Brunswick
14 October 1944 — Brunswick
- Date
- 14 October 1944
- Target
- Brunswick, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 240 aircraft
- Aircraft lost
- 1
Narrative
The raid on Brunswick (Braunschweig) destroyed most of a medieval city for the loss of a single aircraft, and is remembered as much for the lives saved as for the destruction. A No. 5 Group force of 233 Lancasters and seven marker Mosquitoes dropped some 847 tons of bombs — about 12,000 high-capacity ‘blockbusters’ to wreck the roofs and around 200,000 incendiaries to follow — and raised a firestorm that burned the old town for two and a half days; more than ninety per cent of the medieval centre was destroyed. Yet the death toll was strikingly low for such devastation, put at around 600 to perhaps a thousand. The reason lay in the city’s exceptional air-raid bunkers and in a remarkable improvisation: firefighters opened a ‘Wassergasse’, a water-misted alley of hoses, through which some 23,000 people sheltering in a threatened bunker were led to safety. Just one Lancaster failed to return, brought down by flak.
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
115 airmen in this archive died on 14 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.
- Flight Lieutenant Reginald Major Aldus (29)
- Sergeant Leslie Arthur Andrews
- Flying Officer Alexander Barr (24)
- Flying Officer Archie Verdun Batty (29)
- Flight Sergeant Byron Jeremiah Becker
- Flight Sergeant Clarence Walter Beckingham (20)
- Leading Aircraftman William Whittingham Beddow (21)
- Flying Officer Glenn Crawford Bellamy (26)
- Flight Sergeant Lloyd Douglas Bennett (26)
- Warrant Officer Charles Siel Billington (26)
- Flying Officer Ronald Lionel Lister Bodie (22)
- Pilot Officer Robert Henry Bowen (24)
- Flying Officer Joseph Ross Eugene Brouillette (22)
- Pilot Officer John William Brown (22)
- Flight Sergeant Denis Frederick Buist (23)
- Flying Officer Dell Alfred Butler
- Flying Officer James Commodore Campbell (28)
- Flight Sergeant Frederick Paul Cartan
- Pilot Officer Roland Marcel Joseph Champagne (24)
- Flying Officer Robert Albert Charland
- Flight Lieutenant Ray Lloyd Clearwater (32)
- Flying Officer Ross Cuthbert Clouston (22)
- Flight Sergeant Francis John Cook (21)
- Sergeant Gordon Thomas Cook (22)
See all 115 who died on 14 October →
Source: Wikipedia — Bombing of Braunschweig in World War II →