Duisburg

26 April 1943 — Duisburg

Date
26 April 1943
Target
Duisburg, Germany
Force dispatched
561 aircraft
Aircraft lost
17

Narrative

On the third visit Bomber Command put up its largest force yet against Duisburg — 561 aircraft, the full mixed stream of Lancasters, Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Stirlings. The Pathfinders, led in by the Oboe Mosquitoes of No. 109 Squadron, claimed accurate marking, but the main weight of bombing fell to the north-east of the city rather than on it, and there are signs the crews were drawn off by German decoy fires; six other Ruhr towns were hit as well. Even so the raid did real harm where it landed, with some 300 buildings destroyed and between 130 and 200 people killed. Seventeen bombers were lost, three per cent of the force. After three attempts the docks at Duisburg had still not been dealt the crushing blow their importance invited — testimony both to the difficulty of holding a large force on one aiming point in the haze of the valley and to the skill the defenders had reached in pulling the bombing off its mark.

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

174 airmen in this archive died on 26 April 1943 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.

See all 174 who died on 26 April →

Source: Wikipedia — Battle of the Ruhr →