Nuremberg

8 March 1943 — Nuremberg

Date
8 March 1943
Target
Nuremberg, Germany
Force dispatched
335 aircraft

Narrative

Less than a fortnight after the February attack, 335 aircraft returned to Nuremberg and this time found the city. The bombing — some 358 tons of high explosive and 412 tons of incendiaries — fell across the southern districts of the medieval old town and around the castle, starting extensive fires and killing around 343 people. It was the first attack to do Nuremberg real harm, a marked improvement on the scattered raids that had gone before, achieved through better marking and clearer conditions on the night. The raid pointed to what would come: that even a distant, hard-to-find city could be badly hurt when the Pathfinders got their markers down on the aiming point. For a city the Nazis had cast as a shrine of the movement, the burning of its old quarter carried a propaganda sting beyond the physical damage.

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

140 airmen in this archive died on 8 March 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 140 who died on 8 March →

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