Bremen

25 June 1942 — Bremen

Date
25 June 1942
Target
Bremen, Germany
Force dispatched
960 aircraft
Aircraft lost
48

Narrative

Bremen, the great North German port and centre of Focke-Wulf aircraft production, was the target for the third and last of the 1942 thousand-bomber raids on the night of 25/26 June. Harris pushed the numbers higher than ever: around 960 Bomber Command aircraft took off, and by drawing in machines and crews lent by Coastal Command and Army Co-operation Command the total dispatched passed a thousand. The plan called for an incendiary attack concentrated into roughly ninety minutes to overwhelm the city’s fire defences. Cloud again interfered and the bombing was less concentrated than hoped, but a portion fell squarely on the target: the Focke-Wulf works and dockside districts were hit and several hundred houses destroyed. The cost was the heaviest yet of the three great raids — 48 Bomber Command aircraft failed to return, about five per cent of those sent, many of them the obsolescent and training-unit types that made up the bulk of the force. Bremen brought the brief thousand-bomber experiment to a close; the assembled armadas had proved the propaganda value of mass, but the training units could not be stripped indefinitely, and Bomber Command returned to operations of more sustainable size.

Sortie details (which aircraft from which squadron, which crew flew, the outcome) will populate this page once the TNA AIR 27 squadron-diary importer arrives.

The fallen

295 airmen in this archive died on 25 June 1942 or the day that followed. For a raid of this kind these are overwhelmingly the night's losses, though a death-date match is not by itself proof an individual flew this operation.

See all 295 who died on 25 June →

Source: Wikipedia — Thousand-bomber raids →