Paper Is Very Inflammable

The R.A.F.'s target was a single five-story building in The Hague. It was Gestapo headquarters, just across the Scheveningsche Weg from the Peace Palace, where the World Court once sat.

Gestapo headquarters was a busy, harassed little hive. The Dutch underground was growing bigger and bolder every day. The resistance groups had stolen or forged thousands of identity cards, food cards, work certificates, passes of various kinds. The Nazis had decided to call in all Dutch cards and passes, screen them for fakes, issue new ones. Eight or nine million of the new forms were printed and stored in the headquarters, along with bulging files on rebels wanted by Adolf Hitler's bullies.

The Dutch underground smuggled an S O S to London, and the R.A.F. got its assignment: to skip-bomb the building at rooftop level, destroy it utterly, leave the adjoining houses as nearly intact as possible. The job called for some neat doing.

Pin-Point Assignment. The crews of six fast Mosquito bombers were exhaustively briefed over a scale model. Then they took off with 500 lb. of high-explosive bombs apiece (probably five 100-pounders) plus a good hatful of incendiaries. The leader was Wing Commander R. N. Bateson, a 32-year-old veteran from Sussex.

On the first try, Leader Bateson first lost his way among the city's buildings. He went up to 20,000 ft. for a good look, found his bearings, dived, bored in straight for the target.

The raiders got a quick glimpse of the sentry in the doorway as he dropped his rifle and fled. Beyond the building they saw barracks, outside which some German troops were marching, others playing soccer. The Nazis scuttled in all directions as the delayed-fuse bombs ripped in.

The Pardonable Miss. Nearly all the demolition bombs hit the building. One, or possibly two, skidded through the ruins and landed in the barracks beyond--a miss that none of the raiders regretted. Reconnaissance photos showed that the incendiaries burned what the demolition bombs had left. Paper is very inflammable.

When the headquarters attack, which was carried out in utmost secrecy a month ago, was announced last week by the Air Ministry, it was described as "probably the most brilliant feat of low-level precision bombing of the war." Wing Commander Bateson's superiors liked it too. They gave him the D.S.O.

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