Morale Raids

On the night of August 29, five Pe-8s, piloted by Major Pusep and Captain Vladimir V. Ponomarenko of the 746th BAP, and Captains Boris A. Kybyschko, Mikhail V. Rodnykh and Pavel M. Archarov of the 890th, took off for Berlin, while seven other Pe-8s set off on a diversionary raid on Königsberg. At the same time, 100 Il-4s and Yer-2s took off from various airfields near the front lines. At 1:23 on the morning of August 30, the first bombs fell on Berlin. It was the largest Soviet raid ever to be mounted against the German capital, but damage was still received belated recognition when he was awarded the Order of Lenin on his 70th birthday, May 14, 1967.
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Dramatic–and sometimes traumatic–as they had been, the Soviet bombing raids on Berlin were never seriously expected to do more than pay the Germans back for their equally ineffective attacks on Moscow and provide a much-needed boost to morale on the home front. Ultimately, a terrible retribution would fall on Berlin, but it would come from the RAF and the United States Army Air Forces. The Soviets, too, would eventually reach Berlin, but it would be the Red Army, rather than bombers, that would dismantle the last of Hitler’s Reich, block by viciously contested city block.
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The end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945, left the Soviet Union the most formidable land power on earth, but with a hopelessly inadequate strategic air arm that was no match for that of its rival-to-be, the United States. In the early years of the Cold War, the ADD component of the V-VS would have to start over from scratch–albeit aided immeasurably by the acquisition of a Boeing B-29 that strayed into Soviet territory and was interned, to be copied and mass-produced as the Tupolev Tu-4.
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Text: historynet