From 1943: Allied forces conduct bombing raid over Berlin

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]And welcome back to the takeout and our latest CBS News Radio tribute, Edward R.

[00:00:05]Murrow brought listeners to the front lines of World War II and tonight we have his famed 1943 broadcast aboard an Allied bombing run over Berlin. Five radio correspondents went on the mission, but Murrow was one of only two who survived. Here's some of his report.

[00:00:23]CBS World News now brings you a special broadcast from London.

[00:00:28]Columbia's correspondent Edward R.

[00:00:29]Murrow was on one of the RAF bombing planes that smashed at Berlin last night in one of the heaviest attacks of the war.

[00:00:36]41 bombers were lost in the raid and three out of the five correspondents who flew with the raiders failed to return.

[00:00:42]For Mr. Murrow's story of the attack, we take you now to London.

[00:00:48]This is London.

[00:00:50]Yesterday afternoon the waiting was over. The weather was right. The target was to be the big city.

[00:00:57]The crew captains walked in the briefing room, looked at the maps and charts, and sat down with their big celluloid pads on their knees. The atmosphere was that of a school and a church. The weatherman gave us the weather. The pilots were reminded that Berlin is Germany's greatest center of war production. The intelligence officer told us how many heavy and light ack-ack guns, how many searchlights we might expect to encounter.

[00:01:19]By this time we were about 30 miles from our target area in Berlin.

[00:01:23]That 30 miles was the longest flight I have ever made.

[00:01:28]Dead on time, Buzz the bomber, reported, "Target indicator is going down."

[00:01:35]At the same moment the sky ahead was lit up by bright yellow flares. Off to starboard another kite went down in flames.

[00:01:42]The flares were sprouting all over the sky, reds and greens and yellows, and we were flying straight for the center of the firework.

[00:01:49]D dog seemed to be standing still, the four propellers thrashing the air, but we didn't seem to be closing in.

[00:01:57]The cloud had cleared, and off to the starboard a Lanc was caught by at least 14 searchlight beams.

[00:02:03]We could see him twist and turn and finally break out.

[00:02:07]But still the whole thing had a quality of unreality about it.

[00:02:11]No one seemed to be shooting at us, but it was getting lighter all the time.

[00:02:16]Suddenly, a tremendous big blob of yellow light appeared dead ahead, another to the right, and another to the left. We were flying straight for them.

[00:02:24]Jock pointed out to me the dummy fires and flares to right and left, but we kept going in.

[00:02:30]Dead ahead, there was a whole chain of red flares, looking like stoplights.

[00:02:36]Another Lanc was coned on our starboard beam. The lights seemed to be supporting it.

[00:02:41]Again, we could see those little bubbles of colored lead driving at it from two sides. The German fighters were at him.

[00:02:48]And then, with no warning at all, D Dog was filled with an unhealthy white light.

[00:02:54]I was standing just behind Jock and could see all the seams on the wings.

[00:02:58]His quiet Scott's voice beat into my ears.

[00:03:01]"Steady, lads. We've been coned."

[00:03:04]His slender body lifted half out of the seat as he jammed the control column forward and to the left.

[00:03:13]We were going down.

[00:03:14]Jock was wearing woolen gloves with the fingers cut off.

[00:03:18]I could see his fingernails turn white as he gripped the wheel.

[00:03:23]And then I was on my knees, flat on the deck, for he had whipped the dog back into a climbing turn.

[00:03:30]The knees should have been strong enough to support me, but they weren't.

[00:03:34]And the stomach seemed in some danger of letting me down, too.

[00:03:38]I picked myself up and looked out again.

[00:03:41]It seemed that one big searchlight, instead of being 20,000 ft below, was mounted right on our wing tip.

[00:03:49]D Dog was corkscrewing. As we rolled out on the other side, I began to see what was happening to Berlin.

[00:03:56]The clouds were gone.

[00:03:58]And the sticks of incendiaries from the preceding waves made the place look like a badly laid out city with the streetlights on.

[00:04:05]The small incendiaries were going down like a fistful of white rice thrown on a piece of black velvet.

[00:04:13]As Jock hauled the dog up again, I was thrown to the other side of the cockpit.

[00:04:18]And there below were more incendiaries, glowing white and then turning red.

[00:04:23]The cookies, the 4,000-lb high explosives were bursting below like great sunflowers gone mad.

[00:04:30]And then as we started down again, still held in the light, I remembered that the dog still had one of those cookies and a whole basket of incendiaries in his belly. And the light still held us.

[00:04:42]And I was very frightened.