Raid on Sylt

IN THE AIR Raid on Sylt

Niels Schmidt, an innkeeper on the tiny Danish island of Romb, mile and a half north of the long German sandspit called Sylt which Adolf Hitler set apart in 1933 as a "bird sanctuary," knew something remarkable was going to happen one night last week when, at 8:15 p.m., two big airplanes came diving down over him through the low-lying clouds "with crazy speed." They were headed for List, the settlement in Sylt's northern tip, whence (as all Danes know) most birds and all fishermen long since moved out to make way for a Nazi seaplane base.

Within a minute, Landlord Schmidt heard eight loud explosions near List. He saw spouting pillars of fire. Then he heard the Sylt sirens start wailing, and searchlights shot up to finger the sky. Anti-aircraft guns started barking like a kennel of mastiffs aroused in the night. As the two bombers roared south, away from him down the length of Sylt, Herr Schmidt could hear other long-muzzled watchdogs take up the furious chorus.

Five minutes after the first two, another lone bomber power-dived in over List from due west. The German batteries set up such a fierce yammering that the newcomer released only two bombs before whirling back over the North Sea. But the whole length of Sylt--the seaplane base down at Westernland, the anti-aircraft towers on the Hindenburg Damm (causeway) connecting the island umbilically with the mainland, and the seaplane base at Hoernum on the southeast tip 20 miles away--began thudding and crackling with bomb and gun explosions. For ten minutes more Herr Schmidt watched the show--biggest British air raid of the war--until, at 8:30 p.m., he "witnessed a spectacle such as I have never seen in my life. First I heard the explosion of a single bomb. A few seconds later another explosion literally illuminated the entire sky over Sylt, and now explosion followed explosion. The bomb evidently had hit a munitions depot."

British bombing attacks continued at intervals of from five to 20 minutes all through that night until 2:40 a.m. Other Danes estimated they heard 82 heavy explosions, exclusive of incendiary bombs which fizzed and flared beyond count. They saw fires all over Sylt. They believed the whole place must be pretty badly smashed. They saw only one attacking plane shot down, in flames.

That evening Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, with radio reports from his fliers in hand, was on his feet in the House of Commons, defending his Government. The Germans' dashing raid on the Fleet in Scapa Flow (TIME, March 25) rankled bitterly in Members' minds. Not long after 9 p. m. Mr. Chamberlain was able to announce dramatically: "Tonight the Royal Air Force attacked and severely damaged the German air base at Hornum on the island of Sylt."

At 10:20 p.m. Mr. Chamberlain arose and added: "I understand that the attack is continuing."

Next day a squadron of Heinkels swooped on a British convoy near the Orkney Islands. They let go several tons of their "problem children." The British said three neutral merchant ships were hit and two had to be abandoned. The Germans said they dispersed the convoy, sank nine warships and merchantmen, totaling some 42,000 tons, damaged two merchantmen totaling 11,000 tons.

Meanwhile, as the word battle raged over what had happened at Sylt, Danes noticed that day that no trains moved across the Hindenburg Damm (normal schedule: two in the morning, two in the afternoon). They said one of the Damm's four anti-aircraft fire towers was missing. Two R. A. F. reconnaissance planes reported wrecked hangars, burning oil dumps, bomb-pocked slipways, hits on the causeway and on the islands' narrow-gauge supply railways. But the British Air Ministry would not publish the scouts' pictures.

The Germans claimed three British bombers shot down. After 36 hours, Field Marshal Goering had his personal plane, the Manfred von Richthofen, fly three U. S. correspondents to the mainland end of the Hindenburg Damm. Thence they were taken by special train across the causeway and down to Hoernum. Their dispatches said that the air base appeared unscathed except for a building used as an infirmary (25 patients were unhurt in its cellar), a target storehouse, and numbers of bomb craters in the base's extensive grounds and fringing sand dunes. Hangars appeared intact except for shattered windows. One incendiary bomb had sputtered out on a big steel crane used to hoist seaplanes out of the water. On the Hindenburg Damm the correspondents reported no sign of hits. But they may not have been shown the worst parts of the island. Experienced observers concluded that the truth about Sylt lay about midway between the British claims and the accounts of Herr Goering's eyewitnesses.

Sylt is by no means a major German bomber base. Much nearer R. A. F.'s home and overseas fields lie much bigger bases, around Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven, Kiel (see map). To reach these, R. A. F. must fly around the neutral barrier of Belgium and The Netherlands, run a hot gantlet either over the Frisian Islands into Helgoland Bight, or over the Siegfried Position. If the object was, as avowed, to wipe out a prime nest of aerial sea raiders at Sylt, perhaps it also was to start opening the clearest course to those other nests of undersea raiders: Kiel and Swinemuende, Germany's two prime submarine bases, both on a beeline from Britain, through Sylt, to the Baltic.

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