DUISBURG
455 aircraft - 173 Wellingtons, 157 Lancasters, 114 Halifaxes, 9 Mosquitoes, 2 Stirlings. 6 aircraft - 3 Wellingtons, 1 Halifax, 1 Lancaster, 1 Mosquito - lost, 1.3 percent of the force. The Mosquito lost was the first Oboe Mosquito casualty. A message was received from the pilot, Flight Lieutenant L. J. Ackland, that he was having to ditch in the North Sea. His body was never found but his navigator, Warrant Officer F. S. Sprouts, is believed to have survived.
This raid was one of the few failures of this series of attacks on Ruhr targets. It was a cloudy night and, for once, accurate Oboe sky-marking was lacking because 5 Oboe Mosquitoes were forced to return early with technical difficulties and a sixth was lost. The result was a widely scattered raid. The only details reported from Duisburg were 15 houses destroyed and 70 damaged, with 11 people killed and 36 injured.
5 O.T.U. aircraft carried leaflets to France without loss.
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5 Mosquitoes reached and bombed an engineering factory at Hengelo but 7 other Mosquitoes did not reach their targets. No aircraft lost.
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BERLIN
396 aircraft - 191 Lancasters, 124 Halifaxes, 81 Stirlings. 9 aircraft - 4 Halifaxes, 3 Lancasters, 2 Stirlings - lost, 2.3 percent of the force.
This raid was basically a failure. The bombing force approached the target from the south-west and the Pathfinders established two separate marking areas, but both well short of the city. No bombing photographs were plotted within 5 miles of the aiming point in the centre of Berlin and most of the bombing fell from 7 to 17 miles short of the aiming point.
The Berlin report confirms that damage in the city was not heavy, although the bombing was slightly more widespread than the bombing photographs indicated. The local report, however, contains several interesting aspects. Only 16 houses were classed as completely destroyed but many further buildings, including public utilities and factories, suffered light damage. These were typical results in a scattered raid; the local fire services were able to contain fires quickly. But 102 people were killed and 260 injured. The majority of these casualties occurred when two bombs at the Anhalter Station hit a military train bringing men on leave from the Russian Front; 80 soldiers were killed and 63 injured. Our researcher in Berlin, Arno Abendroth, states that the damage in Berlin would have been heavier if approximately one quarter of the bombs dropped had not turned out to be 'duds'. The English factories must have been under some stress,' he writes. Further out from the city centre, stray bombs hit several Luftwaffe establishments. 3 planes were destroyed and a Flak position was hit at Tempelhof airfield; the flying school at Staaken airfield was damaged and a further 70 service personnel were killed or wounded. These casualties are in addition to those in Berlin.
But the most interesting story concerns a secret Luftwaffe stores depot in the woods at Teltow, 11 miles south-west of the centre of Berlin. By chance, this was in the middle of the main concentration of bombs and a large quantity of valuable radio, radar and other technical stores was destroyed. The Luftwaffe decided that this depot was the true target for the R.A.F. raid on this night and were full of admiration for the special unit which had found and bombed it so accurately. The Gestapo investigated houses near by because someone reported that light signals had been flashed to the bombers. This theory was still current when our research into this raid was carried out in 1983!
Minor Operations: 24 aircraft minelaying in the Frisians and off Texel, 4 O.T.U. sorties. No losses.
Total effort for the night: 424 sorties, 9 aircraft (2.1 percent) lost.
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-Duisberg raid. Page 370, line 6:
Warrant Officer F. S. Sprouts should read Warrant Officer F. S. Strouts.
