Hanover
8 October 1943 — Hanover
- Date
- 8 October 1943
- Target
- Hanover, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 504 aircraft
- Aircraft lost
- 27
Narrative
Hanover was a city of real industrial weight — the Continental works that made tyres for German vehicles and aircraft, the Hanomag and Maschinenfabrik plants that built guns and tracked vehicles, and the Misburg refineries that fed the Luftwaffe with aviation fuel. On this October night 504 aircraft, a mixed force of Lancasters, Halifaxes and Wellingtons with eight Pathfinder Mosquitoes, attacked it under conditions that favoured accuracy. The Pathfinders marked the centre cleanly, and for once almost all the bombs fell within the built-up area: the raid killed around 1,245 people, the deadliest attack on Hanover of the entire war. Twenty-seven bombers were lost to the fighter defences on the route. The night was a textbook demonstration of what concentrated, accurately marked area attack could do to an industrial city when the marking held and the weather allowed.
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
263 airmen in this archive died on 8 October 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.
- Sergeant Derrick John Edwin Adams (19)
- Sergeant Donald Albert Adams (20)
- Sergeant Peter Maurice Adams (21)
- Sergeant William Thompson Adamson (29)
- Corporal Ivan Alderson
- Leading Aircraftman Sidney William Allan (33)
- Flight Sergeant Evan Macdonald Anderson (25)
- Sergeant Edward Slaven Andrew
- Flying Officer Frank George Arliss (27)
- Sergeant Thomas Alfred Ashcroft (22)
- Sergeant William Thomas Austin (22)
- Flying Officer Ralph Edmund Baht (23)
- Sergeant Arthur Bailey (23)
- Sergeant Clifford John Bailey (21)
- Warrant Officer Class II Douglas Charles Baker
- Flying Officer Robert Edward Baker (27)
- Flight Lieutenant Edward Cecil Ball (33)
- Flight Sergeant Wallace Bruce Ballantyne
- Sergeant Robert Allan Barr
- Sergeant Percy Barton (30)
- Warrant Officer Class II William Beckthold
- Sergeant Graham Beeken (19)
- Flying Officer James Hope Begg (35)
- Pilot Officer Paul Belkin (22)