NUREMBERG
80 aircraft - 58 Wellingtons, 13 Whitleys, 5 Halifaxes, 4 Stirlings - were dispatched but conditions en route were very bad with icing and thick cloud. 51 aircraft bombed alternative targets; 14 aircraft claimed to have bombed the Nuremberg area but only one of these, a Whitley, claimed to have identified and bombed its allocated target in Nuremberg. 4 Wellingtons lost.
Nuremberg reports only 3 groups of bombs within the city area, although one of these hit the Siemens factory and destroyed a workshop there; these may have been the bombs of the individual Whitley quoted above. (This was the aircraft of Squadron Leader A. J. D. Snow, of 78 Squadron, which dropped 6 high-explosive bombs. Squadron Leader Snow was killed in a raid on Hamburg on
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12 Blenheims on escorted raid to Le Havre docks. A tanker and a 10,000-ton merchant ship were claimed hit but the long, steady bombing run employed resulted in 2 Blenheims being shot down. 12 further Blenheims made sweeps off the Frisians and claimed 1 ship hit, but 5 of these aircraft were lost.
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COLOGNE
27 Wellingtons and 7 Stirlings. 3 Wellingtons lost.
Crews reported large fires in Cologne but the city recorded only a handful of bombs with no damage or casualties. Villages well east of the Rhine were hit, however, and in one of them, Lindenthal, a children's hospital was hit, though casualties are not mentioned. The synthetic-oil refinery at Wesseling, 7 miles south of Cologne, was hit by a high-explosive bomb which caused 8,000 tons of fuel production to be lost. Duisburg, 30 miles from Cologne, was also bombed, probably in error.
8 Wellingtons bombed Boulogne. No losses.
