Darmstadt
11 September 1944 — Darmstadt
- Date
- 11 September 1944
- Target
- Darmstadt, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 240 aircraft
- Aircraft lost
- 12
Narrative
The destruction of Darmstadt is one of the starkest examples of what a firestorm could do to a medium-sized medieval town. The attack was a No. 5 Group operation — 226 Lancasters and 14 marker Mosquitoes — and it used the Group’s low-level marking together with a deliberate fan-shaped bombing plan that spread the load to set the whole town centre alight at once rather than concentrating it on a single point. Some 285,000 incendiaries, with aerial mines and high-explosive to blow open roofs and break the water mains, fell on a town whose timber-framed old quarter was tinder. The result was the Brandnacht — the ‘fire-night’ — a fierce firestorm that destroyed the centre and the districts to the south and east almost completely. More than 11,000 of the town’s 110,000 people were killed, many suffocated in their shelters or drawn into the flames; a fifth of the dead were children. Twelve Lancasters were lost.
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
153 airmen in this archive died on 11 September 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.
- Pilot Officer Eric Kenneth Adams (28)
- Flying Officer Edward David Alexander (27)
- Flying Officer Leonard Edward Anderson (24)
- Warrant Officer Terence Lansdowne Awcock (26)
- Pilot Officer Charles Richard Henry Baker
- Leading Aircraftman Gordon James Barraball (25)
- Flight Sergeant Francis Graham Barrett-lennard (21)
- Warrant Officer Class II Lloyd James Baxter (22)
- Pilot Officer Colin Douglas Bell (25)
- Flight Sergeant John Matthew Biggar (22)
- Warrant Officer Stephen Dale Birdsall (24)
- Flight Sergeant James John Bishop (21)
- Pilot Officer Clarence Alwin Black (33)
- Flight Sergeant Maxwell Bibra Blaubaum (20)
- Pilot Officer George Henry Blom (25)
- Flying Officer George Thomas Bolderston (22)
- Pilot Officer Donald McMillan Boyd (20)
- Flight Sergeant William James Victor Boyd (20)
- Flying Officer Edward Joseph Brian (27)
- Pilot Officer Clement Hector Brown (29)
- Flight Lieutenant David Dorey Browne (21)
- Flight Lieutenant Percy Lloyd Buck (29)
- Flight Sergeant Earl Kitchener Bulloch (28)
- Pilot Officer Douglas Arthur Burnell (26)