Operation Abigail Rachel
16 December 1940 — Mannheim
- Date
- 16 December 1940
- Target
- Mannheim, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 134 aircraft
- Aircraft lost
- 7
Narrative
Operation Abigail Rachel, flown against Mannheim on the night of 16/17 December 1940, marked a turning point in British bombing policy: it was the first raid deliberately aimed at a German city centre as a whole rather than at a specific industrial or military target. Ordered by Churchill as a reprisal for the German raids on Coventry and Southampton, it sent 134 aircraft — the largest force Bomber Command could then muster — to drop high explosive and some 14,000 incendiaries on the town. The bombing was scattered and the damage modest, but the intent was new and deliberate. Seven aircraft were lost. Abigail Rachel foreshadowed the area-bombing campaign that would dominate Bomber Command’s war from 1942 onward.
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
54 airmen in this archive died on 16 December 1940 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 Philip James Anstey (20)
- Flying Officer Peter Aveline Slaney Baker (25)
- Sergeant Arthur Joseph Patrick Casey (18)
- Sergeant Eric Percy Chapman (30)
- Sergeant Henry James Clarke (19)
- Pilot Officer John Coggins (27)
- Aircraftman 1st Class George Cecil Cooke (21)
- Aircraftman 2nd Class Robert Coulson
- Sergeant George Edward Cowan (24)
- Aircraftman 1st Class Norman James Cross (19)
- Sergeant Peter O'Neill Darbishire
- Sergeant Edwin Leonard Hancock (20)
- Pilot Officer John Cottrell Leonard Hanmer-strudwick (35)
- Leading Aircraftman Frank Graham Harrington (19)
- Sergeant Michael Joseph Oliver Heaney (21)
- Aircraftman 2nd Class James Ian Henderson (20)
- Pilot Officer Harold Herbert Jordain Hobday (31)
- Sergeant Jiri Janousek (23)
- Leading Aircraftman Harold Walter Harris Joseph (24)
- Sergeant Jan Krivda (27)
- Pilot Officer William Edward Laceby (30)
- Leading Aircraftman John Gray Lemon (20)
- Sergeant George Mennie Leslie (29)
- Aircraftman 1st Class Herbert William Little