Stuttgart
12 September 1944 — Stuttgart
- Date
- 12 September 1944
- Target
- Stuttgart, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 217 aircraft
- Aircraft lost
- 4
Narrative
This was the most destructive single raid Stuttgart suffered, and one of the few to raise a true firestorm in the city. A compact force of 217 aircraft — 204 Lancasters with marker Mosquitoes — attacked with exceptional concentration, and the bombing kindled a fire that fed on itself, sweeping through the old eastern districts. Around 957 people were killed, the heaviest death toll of any attack on the city, and the damage was correspondingly severe. Only four Lancasters were lost. After years in which Stuttgart’s terrain had scattered far larger forces to little effect, this smaller but tightly marked attack showed what concentration could do: a firestorm needed not the greatest weight of bombs but their fall in a small enough space and a short enough time, and here, at last, that was achieved over Stuttgart.
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
142 airmen in this archive died on 12 September 1944 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.
- Flight Lieutenant Karl Inge Aalborg (27)
- Pilot Officer Victor Abel (23)
- Pilot Officer Eric Kenneth Adams (28)
- Flying Officer Edward David Alexander (27)
- Flying Officer Leonard Edward Anderson (24)
- Warrant Officer Terence Lansdowne Awcock (26)
- Pilot Officer Charles Richard Henry Baker
- Flight Sergeant Francis Graham Barrett-lennard (21)
- Warrant Officer Class II Lloyd James Baxter (22)
- Sergeant Jean Baptiste Belanger (36)
- Flight Sergeant John Matthew Biggar (22)
- Warrant Officer Stephen Dale Birdsall (24)
- Flight Sergeant James John Bishop (21)
- Pilot Officer Clarence Alwin Black (33)
- Flight Sergeant Maxwell Bibra Blaubaum (20)
- Flying Officer George Thomas Bolderston (22)
- Pilot Officer Donald McMillan Boyd (20)
- Flight Sergeant William James Victor Boyd (20)
- Flying Officer William Ransom Breithaupt (24)
- Flying Officer Edward Joseph Brian (27)
- Flying Officer Clare Edward Brooks
- Pilot Officer Clement Hector Brown (29)
- Flight Lieutenant David Dorey Browne (21)
- Flight Lieutenant Percy Lloyd Buck (29)