Kassel
8 March 1945 — Kassel
- Date
- 8 March 1945
- Target
- Kassel, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 176 aircraft
Narrative
This was the last heavy RAF attack on Kassel, flown in March 1945 with the war in its final weeks. A force of 176 aircraft struck a city already devastated by the firestorm raid of October 1943 and worn down by repeated attack since; what remained of its industry and transport was the target. The opposition was slight in skies the Luftwaffe could no longer hold. By the time American forces took Kassel a few weeks later, only about 50,000 inhabitants remained of a pre-war population of 236,000 — a measure of how completely the city had been emptied and broken by the bombing. This final raid added little to a ruin already near total, and it brought to a close the long campaign against one of Germany’s important centres of armament production.
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
56 airmen in this archive died on 8 March 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.
- Sergeant William George Anderson (22)
- Flight Sergeant Peter Noble Black (21)
- Flying Officer Walter Frederick Blackford (24)
- Warrant Officer Ivor Hexter Bond (24)
- Flying Officer John Weldon Cairns (24)
- Flight Sergeant Cyril Chesnutt (25)
- Flight Sergeant Peter Marlow Collier (21)
- Flight Lieutenant William David Corbett (28)
- Flying Officer Thomas Maynard Draper (24)
- Flying Officer Robert Nicholas Ferguson (27)
- Squadron Leader Montgomery Vincent Gibbon
- Flight Sergeant Anthony Edward Gillespie (19)
- Corporal James Scott Mullin Glover (39)
- Pilot Officer Kenneth Bradley Hicks (26)
- Pilot Officer John William Hickson (23)
- Flight Lieutenant Edward George Hollis
- Flight Sergeant Auburn Clyde Innes (21)
- Flight Sergeant Ivor Hilton Jury (31)
- Flying Officer Francis Joseph Klapkew (27)
- Flying Officer Harry Demerse Laronde (25)
- Flight Lieutenant Kenneth James Mackenzie (26)
- Pilot Officer Rudolph Walter Mahr (19)
- Flying Officer Vincent Paul McAllister (22)
- Flight Sergeant Keith Charles McGinn (20)