4. The 1943 Mosquito Raid Of Berlin
On Saturday the 30th of January 1943, Nazi Germany was celebrating the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power. As their traditions, the Germans gathered at the central broadcasting station to listen to the speeches of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göering and Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s Propaganda Minister. While this was supposed to be a special event, the Royal Air Force was inbound at low level in their de Havilland Mosquito’s with other ideas about that.
With German forces occupying virtually the whole of Europe, the British were determined to prevent the concentration of defenses in Berlin. The operation started in the morning when three Mosquito B Mk. IVs from 105 Squadron carried out a low-level attack on the Haus des Rundfunks, headquarters of the German State broadcasting company when Göering was due to address the public. Goering could not take the lectern for an hour after the attack and was reported to have been “boiling with rage and humiliation.”
The second attack followed five hours later when three Mosquitoes from 139 (Jamaica) Squadron flew to Berlin and interrupted a speech by Goebbels. Although not quite as disruptive as the earlier one, this attack also took place at the exact time Goebbels was to start speaking, 16.00. During this raid, only one aircraft was lost – Mosquito DZ367 GB-J, of 105 Sqn was shot down near Altengrabow leading to the death of the Squadron Leader D.F. Darling and his navigator, Flying Officer William Wright.