Heilbronn
4 December 1944 — Heilbronn
- Date
- 4 December 1944
- Target
- Heilbronn, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 282 aircraft
Narrative
On the night of 4 December 1944, 282 Lancasters of No. 5 Group, led by ten Pathfinder Mosquitoes, attacked Heilbronn in southern Germany. Around 1,200 tons of bombs, heavy on incendiaries, fell on the medieval town in barely half an hour and raised a firestorm. About 6,500 people were killed and the old centre almost entirely destroyed — one of the deadliest of the late-war attacks on a German town of modest military importance.
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
104 airmen in this archive died on 4 December 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 Christian Abildgaard (21)
- Flight Sergeant Douglas George Allbon (22)
- Flight Lieutenant Raymond Lloyd Annand-smith (27)
- Flying Officer Philip Peter Awad (21)
- Flight Sergeant Robert James Barr (19)
- Flight Sergeant Arie Gordon Baxter (21)
- Lieutenant Philip August Becker
- Sergeant Joseph Jean Paul Osias Berlinguette (20)
- Pilot Officer Albert Louis Bonany
- Flying Officer Joseph Rufin Boudreau
- Sergeant Leonard Jack Bowick (20)
- Warrant Officer James Kemble Brill (24)
- Flying Officer Eric Ivor Britton (25)
- Flight Sergeant John Lane Brosnan (20)
- Flying Officer Gordon Roch Campbell (25)
- Sergeant William McDonald Campbell (33)
- Flying Officer Albert Victor Carter (22)
- Leading Aircraftman Maxwell Harold Cassidy (19)
- Flying Officer Stanley Victor Chambers
- Sergeant George Albert Chevrier (19)
- Flight Sergeant William Michael Ching (20)
- Pilot Officer Arthur Henry Clarke (31)
- Flying Officer Kenneth Roy Collier (24)
- Sergeant Ernest Newton Cook (37)