World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF EUROPE: The Leaves Fall in Berlin

Yellowed leaves of the lindens and horse chestnuts drifted through the smoky night air and fell on the graveled paths of the Tiergarten. Summer was almost over in Berlin. It was the fourth anniversary of the day on which Germany had attacked Poland. The sky above Berlin suddenly leaped into white shimmering flame.

For the second time in a little more than a week the British were over the city. This time Nazi interceptors with searchlights in their noses had climbed above them, circling through the high thin air, dropping brilliantly burning white flares. A British pilot steered his Halifax toward his target, watching the flares float down around him in parallel lanes. His navigator counted 50 flares “going down even more slowly than a leaf falls.” In the eerily lighted sky world, half a thousand Nazi fighters fell on the attackers. Some of the British were sent plunging into the city’s streets. An uncounted number of Nazi fighters were shot down. Through lanes of light and showers of red tracers the bomber fleet rolled on, dropping its hundreds of tons of bombs.

Four nights later the bombers returned again. The Luftwaffe, striking desperately back, fighting the R.A.F. across half of Europe, had accomplished one thing. It had forced the British to abandon, momentarily at least, the slow-moving Halifaxes and Stirlings and use only speedy Lancasters. The Lancasters did not tarry. Launching a new, concentrated kind of attack, they loosed 1,120 tons in a brief and terrible 20 minutes. Within the week 69 British planes fell under the Luftwaffe’s frantic defense. But faster than autumn leaves, the bombs continued to fall on a city marked for revenge.