Stuttgart

5 May 1942 — Stuttgart

Date
5 May 1942
Target
Stuttgart, Germany
Force dispatched
77 aircraft
Aircraft lost
4

Narrative

Bomber Command came back to Stuttgart the very next night with a smaller force of 77 aircraft, and the valleys defeated it again. Poor visibility and the broken ground scattered the attack, and the bombs fell mainly on the Kräherwald, the wooded high ground west of the city, rather than on Stuttgart or its factories. Four aircraft — three Wellingtons and a Stirling — failed to return. Two raids on consecutive nights had achieved very little against a city that the navigation aids of 1942 simply could not pin down in such terrain. Stuttgart would be left largely alone for some months afterwards, the Command turning to targets it could actually hit, and it was not until the Pathfinder Force and better radar arrived that the city came under serious threat.

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

116 airmen in this archive died on 5 May 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 116 who died on 5 May →

Source: Wikipedia — Bombing of Stuttgart in World War II →