Warsaw, Rotterdam Papers Copy

Berlin crouched, waiting the attack which had long been promised. In darkened restaurants along the Kurfuerstendamm, Berliners listened to the stories and dreadful rumors from Hamburg--200,000 dead, the tunnel under the Elbe River cracked open, and 18,000 drowned; Hamburg all but obliterated. The cautious camped near the Zoo against emergency bunkers, slept in air-raid shelters. The terrified left the city for its safer fringes.

Near midnight one night last week the British struck.

Berlin's searchlights shivered across the sky. The Luftwaffe's fighters rose in swarms. Some 700 raiders rumbled across the city, raining incendiaries, dropping a hail of bombs. Berlin officials who dared to stand by their radios could hear the voice of an observer circling in a plane somewhere on high giving commands to the methodical British pilots: "There's absolutely nothing here to stop you chaps. The searchlights look pretty thick but they haven't got glue. . . . There's a bit of flak among the searchlights, but none is as bad as it looks. Now, boys, for a nice run in. . . ." Some 1,800 tons of explosives fell on flaming Berlin.

Of the 73 raids Berlin had experienced, this was the worst, the first of the kind of saturation raids that had wrecked Hamburg. And on the next night, and the next, the British were back, not with the same massive strength but with fast Mosquitoes which harassed the city, kept terror alive as Berliners dug out.

Over the rest of Europe flew heavy and medium bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, distracting Germany's outlying defenses in France. Flying Fortresses which had flown across southeast Germany to Africa on Aug. 17, blasting factories, shuttled back to British bases, wrecking an aircraft assembly plant in Bordeaux. All across Hitler's Europe the Allied airmen's campaign of destruction continued. At week's end it reached another climax. R.A.F. bombers staged a second saturation raid. This time they were over Nuernberg, vital railroad center, crowded factory city and Naziism's shrine. Inside of 45 minutes 1,500 tons of bombs poured down.

"Inconceivable, Terrible." Germany defended herself with desperation. Searchlights fingered the bomber fleets all the way across the continent. From German cities hundreds of night-fighter planes tried to intercept. Ack-ack fire in Berlin was light, but fighter resistance was savage and concentrated. The British Air Ministry reported that 58 of its bombers were shot down. The air battle over Nuernberg was described as the greatest air night battle of the war. The R.A.F. admitted losing 33 more planes.

The U.S. bombers in their shuttle across Germany had shot down 287 Nazi fighters, but the U.S. admitted losing 59 (a record) Flying Fortresses.

Stockholm reports had the Wilmersdorf residential district completely flattened, the Charlottenburg shopping area knocked beyond recognition, its main shopping streets--Tauenzien Strasse, Joachimstaler Strasse and half the Kurfuerstendamm--wiped out. Hit again was the Zoo railway station. Destruction to Tempelhof Air Field, said Stockholm, caused suspension of all traffic. Observers who studied smoke-hazed air reconnaissance pictures, which partially confirmed the Stockholm stories, said damage was as thorough as anything they had seen in Warsaw or Rotterdam.

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