The crew of a German 8.8-cm flak gun—the '88'—prepare to fire. This gun was on top of one of the ‘Flakturm' (flak towers) at Berlin Zoo, one of three such massive structures which Adolf Hitler ordered built to protect the city from air attack. The crews of these guns were often adolescent boys, the so-called 'Flakhilfers', conscripted into the Luftwaffe to help combat Bomber Command's area bombing campaign of 1943–1944. Whole school classes, born between 1926 and 1929, were trained for this defensive work and they are still known in Germany as the Flakhilfer generation. Heinrich Möller was a Flakhilfer at the Zoo tower during the two highly destructive raids of 22 and 23 November 1943. He was manning a range finder, not on the main tower but in a smaller control tower close by, and the two towers were right in the centre of the bomber stream's aiming point: … the hail of bombs came down on to us … There were thousands of incendiaries; a whole lot of them fell on top of both our tower and the gun tower … Across at the gun tower it looked like a firework display. There were at least ten just near me; I was lucky not to be hit by one … We had two gunners killed on the gun tower. One had his head bashed in by an incendiary bomb falling right on top of his steel helmet; that scattered his brains. The other was hit … on the shoulder. I think that was the only time we had men killed on the top. [Möller, quoted in Middlebrook, The Berlin raids, pp. 153–154; Bundesarchiv (Germany) Bild 183-H27779]
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