Essen

25 July 1943 — Essen

Date
25 July 1943
Target
Essen, Germany
Force dispatched
705 aircraft
Aircraft lost
26

Narrative

This was the heaviest blow Essen suffered in the whole campaign, and it came at a moment of sudden Bomber Command advantage. Three nights earlier the great fire-raids on Hamburg had introduced Window — clouds of metallised paper strips that swamped the German radar screens — and the defences of the Ruhr were still reeling from it when 705 aircraft were turned against Essen. Lancasters, Halifaxes, Stirlings and Wellingtons came in behind the target indicators of No. 109 Squadron’s Oboe Mosquitoes and struck the Krupp works the worst damage they took in the entire war; nearly 2,900 houses were destroyed and about 500 people killed. Gustav Krupp, it was said, suffered a stroke on learning of the ruin of the family firm. Protected by Window, the bomber stream got off comparatively lightly: twenty-six aircraft failed to return, 3.7 per cent of the force. Coming at the campaign’s very end, the raid was a fitting close to the Battle of the Ruhr — the city that had opened the offensive five months before now devastated as never before.

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

314 airmen in this archive died on 25 July 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 314 who died on 25 July →

Source: Wikipedia — Battle of the Ruhr →