Nuremberg
12 October 1941 — Nuremberg
- Date
- 12 October 1941
- Target
- Nuremberg, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 152 aircraft
Narrative
This was an early-war attempt on Nuremberg, the Bavarian city that the Nazi Party had made the stage for its great rallies and so a target of particular symbolic weight. A force of 152 aircraft — Wellingtons and the obsolescent Whitleys that still equipped much of the Command — was sent on the long haul deep into southern Germany, near the limit of their range. In the navigation conditions of 1941, before Gee or the Pathfinders, such a distant target was almost impossible to find accurately in the dark: the bombing scattered widely, and the chief recorded damage fell not on Nuremberg but on the small town of Schwabach nearby, where around 50 houses were destroyed and a handful of people killed. The raid showed how far beyond Bomber Command’s reach a target like Nuremberg still lay; it would be years before the city was struck with real weight.
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
124 airmen in this archive died on 12 October 1941 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.
- Pilot Officer Kenneth Alexander (21)
- Sergeant Samuel Haywood Alsop (19)
- Sergeant John Alterson (21)
- Sergeant John Richard Ashley
- Sergeant John James Ashurst (21)
- Sergeant Francis Edward Austin (27)
- Flight Lieutenant Leslie Longmore Bache (28)
- Sergeant Reginald John Banks (21)
- Sergeant George Frederick Bateman (21)
- Sergeant Donald Beale (21)
- Sergeant Sidney Bentley
- Pilot Officer Bernard Bowers (30)
- Pilot Officer Brian Derek Bowes-cavanagh (21)
- Leading Aircraftman Ronald Thomas Bransgrove (22)
- Sergeant Edward Brayley (20)
- Flight Sergeant Charles Kennedy Bremner (19)
- Flight Sergeant William Henry Burns
- Sergeant Raymond George Butt (20)
- Flight Sergeant William Harold Stanley Byers
- Sergeant Andrew Joseph Carter (26)
- Sergeant Herbert Edward Chamberlain (26)
- Squadron Leader Paul Burton Chamberlain (25)
- Flight Lieutenant Richard John Chamberlain (21)
- Sergeant Henry Raymond Gordon Chapman