BREST
71 aircraft - 65 Wellingtons, 4 Manchesters, 2 Whitleys; only 47 aircraft located the target in bad weather. No losses.
Minor Operations: 19 aircraft to Calais, Rotterdam and airfields, 24 Hampdens minelaying off Brittany and Frisians. 1 minelaying Hampden lost.
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25 Blenheims to Dutch and Danish coasts. Several ships were attacked and 8 aircraft bombed industrial targets at Ijmuiden. 1 aircraft lost.
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KIEL
229 aircraft - 117 Wellingtons, 61 Hampdens, 49 Whitleys, 2 Stirlings - on the largest raid to one target so far in the war. 2 Wellingtons and 2 Whitleys lost.
Visibility was perfect and bright moonlight toned down the intensity of searchlights. The raid lasted nearly 5 hours and, at the end of it, the Kiel electric-light supply failed. Numerous fires were started requiring outside reinforcement of the fire services. Widespread damage of naval, industrial and civilian housing was caused. Particular damage is reported in the eastern dock areas and the night shifts at the Deutsche Werke and at the Germania Werft, both making U-boats, were sent home during the raid and both yards were out of action for several days. A fire in a naval armaments depot burnt for 2 days. 88 people were killed and 184 injured.
BREMERHAVEN
24 Blenheims. No losses.
Minor Operations: 9 aircraft to Emden, 2 O.T.U. sorties. No losses.
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. The concentration of bombers over the target - averaging 121 per hour - exceeded Bomber Command's previous best rate of 80 per hour; there were no collisions. A record tonnage of bombs was dropped, although the exact tonnage is in doubt, official records giving 412 and 470 tons. A significant tactical point was the mass use of flares and the selection of some experienced crews to open the raid, thus foreshadowing some of the 'pathfinding' methods to be used later in the war. Gee was not used, being not yet ready for operations. The raid was considered a great success and the destruction caused in the factory received much publicity.
The report from Billancourt says that 300 bombs fell on the factory, destroying 40 percent of the buildings. Production was halted for 4 weeks and final repairs were not completed for several months. A post-war American estimate says that the production loss was nearly 2,300 lorries. Unfortunately, French civilian casualties were heavy. There were many blocks of workers' apartments very close to the factory. Few people had taken shelter when the sirens sounded; they had often sounded before when bombers were flying to and from Germany. 367 French people were killed; this too was a record, being more than double the death toll of any R.A.F. raid on a German city so far in the war. 72 people were killed in just one block of flats. A further 341 people were classed as badly injured and some of these would die later. 9,250 people lost their homes. A prominent Billancourt citizen, Georges Gorse, was serving with the Free French forces in London at the time and wrote as follows:
If we want the liberation of France, we have to clench our teeth and accept that the English bomb occupied Paris just as the Germans bombed London, that some French people perish under Allied bombs, just as much victims of Germany as the casualties of the 1940 campaign and the men shot at Nantes or Paris. The workers of Boulogne-Billancourt truly saw in the raids of March a promise of liberation. And those who died have also brought 'their own contribution to the coming of dawn'.
This well-publicized view must have been shared by the people of Billancourt because they elected M. Gorse as Mayor with a large majority after the war.
Minor Operations: 4 Wellingtons to Emden, 4 Blenheim Intruders to Dutch airfields but these were recalled. 4 Lancasters minelaying off the north-west German coast, 2 Whitleys on leaflet flights to France. 1 Wellington lost on the Emden raid.
Total effort for the night: 249 sorties, 2 aircraft (0.8 percent) lost. The Lancaster mining sorties, flown by 44 Squadron, saw the introduction into operational service of this new type of aircraft.
