Strange as it may seem, in 1943-44 our entire high school class in Berlin was drafted into the air defence of the capital with an 8.8mm flak battery. I was directly involved in shooting at British and American bombers, including B-17s. With my now 84 years, I still remember vividly many of the air raids including the first American air raid on March 6th 1944. I had great admiration for the Allied air crews who participated in tight formation, courageously braving the terrible hail of shrapnel and now I support the restoration of the B-17. How things have changed over all the years!



Franz was an anti-aircraft gunner in Berlin. He served in the US Army during the Cold War, and then became a biology professor at a university in Georgia. But in 1943, he was a 15-year-old anti-aircraft gunner in the country of his birth: Germany. Franz was called up, like thousands of children, to help defend German cities from Allied bombers. His class manned a battery of guns, and were taught their regular lessons while they waited for the bombers to attack. ‘I was just a boy. At that time we thought we were honoured to be in the defense – to save our city. We thought it was our duty to do it.’



Franz was one of 200,000 members of the Hitler Youth conscripted to operate anti-aircraft guns. Franz and his fellow teenagers were assigned to the German air force and known as

‘Luftwaffenhelfer-Hitler Jugend’, or ‘Flakhelfer’.



Franz remembered how attitudes changed as the war progressed: ‘We collected souvenirs when the first air raids came,’ remembered Franz. ‘All kinds of junk: shrapnel, and also parts of planes. We thought the war [would be] so short, we wanted to have at least a souvenir of it.’ When Franz turned 17, he was sent to join the German army and he fought on the Eastern

front where his unit was defeated by the Russians. Franz returned to Berlin to find his mother had taken her own life. After the war, his father took the family to the USA. Later, as an American citizen, Franz served with the American army in Germany.



The bombing campaign cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. It did not alone win the war, but it helped to bring victory. The USAAF began the war planning to attack specific sites with precision accuracy. But they soon found that this was hard to achieve, in part because the targets were often covered by cloud. Electronic devices were developed to get the bombers to the right place. Accuracy improved, but precision bombing remained difficult: overall, 80% of bombs landed further than 305 meters (1,000 feet) from their targets. Some parts of the campaign were more successful than others. When the USAAF attacked Germany’s oil production facilities and transport networks, Germany was severely weakened. Destroying the German air force gave the Allies control of the skies. This helped the troops on the ground. But overall, the Allies discovered that weakening German industry and morale was harder than many had hoped. Bombing had a dramatic effect on life in Germany. The Nazi government had to plough huge resources into defense. Fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft guns had to be built to attack the bombers, and millions of people had to deal with the problems caused by the raids. Even German children such as Franz Eitel were made to help. but they could not prevent Germany’s cities being smashed. At least 80,000 Allied airmen and around three quarters of a million men, women and children on the ground lost their lives.

After the war the cities were rebuilt, but even now unexploded Allied bombs continue to be discovered.