The front cover of "The Night Hamburg Died", Martin Caidin, Four Square/New English Library, London, 1966. Originally published in USA by Ballatine Books, Inc, 1960

The text in the picture reads:

FOUR SQUARE WAR ILLUSTRATED 5/- The Night Hamburg Died: Martin Caidin Allied bombs burned a city to death

The back cover reads:

PUBLISHED BY THE NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY LIMITED

In 1943, the city of Hamburg, the second largest in Nazi Germany, had already sustained 137 air raids - but with its well-organized civil defence system, it had been well-trained and equipped to handle a bombing attack. Then the bombers swooped again and in 90 minutes a fire-storm was born. Searing, horrifying, uncontrollable, a single gigantic fire roared 40,000 feet into the air, winds of incredible velocity whipped flames through the streets, and the air temperature reached 1,500 degrees. More than 6,000 acres of buildings were gutted, three-quarters of a million people were homeless and in the ruins of their city - which would continue to burn for many weeks - lay 70,000 dead.

Why did the emergency measures of defence collapse? What were the secret weapons that enabled the British bombers to fly over unimpeded? What was the meaning of 'Gomorrah', and how did it accomplish its frightful purpose?

Martin Caidin, consultant on civil defence and a leading aviation writer, has examined official German and allied sources to tell for the first time the full story of the most shocking aerial bombardment of the war and raises the question of how our cities would survive today in case of nuclear attack.

(Note that Caidin has worked for US "intelligence":

In Japan for two years with the Intelligence and Public Information offices of the U.S. 5th Air Force, Mr. Caidin toured the devastated Japanese cities, and spent much time in Hiroshima, where the world's first atomic bomb used in the war was dropped.

ibid., page 157)