LUDWIGSHAFEN
66 Lancasters and 17 Halifaxes of 8 Group on a purely H2S blind-bombing raid without any target indicators being dropped. Few details are available about the results of the bombing but it is believed that the attack was accurate and the I.G. Farben factory was hit. Because of misleading instructions broadcast from England to the German night-fighter pilots, most of the fighter force landed early and only 1 Lancaster was lost.
Minor Operations: 21 Mosquitoes to Berlin, Bochum, Bonn and Duisburg, 4 O.T.U. sorties. No losses.
Operational Statistics, 3/4 August to
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(107 days/nights)
Number of nights with operations: 79. There were no day operations
Number of night sorties: 18,878, from which 661 aircraft (3.5 percent) were lost
Approximate bomb tonnage in period: 52,377 tons
Averages per 24-hour period: 176.4 sorties, 6.2 aircraft lost, 489.5 tons of bombs dropped
For further details on the Peenemnde raid see The Peenemnde Raid by Martin Middlebrook, London, Allen Lane, 1982; New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1983.
London, Macdonald & Janes', 1976, p. 80.
Report of Effects of Area Bombing, DÜSSELDORF, p. 12b.
L'claireur de Nice et du Sud-Est,
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and the end of January 1944, a period which saw fourteen large raids on the city employing 7,403 sorties and losing 384 aircraft. Some of the raids caused serious damage in Berlin; the local reports sent for the use of this diary show that more destruction was caused than Bomber Command suspected at the time. (Our expert in Berlin, Arno Abendroth, studied six different wartime reports for each of his raid reports. He stresses that much of the information sent on this series of raids was secret at the time and has never been published. 'Hope you use it!', he writes.) But the overwhelming success sought by Harris proved to be elusive. Berlin was not reduced to ruins at the end of the battle and the Germans were nowhere near surrender by April 1944 as Harris had forecast. In February and March the main weight of the campaign turned to lesser German cities, although Berlin was raided twice more before the end of March. The first raids of the pre-invasion periods against railway targets in France and Belgium started in March, but these raids mostly used the under-employed Stirlings and Halifax IIs and Vs.
Much has been written about the morale of the bomber crews and the degree by which it fell during the Battle of Berlin. The main strain fell on the men who flew Lancasters and Halifax IIIs, the latter having the most severe test to face because, when the fighters struck and bomber pilots made for altitude, whatever their orders, the Halifax IIIs were now left at the lower altitudes and the Germans found them first. There were no 'freshman' raids for the Lancaster and Halifax men; a new crew could arrive at a squadron from a training unit and a flight to Berlin in midwinter could be their first operation. Aircrew morale was undoubtedly put to a severe test. There is evidence that some Halifax squadrons had a consistently higher rate of early returns than other squadrons. The attempt to increase the Lancaster's bomb tonnage also affected the willingness of crews to comply fully with orders. No. 1 Group was the most enthusiastic in loading its aircraft with extra bombs and, whenever 1 Group aircraft were flying across the North Sea, a succession of explosions below would show how some crews were anonymously making their aircraft more manoeuvrable by jettisoning part of their loads. Bomber Command documents of this period several times contain written exhortations to 1 Group crews to cease this practice. Around the targets, too, there were the so-called 'fringe merchants' who dropped their loads a little too early and caused the creepback to extend for many miles out into the country from the target city.
30. This fine photograph shows a Mark III Halifax, the version used extensively in 4 and 6 Groups during the final years of the war. This aircraft was used briefly by 51 Squadron at Snaith until shot down on the way to Nuremberg on
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BERLIN
440 Lancasters and 4 Mosquitoes were dispatched. Few German fighters intercepted the force. 9 Lancasters were lost, 2.0 percent of the force.
Berlin was completely cloud-covered and both marking and bombing were carried out blindly; Bomber Command could make no assessment of the results. The local Berlin report shows that bombs fell in most parts of the city and no main concentration ('Schwerpunkt') could be detected, although more southern districts are mentioned than others. 4 industrial premises were totally destroyed and 28 damaged; 11 'explosive' works and 4 chemical plants were among these figures. 169 houses were destroyed and 476 seriously damaged. Casualties were: 131 people killed, 14 missing and 391 injured; 27 of the killed were foreign workers or prisoners of war.
MANNHEIM/LUDWIGSHAFEN
395 aircraft - 248 Halifaxes, 114 Stirlings, 33 Lancasters - of 3, 4, 6 and 8 Groups were on this major diversionary raid. German fighters successfully engaged the bomber force and 23 aircraft - 12 Halifaxes, 9 Stirlings, 2 Lancasters - were lost, 5.8 percent of the force.
Cloud was present over the target area and much of the bombing was scattered. Mannheim reports that the majority of the damage was in the north of the city. 4 industrial buildings were destroyed and 11 seriously damaged, the most serious being the Daimler-Benz car factory which suffered a 90 percent production loss for 'an unknown period'. 325 other buildings were destroyed and 335 seriously damaged, including 2 churches and 3 schools. 4 army barracks and the airfield at Sandhofen were all hit. 21 people were killed, 154 injured and 7,500 bombed out. Many bombs fell outside the city and the local report lists much damage and loss at farms.
This was the last major raid on the much-bombed city of Mannheim for 15 months.
Minor Operations: 10 Mosquitoes to Essen, 6 to Aachen and 6 to Frankfurt, 16 Wellingtons minelaying from Texel to St-Nazaire, 7 O.T.U. sorties. No losses.
Total effort for the night: 884 sorties, 32 aircraft (3.6 percent) lost. The total number of aircraft dispatched was a new record for a non-1,000 raid night, but only by 1 sortie.
