(141 days/nights)
Number of nights with operations: 99
Number of days with operations: 55 (there were no day operations after 2 Group left Bomber Command on 31 May)
Number of night sorties: 23,401, from which 1,000 aircraft (4.3 percent) were lost
Number of daylight sorties: 954, from which 38 aircraft (4.0 percent) were lost
Total sorties: 24,355, from which 1,038 aircraft (4.3 percent) were lost
Approximate bomb tonnage in period: 57,034 tons
Averages per 24-hour period: 172.7 sorties, 7.4 aircraft lost, 404.5 tons of bombs dropped
Details from Bowyer, op. cit., pp. 296-7.
A more detailed account of the action is given in Michael Bowyer's 2 Group R.A.F., op. cit., pp. 309-14.
The casualty calculation is in John Sweetman's Operation Chastise, Jane's, 1982, p. 153. Other sources which have been consulted are Alan W. Cooper's The Men Who Breached the Dams, Kimber, 1982; Hans Rumpf's The Bombing of Germany, op. cit., pp. 64-77; and the British Official History, Vol. I, pp. 168-78 and 289-92, and Vol. IV, pp. 375 and 392.
Report from Hubert Beckers, private archivist in Aachen.
Sir Arthur Harris had decided upon his next step well before the Battle of the Ruhr was over. As early as 27 May, he had circulated an order to his group commanders to start preparing for a series of heavy raids on Hamburg - Europe's largest port and the second largest city in Germany, with one and three-quarter million people. Bomber Command had attacked this target ninety-eight times so far in the war. But Hamburg had twice missed being the target for 1,000-bomber raids in 1942 and it had never been seriously hit as had Cologne and many of the Ruhr communities. Harris felt that the time was now ripe for this target to receive the full attentions of Bomber Command.
Hamburg was well beyond the range of Oboe but the city was theoretically a good H2S target. The important factors were a distinctively shaped coastline only 60 miles away on which the Pathfinders could make accurate landfalls after their long sea crossing, and the wide River Elbe and Hamburg's dock basins which should show up well on the H2S screens. The aiming points and approach routes for the coming raids would all be chosen so that the now familiar creepback would fall across various sections of the main residential areas of this huge city which were on the north bank of the Elbe. Hamburg was a famous shipyard city; the battleship Bismarck - now at the bottom of the Atlantic - and at least 200 U-boats had already been built there. But the port and shipbuilding areas, which were on the south bank of the Elbe, were not to be targets in the coming raids. It was hoped to slow down production by the indirect means of crippling the general life of the city.
For the first time, the heavy daylight bombers of the American Eighth Air Force were invited to join directly in with a Bomber Command 'battle'. B-17 Fortresses would fly 252 sorties in the two days immediately following the first R.A.F. night raid. The American targets were all industrial and included the U-boat yards. But the American effort would run into difficulties, mainly caused by the dense smoke from the fires started by the R.A.F. bombing still obscuring their targets. The Americans quickly withdrew from the Battle of Hamburg and were not keen to follow immediately on the heels of R.A.F. raids, in future, because of the smoke problem.
This diary shows that Sir Arthur Harris directed four major raids on Hamburg in the space of ten nights. A total of 3,091 sorties were flown and nearly 10,000 tons of bombs dropped, though not all of these would hit Hamburg. Because of the firestorm which developed in the city on the second R.A.F. raid, it is often suggested that Bomber Command carried an unusually high proportion of incendiary bombs in these attacks and was launching 'firestorm raids'. This was not true. Just under half the total tonnage dropped on Hamburg was incendiary, a proportion which was actually lower than on many of the recent Ruhr raids. It cannot be stressed too strongly that the raids to be carried out against Hamburg at this time were no more than Bomber Command's normal area attacks for this period of the bombing war. The Hamburg firestorm was caused by other, unexpected, factors which will be described later.
There was, however, one major tactical innovation in the Battle of Hamburg - a device which enabled the bombers to pass through the German defences and to reach Hamburg in greater safety and numbers. This was Window, strips of coarse black paper exactly 27 centimetres long and 2 centimetres wide with thin aluminium foil stuck to one side of the strips. It had been proved in trials that, if sufficient of these were released by a force of bombers, the German Wrzburg radar sets on the ground which controlled both the night-fighter interceptions and the radar-laid Flak guns, as well as the smaller airborne Lichtenstein radar sets which the night-fighter crews used for their final part of the bomber interception process, would be swamped by false echoes and rendered virtually useless. Window had been ready since April 1942 but Bomber Command had not been allowed to use it for fear that the Luftwaffe would copy it and use it in raids against England. It was a bad decision. The Luftwaffe was mainly in Russia at this time and the weak German raids on England had been of only the most minor nature compared with the Bomber Command night offensive against Germany. Bomber Command lost 2,200 aircraft during the Window embargo period, a large proportion of them to German radar-assisted defences. Window was released in time for Bomber Command to use it for the Battle of Hamburg and would be carried by R.A.F. bombers for the remainder of the war. It can be estimated that, in the six major raids carried out in the ten nights of operations which comprised the Battle of Hamburg, Window saved 100-130 Bomber Command aircraft which would otherwise have been lost. The German defensive system was rendered obsolete at a stroke, although they started to recover and reorganize remarkably quickly and it will be shown later that, in one respect, the introduction of Window would be beneficial for the Germans.
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HAMBURG
791 aircraft - 347 Lancasters, 246 Halifaxes, 125 Stirlings, 73 Wellingtons. 12 aircraft - 4 Halifaxes, 4 Lancasters, 3 Stirlings, 1 Wellington - lost, 1.5 percent of the force.
Window was used for the first time on this night. Conditions over Hamburg were clear with only a gentle wind. The marking - a mixture of H2S and visual - was a little scattered but most of the target indicators fell near enough to the centre of Hamburg for a concentrated raid to develop quickly. 728 aircraft dropped 2,284 tons of bombs in 50 minutes. Bombing photographs showed that less than half of the force bombed within 3 miles of the centre of Hamburg and a creepback 6 miles long developed. But, because Hamburg was such a large city, severe damage was caused in the central and north-western districts, particularly in Altona, Eimsbttel and Hoheluft. The Rathaus, the Nikolaikirche, the main police station, the main telephone exchange and the Hagenbeck Zoo (where 140 animals died) were among the well-known Hamburg landmarks to be hit. Approximately 1,500 people were killed. This was the greatest number of people killed so far in a raid outside the area in which Oboe could be used.
26. The women of Hamburg after a raid.
LEGHORN
33 Lancasters of 5 Group returning from North Africa bombed Leghorn docks but the target was covered by haze and bombing was scattered. No aircraft lost.
Minor Operations: 13 Mosquitoes carried out diversionary and nuisance raids to Bremen, Kiel, Lbeck and Duisburg; 6 Wellingtons laid mines in the River Elbe while the Hamburg raid was in progress and there were 7 O.T.U. sorties. No aircraft lost.
