The Battle Of Berlin by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2020-08-20T19:15:06+00:00

Chapter Twelve

‘Chop City’

‘God, the losses over Berlin! The “Big City ” is now referred to as “Chop City” by some. Seem to remember that over four raids at the beginning of 1944, 158 kites bought it. A slugging match with masses of night-fighters all along the route with even more over Berlin itself; and the heaviest concentration of flak in all Germany.’

Pilot Officer Campbell Muirhead, a Lancaster bomb-aimer on 12 Squadron.¹

The main Battle of Berlin had begun on the night of 18/19 November 1943. RAF Bomber Command had attacked the German capital in some strength on ten nights up to and including 20/21 January 1944. The main offensive of the war against the ‘Big City’, as it was known to RAF bomber crews, would continue to the end of that month and it would see a grand total of 14 large raids and 7,403 sorties on the German capital at a cost of 384 aircraft. The German night-fighter defences would prove that Bomber Command could not maintain a strategic offensive on deep penetrations of Germany. The Luftwaffe had, by January 1944, fitted the FuG 220 Lichtenstein SN-2 radar to most of the ‘Tame Boars’ employing freelance or Pursuit Night-Fighting tactics to augment the Lichtenstein sets. Now the fighters had such a marked superiority over the bombers that bomber crews were instructed not to use H2S, or to use it only for short periods when vitally required for navigation or for blind marking on long-range targets. There was no other technique available.² However, the accuracy achieved against the Ruhr and against Hamburg could not be achieved on long-range targets such as Berlin and the attrition from fighters became too great to sustain.

The night of 27/28 January 1944 would be the second of the four raids on Berlin which prompted the scornful sobriquet ‘Chop City’. It came after six nights’ respite during which the only raid on the German capital had been on 21/22 January when twenty-two Lancasters and a dozen Mosquitoes had carried out a diversionary raid on the ‘Big City’. Only one of the Lancasters was lost but fifty-seven aircraft had been lost on the Magdeburg raid.

Wing Commander Reggie ‘Sunshine’ Lane

DSO DFC

had taken command of 405 ‘Vancouver’ Squadron at Gransden Lodge on 22 January when long-serving Johnny Fauquier had been posted to a desk job at 6 Group. Lane’s squadron detailed fourteen Lancasters for the Berlin raid on 27 January. He wrote:

‘Every time the crews came into the ops room the route would be up on the map and they’d look at the map and they’d say, ‘God! Berlin again!’ The old usual chitchat that would go on had died; it was just not there. It was like walking into the jaws of death another night, because the losses on the Berlin raids were very heavy.

‘During that difficult time when every night it was Berlin, Berlin, Berlin and the morale was down, I can remember one occasion when Mac and Bennett – both were Squadron Leaders – came into the Ops Room and you could hear a pin drop.

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