeltungswaffe 1 (Reprisal Weapon 1), Londoners had no relief.

But it was a warning that the Allied command also feared more trouble to come, from the larger, longer-ranged V-2 of which the Nazis boast. It was no secret that the bombers were trying to nip off V-2 as well as stop Vi. The targets were significant: the experimental stations at Peenemuende and Zinnowitz on the wooded Baltic coast (R.A.F. attacks there a year ago were officially credited with having delayed V-1 by six months); robot-parts plants at Friedrichshafen and Memmingen in southwest Germany; unnamed factories turning out special fuels for pilotless bombs; storage points in France and Germany for bombs and fuels. Part of the strategic pattern was a concentrated blasting of the Bayerische Motorenwerke (Munich), which makes robot propulsion engines. It was reported four-fifths destroyed.

In London the war's greatest concentration of flak guns destroyed some bombs, added to the nerve-racking din compounded by sirens, bells and other warning devices. The bombs continued to deliver death in wholesale lots: twelve in one row of shops, five in a row of dwellings. One bomb barely missed a U.S. Army headquarters, slightly wounded four WACs.*

London packed off more women & children (more than 182,000), heard renewed assurances that the robot bombs could not possibly affect the course of the war. The course of Londoners' lives was another matter. Home Security Minister Herbert Morrison had to admit what was deadly obvious: "We have not beaten it yet."

*TIME'S London bureau had a close one. Cabled Bureau Chief Walter Graebner: "The other night one of the bombs flew past our window looked in, saw no crowd and proceeded up the street. Cor, if ever a man suffered. . . ."

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