On 23 August 1940 the first RAF raid took place on the capital of the Third Reich, Berlin. The German capital was then at the extreme range of bombers operating out of airfields in Britain. The American journalist, William Shirer, was living in Berlin and wrote about the raid in his diary:
We had our first big air raid of the war last night. The sirens sounded at 12.20 am and the all-clear came at 3.23 am. For the first time British bombers came directly over the city, and they dropped bombs. The concentration of anti-aircraft fire was the greatest I’ve ever witnessed. It provided a magnificent, a terrible sight. And it was strangely ineffective. Not a plane was brought down; not one was even picked up by the searchlights, which flashed back and forth frantically across the skies throughout the night.
The Berliners are stunned. They did not think it could happen. When this war began, Goering assured them it couldn’t. He boasted that no enemy planes could ever break through the outer and inner rings of the capital’s anti-aircraft defence. The Berliners are a naive and simple people. They believed him. Their disillusionment today is therefore all the greater. You have to see their faces to measure it. Goering made matters worse by informing the population only three days ago that they need not go to their cellars when the sirens sounded, but only when they heard the flak going off near by. The implication was that it would never go off. That made people sure that the British bombers, though they might penetrate to the suburbs, would never be able to get over the city proper. And then last night the guns all over the city suddenly began pounding and you could hear the British motors humming directly overhead, and from all reports there was a pellmell, frightened rush to the cellars by the five million people who live in this town.51
The bombing of Berlin was a massive propaganda coup for the RAF at a time when Hitler was threatening to invade Britain. While the damage was slight, Hitler flew into a rage and ordered the Luftwaffe to stop bombing air defences and start bombing cities. It was a turning point in the Battle of Britain. To take advantage of the huge interest in the raid a game called Bomber Command was produced. Described as ‘an interesting and exciting game for 4 players’, Bomber Command was a real austerity wartime game consisting of a paper board and a small brown envelope with a paper die and counters. There was no box, the board instead having on the front a crude cartoon of a nondescript bomber with the instructions for play on the reverse.
The board was divided into two with fifty-two squares on each side with Berlin in the centre denoted by a circular swastika and two bombs. Each player had a base at the corner with four planes. There were two ‘Bomber Stations’ and two ‘Fighter Stations’ from where players started their missions. The aim of the game was to fly your four planes to Berlin, drop your bombs or strafe the city and safely return to base.
Bomber Command was a real austerity wartime game with no box, the board instead having on the front a crude cartoon of a nondescript bomber with the instructions for play on the reverse.
The game was modelled on snakes and ladders with different bonus and hazard squares in each quarter of the board leading to two shared final bombing approaches to Berlin. Bonus squares included climbing, taking evasive action and favourable weather. Hazard squares included anti-aircraft fire, being caught in a searchlight and the engine failing. To make the game more difficult each player had to roll a six to take off and to return from Berlin. In addition, if a plane landed on an occupied space, it had to return to its station. The winner was the first person to get all their four planes over Berlin and then safely back to base.
The raid on 23 August 1940 would be the first of 314 air raids on Berlin including 85 in the final year of the war. Half of all the houses in the city would be damaged and a third destroyed. Around 16km2 of Berlin would be reduced to rubble, the equivalent of nearly 30m3 for every inhabitant. Estimates of the total dead from the air raids vary from 20,000 to 50,000.
The board was divided into two with fifty-two squares in each, the aim being to fly your four planes to Berlin, drop your bombs or strafe the city and safely return to base.