Dortmund
23 May 1943 — Dortmund
- Date
- 23 May 1943
- Target
- Dortmund, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 826 aircraft
- Aircraft lost
- 38
Narrative
The raid on Dortmund on the night of 23/24 May 1943 was the largest single attack of the Battle of the Ruhr and, at the time, one of the heaviest Bomber Command had ever mounted. Some 826 aircraft — a force built around 343 Lancasters and 199 Halifaxes, with Wellingtons, Stirlings and Mosquitoes making up the rest — dropped more than two thousand tons of bombs on the city in clear conditions, guided by the Pathfinder marking and Oboe-directed precision that had transformed the campaign since its opening two months earlier. The attack fell heavily on the centre and on the Hoesch steelworks, wrecking industrial plant and laying waste to wide areas of housing. Goebbels recorded in his diary that the assault was extraordinarily heavy, probably the worst yet directed against a German city. Thirty-eight aircraft were lost. Dortmund showed how far Bomber Command had come in a single spring: the force of 442 that had opened the Battle of the Ruhr in March had nearly doubled, and the marking techniques that mass alone could not supply the year before were now breaking open the Reich’s industrial heartland.
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
304 airmen in this archive died on 23 May 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.
- Flight Sergeant William Geoffrey Abbott (21)
- Pilot Officer Derrick Henry George Adams
- Flight Sergeant Frederick George Addis (31)
- Sergeant Ernest Douglas Ager (23)
- Flight Sergeant Ernest Henry Alderson (29)
- Sergeant Donald Eric Alford (20)
- Sergeant Frederick Victor George Alloway (21)
- Sergeant Robert Hasting Ancell (39)
- Sergeant William Antcliffe (27)
- Aircraftman 2nd Class William Stevens Anthony
- Sergeant Victor Harry Archer (23)
- Sergeant Herbert George Ashton (33)
- Flight Sergeant George Assaf
- Sergeant Charles Wilson Astle (23)
- Sergeant Horace William Austin (20)
- Sergeant Robert Frederick Fletcher Baggaley
- Leading Aircraftman Charles Arthur William Bailey (31)
- Warrant Officer Class II George Bancescu (23)
- Sergeant William Herbert Bastable (21)
- Pilot Officer Edward Semmens Bawden (23)
- Sergeant William Parker Baxter
- Sergeant Thomas Richard Bayles
- Sergeant Ronald Bell (22)
- Corporal Albert Edward Belsham (32)
See all 304 who died on 23 May →
Source: Wikipedia — Battle of the Ruhr →