Operation Charnwood
7 July 1944 — Caen
- Date
- 7 July 1944
- Target
- Caen, France
- Force dispatched
- 467 aircraft
Narrative
On the evening of 7 July 1944, to break the month-long deadlock before Caen, more than 450 heavy bombers of Bomber Command dropped some 2,000 tons of bombs on the northern edge of the city in support of Operation Charnwood. The attack flattened much of Caen and killed around 400 French civilians, but for the safety of Allied troops the bomb line was set well back from the front, so few German positions were actually hit; the rubble it created then choked the very streets through which the ground forces had to advance. Militarily it achieved little, and it is remembered as one of the more questionable uses of heavy bombers in the Normandy campaign.
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
86 airmen in this archive died on 7 July 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 Hilton Craig Bell (22)
- Pilot Officer James Douglas Bishop
- Squadron Leader William Walter Blessing (31)
- Flying Officer John William Blyth (23)
- Pilot Officer Kenneth Arthur Boyce (23)
- Warrant Officer Warwick Brothers (22)
- Pilot Officer Hugh Thomas Blakeley Burgess (23)
- Corporal Reginald Edward Stanley Butler
- Warrant Officer Class II Henry Ramsay Carruthers (21)
- Flight Lieutenant Henry Joseph Cleary (25)
- Flight Sergeant Verne Edward Cockroft (24)
- Flight Sergeant Geoffrey Anthony Conway Coldridge (22)
- Pilot Officer Ronald Thomas Collins (26)
- Corporal Robert Edwin Colwell (23)
- Flying Officer Arthur George Corck (20)
- Flight Sergeant Horace Andrew Cummins (28)
- Warrant Officer Geoffrey James Custance (21)
- Flight Sergeant John Phillip Sinclair Dalton (21)
- Flight Sergeant Rae Charles Dalton (27)
- Flight Sergeant Dennis Albert Davies (24)
- Lieutenant Francois Meyer Du Toit (19)
- Flying Officer Douglas Elphick (25)
- Warrant Officer Robert Barnes Flegg (25)
- Flying Officer Norman Vincent Gautschi (26)