Multiply By Terror

"A half hour after the first planes roared overhead, the whole town seemed ablaze. The overhanging clouds turned salmon pink underneath. Apprehension gave way to fear. The crackle of flames, the hiss of water on molten girders, the incessant clang of firebells provided a sullen noisy backdrop for the whurrump of cascading bombs. Incendiary bombs cracked against walls in a blinding bluish white flash.

"Wet glistening streets were a writhing mass of fire hoses. Splintered glass lay ankle deep. Gaunt, charred walls buckled in, carrying firemen on extension ladders down with them. The night air stank with acrid smells of cordite, burnt flesh, sweat. Cries of the burned, hoarse shouted commands of the firemen, and thunderous oaths kaleidoscoped into a rumble of sound. The city seemed engulfed in flame. At dawn the rosy glow of the fires gave way grudgingly to a coppery sun, picking its way through billows of heavy black smoke."

That was London, May 10, 1941.

On that last great night of London's blitz, some 300 twin-and-single-engined German planes dropped some 400 tons of bombs. Last week the R.A.F. sent 900-1,000 four-engined bombers to Berlin and the important chemical center of Ludwigshafen. Upon the two cities fell some 2,500 tons of incendiary and high-explosive bombs, each bomb more efficient and terrible than those of 1940. "The largest force of heavy bombers yet dispatched to Germany" earmarked at least 350 two-ton blockbusters for Berlin alone. As in London in 1941, Berlin's fires gorged themselves for two days. Buildings had to be dynamited to stop the fire's spread. How many lay cremated under the rubble, how strong was the smell of cordite, burnt flesh and sweat, how many were without homes, kin, legs, eyes, no one could say.

It was Berlin's 84th raid of the war. It was not the last, nor the heaviest that Berlin must take.

* As shown in British photographs radioed to the U.S. this week. Both R.A.F. night-bombers and U.S. day-bombers have repeatedly attacked Hamburg's waterfront and factories.

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