Les Marins français Bombardaient Berlin
7 June 1940
Actually, the first bombing raid over Berlin was a French affair.
On Monday, June 3, 1940, the Germans launched “Operation Paula” with a Luftwaffe force of some three hundred bombers attacking Paris and causing several hundred civilian casualties. The French decided to retaliate, and although they didn’t have a comparable number of bombers, a psychological blow to the enemy was deemed necessary. American journalist William L. Shirer, who was at the time of the raid Berlin on the CBS radio network, wrote in his diary on June 5th: ‘… BBC says the Parisians are demanding revenge. But no planes came over here last night; none so far tonight…’ (Shirer, 1990)
On June 7, 1940, a week before The Fall Of Paris, the French Navy went into the offensive attacking Berlin on a night raid. It was made just by one plane, and no other raids will be made again by the French during the rest of the war. Damage to the capital was slight. The only long-range bomber available in 1940 was the Farman F.222, a rather ungainly four-engine aircraft dating back to the mid-1930s based on the French idea of the ‘multiplace de combat’, an outdated concept of air war. The Aéronautique Navale was in possession of three Farman 223.4, former postal aircraft that had been requisitioned by the Navy and given the names Camille Flammarion, Le Verrier, and Jules Verne. The ‘Jules Verne’, formerly Air France’s F-ARIN, was assigned to Capitaine de Corvette Henri Daillière in April 1940.
The experienced crew of the Jules Verne: C.C. Daillière (commandant, at centre); l’Enseigne de Vaisseau Comet (navigator); Maître Principal Yonnet (pilot); Maître Corneillet (flight engineer); Maître Scour (radioperator) and Second Maître Deschamps (mitrailleur-bombardier).
Daillière was given the mission to be the first aviator to attack the Reich capital with ordnance. The ‘Jules’ took off from Merignac airfield near Bordeaux at mid afternoon and set course for Berlin. The crew proceeded over the North Sea at dark, later flying in over the Baltic Sea before turning south and heading straight for Berlin at high altitude. Daillière says: ‘I got ready to release the bombs and realized that someone had failed to install our bombsight, so I pressed my nose to the glass of the cockpit’. He wasn’t able to identify natural landmarks, and Berlin was blacked out; but once the city’s searchlights came on, the city was defined. He tried to create the impression of more than one airplane, and dropped bomb load over some factories in Berlin’s north end, where some bombs fell in the administrative district of Pankow. They claimed to have dropped eight bombs of 75 kg and 80 small-size incendiaries at low level (and even one boot, thrown by Corneillet as an insult to Hitler).
Daillière made for Paris in a straighter path back to France, and landed at Orly Airfield. They met no resistance on the return leg, and when the aircraft touched down, it had covered nearly 3,000 miles in 13.5 hours on this epic mission. The French Admiralty released a communique on the next day stating that ‘a squadron of navy aviation bombarded had raided factories in the outskirts of Berlin last night’ highlighting this first raid, the great distance of the target and that all planes (sic) had returned safely to their base.
Hitler -and Berliners too- knew after the French attack that they’re vulnerable at their own home. Curiously, the city’s air alarm list recorded during the war doesn’t show any alarm registered on that night (or in the previous one), so the big question here is: Did the Germans not notice the Farman air attack, or did Nazi authorities cover it up? More curiously, this solitary raid doesn’t show neither in any of the principal historians bombing research works (Demps, Overy…).
The first Allied bomber to raid Berlin, a Farman F. 223.4, received a new brown/green/grey colour scheme on top and flat black finish on sides for night operations to cover her aluminium finish. French Tricolores were also added on rudders and the civil registration was kept. Note original nickname Jules Verne has been masked to not overtape it with the new black finish. Daillière oversaw a series of modifications to the aircraft at the Toussus-le-Noble airfield, which included the fit of a 7.5 mm Darne machine-gun in the right rear access door, eight Alkan bomb shackles under the aircraft, a bombsight, extra fuel tanks as well as an autopilot.
Sources and Bibliography:
Ammac du Fumelois. Quand les marins bombardaient Berlin. 2010. (accessed February 2026)
Bertke, Donald, Kindell, Don & Smith, Gordon. World War II sea war: France falls, Britain stand alone: Day-to-Day Naval Actions April 1940 through September 1940. Lulu, 2011
C. G. Sweeting. Target Berlin: The First Air-Raid on the German Capital. [Internet]. Available from: <https://www.historynet.com/target-berlin-the-first-air-raid-on-the-german-capital/> (accessed February 2026)
Fernandez, José & Laureau, Patrick. French Bombers of WWII (White Series). Mushroom Model Publications, 2019
Giebel, Wieland. Bomben auf Berlin: Zeitzeugen berichten vom Luftkrieg. Berlin Story Verlag, 2015
Shirer, William. Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon and Schuster, 1990
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