; their troops in North Africa would march off to prison camps soon afterwards. Come the spring and Bomber Command would be back to the German cities.
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36 Venturas bombed railway targets at Abbeville and Bruges without loss.
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COLOGNE
161 aircraft - 116 Lancasters, 35 Halifaxes, 8 Stirlings, 2 Mosquitoes. 5 aircraft - 3 Lancasters, 1 Halifax, 1 Stirling - lost, 3.1 percent of the force.
This was a further experiment using a 4-engined bombing force with various forms of Pathfinder techniques. On this cloudy night, markers were dropped by both the Oboe Mosquitoes and the H2S heavy marker aircraft. Again the results were disappointing, with no clear concentration of markers being achieved and with subsequent bombing being well scattered.
The report from Cologne shows that damage was caused right across the city but was nowhere serious. No industrial premises were hit but the military airfield at Butzweiler Hof was struck by 6 4,000-lb bombs, causing 'medium to serious' damage. 65 houses were destroyed and nearly 1,600 were damaged but the report says that most of this was caused by blast from the 15 4,000-pounders which fell in the city. 14 people were killed and 63 injured.
A Pathfinder aircraft on this raid, Stirling R9264 of 7 Squadron, was shot down by a night fighter and crashed in Holland. It was unfortunate for the Pathfinders that the Germans thus obtained an example of the H2S set on only the second night that this new device was used. The set was damaged but the German firm of Telefunken was able to reassemble it. This gave the Germans an early indication of the operational use of H2S and eventually led to the development of a device, 'Naxos', which would enable German night fighters to home on to a bomber which was using its H2S set.
Minor Operations: 13 Halifaxes of 6 Group minelaying in the Kattegat but bad weather was encountered and only 5 aircraft laid their mines; there was 1 O.T.U. sortie. No aircraft lost.
