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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 2293.PDF
NOVEMBER gTH, 1944 V FLIGHT 491 WAR in the Am The Mosquito Chisel: Cologne Has Been t Unsealing Antwerp : Salonika Falls F.A.A. LATEST : A Fairey Firefly, with folded wings, on the flight deck of H.M.S. Pretoria Caslle. SOME time ago (a couple of years, if our memory is correct, without looking up records) Mosquitoes made their first public appearance by bombing the headquarters of the Ges tapo in Oslo in broad daylight. Since then this remarkable De Havilland type has given other demonstrations of its powers to chisel out some special target without causing damage to neighbouring structures which were of a friendly nature. Only a couple of weeks ago the same type was en trusted with the delicate task of burst ing open the gaol at Amiens with the utmost nicety. The bombers had to break down the outside wall at more than one place, make holes in the main building so that the inmates could get out, and at the same time blow up the German guards in their quarters—and all this without hurting the prisoneis inside. Last week another feat of almost equal delicacy was entrusted to 24 Mosquitoes. This was the destruction of the Gestapo H.Q. in Aarhus in Den mark. The offices were located in two buildings in the middle of the Univer sity, and the neighbouring buildings had been turned into hospitals. Such a task would have seemed easy to the Luftwaffe. They would merely have tried to blot out the whole area, hos pitals and all. Not so the 2nd Tacti cal Air Force. They were naturally ordered to take the greatest pains to avoid all chance of damaging the hos pitals. That, of course, meant that the R.A.F. pilots had to take special risks, flying low and slow. They went in in four sections of six machines each, while a photographic machine hung round to record the re sults. There seems no doubt that both the Gestapo buildings were well and truly destroyed. In those buildings were housed the Gestapo records, which would enable the organisation to seize such Danes as they considered dangerous. Most of those papers were, it is hoped, destroyed ; and it may also be hoped that a goodly contingent of Gestapo villains were in their offices when the bombs fell. The raid only took ten minutes, and all the Mos quitoes returned home. Some flak was encountered, but no fighters appeared. Cologne was, if not the first, cer tainly in the first three German towns to receive attacks by 1,000 bombers at a time. Survivors of that first occa sion, if any are still left in the place, must look back on it as a nice quiet night when not nruch harm was done. R.A.F. bomber crews, on the other hand, probably look back on those bad old days as meaning long journeys through endless flak to reach a far away target. Cologne is now only a few miles behind the American battle line. The flight to reach if. is just as far in miles, but most of it is over country now occupied by the Allied armies, and the journey there and back is mostly unexciting. Being so close to the battle, Cologne acquired a new importance. The city became, not merely a manufacturing centre whose products might reach the German armies in some six months or TRAFFIC SUSPENSION: All that remains of the Cologne suspension bridge after the R.A.F. Bomber " mand attack on XJ
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