Nuremberg
19 October 1944 — Nuremberg
- Date
- 19 October 1944
- Target
- Nuremberg, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 270 aircraft
Narrative
A force of 263 Lancasters and seven Mosquitoes attacked Nuremberg on this October night in 1944. By this stage of the war the German night-fighter arm was weakening under fuel shortages and the steady attrition of two years’ fighting, and deep raids into southern Germany no longer cost what they once had. The bombing killed around 237 people and rendered some ten thousand homeless. It was a lesser attack than the catastrophe that would fall on the city in the new year, but it kept up the pressure on Nuremberg through the autumn. The raid belonged to the period in which Bomber Command, freed after the Normandy campaign to return to Germany in full strength, ranged almost at will across the Reich, striking cities that earlier in the war had been reached only with difficulty and at heavy price.
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
46 airmen in this archive died on 19 October 1944 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.
- Warrant Officer Reginald Charles Bolland
- Flying Officer Robert William Brown (23)
- Flight Sergeant William Edward Brunton (24)
- Flight Sergeant Neil Conway Burgess (21)
- Flight Sergeant William James Carpenter (21)
- Pilot Officer Frederick Robert Charnock (21)
- Sergeant George Child (31)
- Sergeant Almer Ebart Churcher (20)
- Leading Aircraftman Ronald Leslie Cox (26)
- Sergeant Joseph John Cunningham (31)
- Flying Officer Ronald William Doidge
- Captain Quinton Rowland Dummett (24)
- Pilot Officer James Earl (23)
- Flight Sergeant Eric Clifford Fagg (27)
- Lieutenant Fisher (20)
- Pilot Officer Peter Fontaine (23)
- Flying Officer John Robert Frees (26)
- Flying Officer Gunnar Freese (36)
- Flight Sergeant Rex Patrick Furey (21)
- Flying Officer Ronald Alastair Gaskin
- Flying Officer Ian Dundee Graham (30)
- Flight Lieutenant Douglas Boyd Hamilton (21)
- Corporal Michael George Heap
- Flying Officer Keith Frederick Hynes (24)