Bombing of Hamburg in World War II

The large port city of Hamburg, Germany, was very heavily bombed many times by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) during World War II. During one of the attacks in July 1943 a firestorm was created that caused tens of thousands of mostly civilian casualties.

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Battle of Hamburg

An Avro Lancaster of No. 1 Group over Hamburg on the night of 30/31 January 1943 — the curved streaking is caused by the long exposure time required for taking photographs at night.

The Battle of Hamburg, codenamed Operation Gomorrah, was a series of air raids conducted by the RAF on the city of Hamburg beginning in the end of July 1943. It was at the time the heaviest assault in the history of aerial warfare and was later called the Hiroshima of Germany by British officials.

The operation was originally formulated by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill with help from Air Chief Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris (who famously said of the Germans "They have sown the wind, and now they shall reap the whirlwind") and was actually a joint effort between the RAF Bomber Command, the RCAF, and the USAAF (specifically 8th Air Force Bomber Command), who combined to create an "around-the-clock" bombing mission spanning 8 days and 7 nights — The British conducting the night raids and the Americans following with the daylight raids.

On 24 July, at approximately 00:57AM, the first bombing started by the RAF and lasted almost an hour. A second daylight raid by US Army Air Force was conducted at 2:40PM. A third raid was conducted on the morning of the 26th. The night attack of 26 July at 00:20AM was extremely light (due to a severe thunderstorm and high winds over the North Sea during which a considerable number of bombers jettisoned the explosive part of their bomb loads) with only two bomb drops reported. That attack is often not counted when the total number of Operation Gomorrah attacks is given. There was no day raid on the 27th.

Typical bomb damage in Hamburg. This picture was taken in 1944 or '45

On the night of 27 July, shortly before midnight, 739 aircraft attacked Hamburg. A number of factors combined to give the enormous destruction that followed; the unusually dry and warm weather, the concentration of the bombing in one area and that the city's firefighters were unable to reach the initial fires — the high explosive "Cookies" used in the early part of the raid had prevented them getting into the center of the city from the periphery where they were working on the results of the 24th. The bombings culminated in the spawning of the so-called "Feuersturm" (firestorm). Quite literally a tornado of fire, this phenomenon created a huge outdoor blast furnace, containing winds of up to 240 km/h (150 mph) and reaching temperatures of 800 °C (1,500 °F). It incinerated some eight square miles (21 km²) of the city, causing asphalt on the streets to burst into flame, killing many that had both taken shelter and not. Most of the casualties (40,000) caused by Operation Gomorrah happened on this night.

On the night of 29 July, Hamburg was again attacked by over 700 aircraft. The last raid of Operation Gomorrah was conducted on 3 August.

Operation Gomorrah caused at least 50,000 deaths, mostly civilians, and left over a million other German civilians homeless. Approximately 3,000 aircraft were deployed, 9,000 tons of bombs dropped, and 250,000 houses destroyed. No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly alarmed and there is some indication from later allied interrogation of high officials, that Hitler thought that further attacks of similar weight might force Germany out of the war. Hamburg was hit by air raids another 69 times before the end of World War II.

RAF Bomber Command lost 12 bombers on the first day of the attack. In total during the war, 440 were lost over Hamburg.

Time line of Hamburg air raids during World War II

Bombing raids by the RAF on Hamburg took place:[1]

Memorial to the victims of the Hamburg bombings. Inscription reads: "On the night of 30th July 1943, 370 persons perished in the air-raid shelter on the Hamburgerstrasse in a bombing raid. Remember these dead. Never again fascism. Never again war".
Memorial "Passage over the Styx" at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery
Example of a Memorial plaque at a house in Hamburg

Aftermath

Cityscape

The totally destroyed district of Hammerbrook, in which mostly longshoremen lived, was not rebuilt as housing area but as a commercial area. The adjoining district of Rothenburgsort shared the same fate, as only a small area of housing was rebuilt. The underground line which connected these areas with the central station was not rebuilt either.

In the destroyed residential areas many houses were rebuilt across the street and therefore do not form connected blocks anymore.

The hills of the Öjendorfer Park are formed by the debris of destroyed houses.

Memorials

Several memorials in Hamburg remind at the air raids during World War II:

See also

References

Notes

  1. RAF Bomber Command Campaign Diary

Further reading