Nuremberg
11 April 1945 — Nuremberg
- Date
- 11 April 1945
- Target
- Nuremberg, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 143 aircraft
Narrative
This was one of the last attacks of the war on Nuremberg, flown in mid-April 1945 with under four weeks of fighting left in Europe. A force of around 143 aircraft struck at the railway yards and what remained of the city’s industry, against negligible opposition in skies the Luftwaffe could no longer contest. By now Nuremberg was a ruin: the old town destroyed in January, the wider city battered by raids stretching back to 1943, and Allied ground forces closing in from the west. Attacks of this scale in the final weeks were essentially mopping-up, severing the last threads of transport and production. The American Seventh Army would take the shattered city after hard street fighting a few days later, on the eve of the Nazi regime’s collapse, ending Nuremberg’s long ordeal from the air.
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
42 airmen in this archive died on 11 April 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.
- Pilot Officer John Andrew Allen (23)
- Flight Lieutenant Peter Murray Anderson (24)
- Flight Lieutenant Russell Bradfield Ashley (31)
- Flying Officer Robert Alec Bamford
- Wing Commander Ronald Edward Bary (29)
- Flying Officer Harold Ernest Leslie Chapman (24)
- Flight Sergeant William Clive Crosby (22)
- Pilot Officer Albert Darby (23)
- Flying Officer Gwilym Leonard Davies (34)
- Flying Officer Trevor Percival Dollery (22)
- Pilot Officer Ian Henry Dustin (26)
- Pilot Officer Colin Ware Evans (27)
- Flying Officer Lawrence Albert Graham
- Pilot Officer Dennis Hugo
- Flying Officer Frank Martin Jackson (24)
- Flight Lieutenant Fred Jackson (32)
- Flying Officer Errol Johnston (28)
- Warrant Officer John Kevin Mahoney (23)
- Flight Sergeant William Malcolm McLeod (21)
- Flight Lieutenant Albert Elmore McMorran (25)
- Flying Officer Philip John McNair (23)
- Flight Sergeant John Maurice Moore (22)
- Flying Officer Desmond Moulton (23)
- Warrant Officer Edwin George Murphy (23)