Berlin
2 January 1944 — Berlin
- Date
- 2 January 1944
- Target
- Berlin, Germany
- Force dispatched
- 383 aircraft
- Aircraft lost
- 27
Narrative
On the very next night a force of some 380 Lancasters went back to Berlin, and this time the night-fighters caught the stream over the city itself. Twenty-seven bombers were shot down — about one in fourteen of those dispatched — one of the steepest loss rates of the entire campaign. Coming straight after the costly raid of the previous night, it brought home how dangerous repeated attacks on the same distant target had become once the German controllers learned to read Bomber Command’s intentions. For the crews, two maximum-effort nights to Berlin in succession at the turn of the year were a brutal start to 1944.
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
400 airmen in this archive died on 2 January 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.
- Wing Commander William Abercromby (33)
- Sergeant Charles Ablett
- Warrant Officer Class I Leslie James Adair
- Flying Officer Ian Godfrey Allan
- Flying Officer Frederick Charles Allcroft (20)
- Flight Lieutenant John Allardyce Allen (23)
- Sergeant Richard William Allen
- Flight Sergeant Peter Allwell (22)
- Flight Sergeant Jack Anderson (21)
- Sergeant Kenneth Aspinall (21)
- Sergeant Eric Atkinson (19)
- Flying Officer Roy Barry Baker (29)
- Flight Sergeant John Stanley Baldwin (20)
- Sergeant Alex William Charles Ball (20)
- Sergeant Joseph Banks (22)
- Sergeant Robert Ross Barbour (21)
- Flight Sergeant Alan Douglas Barnes (20)
- Warrant Officer Class I Roger John Barrett (22)
- Flight Sergeant George Barry (23)
- Aircraftman 1st Class Sydney Herbert Bartrum (36)
- Sergeant John William Bateman (22)
- Flying Officer Albert Bramwell Bearcroft
- Sergeant Gerald Alfred Beckett
- Sergeant George Frederick Kenneth Bedwell (24)