Cologne

8 July 1943 — Cologne

Date
8 July 1943
Target
Cologne, Germany
Force dispatched
288 aircraft

Narrative

The third Cologne raid in eleven days was flown almost entirely by Lancasters — 282 of them, with six Mosquitoes — and again used Oboe ground-marking laid by No. 109 Squadron’s Mosquitoes. After the two huge attacks of late June and early July, which had already gutted much of the city, this all-Lancaster force returned to press the destruction further and to deny the people of Cologne any pause in which to recover. The bombing fell on a city already badly broken, adding to the ruin of the central and eastern districts. The July 1943 raids together drove Cologne to the edge of collapse as a functioning industrial centre, and they marked the close of the sustained Battle of the Ruhr phase in which the Rhineland cities, Cologne foremost among them, bore the main weight of the offensive.

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

173 airmen in this archive died on 8 July 1943 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 173 who died on 8 July →

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