MINOR OPERATIONS
59 Mosquitoes to Cologne and 6 to Mannheim, 55 Mosquitoes on Serrate and Intruder patrols. No aircraft lost.
---
WALCHEREN
102 Lancasters and 8 Mosquitoes of 5 Group successfully attacked gun batteries. 1 Mosquito lost. This was the last Bomber Command raid in support of the Walcheren campaign and the opening of the River Scheldt. The attack by ground troops on Walcheren commenced on 31 October and the island fell after a week of fighting by Canadian and Scottish troops, including Commandos who sailed their landing craft through the breaches in the sea walls made earlier by Bomber Command. It required a further 3 weeks before the 40-mile river entrance to Antwerp was cleared of mines and the first convoy did not arrive in the port until 28 November.
45. Gunlaying equipment at a Flak site in Holland. The white symbols on the radar shield represent successes attributed to this unit. The activities of Bomber Command tied down a vast amount of German armaments and manpower.
WESSELING
102 Lancasters of 3 Group carried out a G-H raid on the oil refinery. No results were seen because of the cloud but the bombing was believed to be accurate. No aircraft lost.
Minor Operations: 7 R.C.M. sorties, 1 Hudson on a Resistance operation. No losses.
---
COLOGNE
905 aircraft - 438 Halifaxes, 435 Lancasters, 32 Mosquitoes. No aircraft lost.
This was an Oboe-marked raid through cloud, and Bomber Command estimated that only 'scattered and light' damage was caused in the western parts of the city. But the local report shows that enormous damage was caused in the suburbs of Braunsfeld, Lindenthal, Klettenberg and Slz, which were 'regelrecht umgepflgt' - 'thoroughly ploughed up' - by the huge tonnage of high explosive dropped (3,431 tons of high explosive and 610 tons of incendiaries were dropped). A vast amount of property, mostly civilian housing, was destroyed but railways and public utilities were also hit. There was little industry in the area which was bombed. Among the buildings destroyed or seriously damaged were Cologne University, the local army-garrison headquarters and the 1,000-year-old St Gereon church, struck by a heavy bomb which blew 'an enormous hole'; the damage took 35 years to repair! 497 Germans were killed and 57 were 'missing'. The number of foreigners killed is not known but a prisoner-of-war camp in the Heliosstrasse was destroyed.
Minor Operations: 62 Mosquitoes to Berlin and 3 each to Heilbronn and Oberhausen, 42 R.C.M. sorties, 57 Mosquito patrols. 2 Mosquitoes were lost - 1 from the Berlin raid and 1 Intruder.
Total effort for the night: 1,072 sorties, 2 aircraft (0.2 percent) lost.
