MUNICH
270 Lancasters and 8 Mosquitoes of 5 Group. 1 Lancaster crashed in France.
Bomber Command claimed this as an accurate raid in good visibility with much fresh damage, particularly to railway targets. It has not been possible to obtain a local report. The Munich Stadtarchiv refused to provide any help (the only large city in West Germany to do so) and the waiting time for reports from the Bundesarchiv at Freiburg was more than a year!
Minor Operations: 7 Mosquitoes to Erfurt and 6 to Karlsruhe (a 'spoof' raid), 20 R.C.M. sorties, 20 Mosquito patrols, 31 aircraft on Resistance operations. 1 Intruder Mosquito was lost and 1 Hudson on a Resistance flight crashed behind Allied lines in Belgium.
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COLOGNE
169 Lancasters of 3 Group carried out a G-H raid on the Kalk Nord railway yards. Good results were observed. 1 Lancaster lost.
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FREIBURG
341 Lancasters and 10 Mosquitoes of 1 and 8 Groups. 1 Lancaster lost.
Freiburg was not an industrial town and had not been bombed before by the R.A.F. It was attacked on this night because it was a minor railway centre and because many German troops were believed to be present in the town; American and French units were advancing in the Vosges, only 35 miles to the west. The marking of the medium-sized town was based on Oboe directed from caravans situated in France. Flak defences were light and 1,900 tons of bombs were dropped on Freiburg in 25 minutes. Photographs showed that the railway targets were not hit but that the main town area was severely damaged. German reports say that 2,000 houses were destroyed and 453 seriously damaged. Casualties were 2,088 people killed, 858 missing and 4,072 injured. 75 German soldiers were also killed and 61 were injured. The high casualty rate suggests that the population were taken by surprise and had not been properly prepared for air attack. The ratio of more than 8 people dead for each heavy bomber attacking is unusually high.
NEUSS
290 aircraft - 173 Halifaxes, 102 Lancasters, 15 Mosquitoes - of 1,6 and 8 Groups. 1 Mosquito lost.
The central and eastern districts of Neuss were heavily bombed and many fires were started. A brief local report says that 145 houses and 4 industrial buildings were destroyed and 586 houses, 16 industrial buildings and 5 public buildings were seriously damaged. 41 people were killed and 44 injured, figures which suggest a high degree of air-raid preparedness in this town on the western edge of the Ruhr.
Minor Operations: 67 Mosquitoes to Berlin, 7 each to Hallendorf and Ludwigshafen and 5 to Nuremberg, 35 R.C.M. sorties, 61 Mosquito patrols, 18 Halifaxes and 12 Lancasters minelaying off Danish and Norwegian coasts. No aircraft lost.
Total effort for the night: 853 sorties, 2 aircraft (0.2 percent) lost.
