Stuttgart
28 January 1945 — Stuttgart
- Date
- 28 January 1945
- Target
- Stuttgart, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 602 aircraft
- Aircraft lost
- 11
Narrative
This was Bomber Command’s last major attack on Stuttgart, flown as the war entered its final winter. The effort of 602 aircraft was split into two waves: the first against the railway yards at Kornwestheim, the second against the northern suburb of Zuffenhausen and its Hirth aero-engine works. Cloud scattered the second wave across Feuerbach and Weilimdorf, where the bombing nonetheless struck the Bosch plant once more. Eleven aircraft were lost. After three years and more than fifty raids, Stuttgart had at last been broken as an industrial centre, and this final heavy attack was as much about completing the work as about any single objective. By the spring the city’s population had been driven far below its pre-war figure and great tracts of its centre lay in ruins — the long, frustrating campaign against the city in the valleys finally over.
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
86 airmen in this archive died on 28 January 1945 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.
- Flying Officer Norman Godwin Baily (31)
- Wing Commander Nigel William Barker (31)
- Sergeant Reginald Thomas Barter (24)
- Flying Officer Alfred Vincent Eric Bate (31)
- Lieutenant Edward Baxter
- Flying Officer Peter Norham Birt (20)
- Flying Officer John Wilfred Blades
- Sergeant Edward Max Bowman (27)
- Warrant Officer Marshall Vivian Muir Bowness (28)
- Pilot Officer Joseph Henry Brown (23)
- Sergeant Frank Tranter Burgess (22)
- Flight Sergeant John Hunter Carter (22)
- Pilot Officer Russell Edmund Chatfield (32)
- Flying Officer Colin Laidler Chisholm (23)
- Pilot Officer Harold Luther Clark
- Pilot Officer Leslie John Collinson
- Flying Officer Franklin Howard Cummer (21)
- Flying Officer Allan Dalglish (27)
- Flying Officer Douglas Lyle Dewart (21)
- Pilot Officer Gordon James Doyle (23)
- Flight Sergeant John Alexander Emerson (30)
- Flying Officer Allan Llewellyn Evans (24)
- Flight Sergeant Sidney Filipchuk
- Leading Aircraftman Frank Hugh Fisher (22)