Okla-homey
7/28/2008, 07:59 AM
July 28, 1943: Hamburg suffers a firestorm
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/1728/ham796pxhamburgaftertheqv1.jpg
Post-war photo of Hamburg depicting the aftermath of this week in 1943
65 years ago tonight in 1943, the worst British bombing raid on Hamburg so far virtually sets the city on fire, killing 42,000 German civilians.
The operation was originally formulated by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill with help from Air Chief Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris and was actually a joint effort between the RAF Bomber Command, the RCAF, and the USAAF (specifically 8th Air Force Bomber Command), who combined to create an "around-the-clock" bombing mission spanning 8 days and 7 nights — the Americans conducting the daylight raids with the British following after nightfall.
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/3605/hamgomorrah03la3.jpg
Arthur "Bomber" Harris. Harris was unique in that he alone was ignored by the Crown for special honors post-war. All other RAF air marshalls (four-star equivalents) were granted hereditary titles of nobility after the war by a grateful Crown. Harris was merely knighted. It's pretty clear that although the British government abided his approach, they didn't like it.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
– Arthur Travers Harris, "Bomber Offensive"
On July 24, British bombers began the nocturnal portion of Operation GOMORRAH, repeated bombing raids against Hamburg and its industrial and munitions plants. Sortie after sortie dropped fire from the sky, as thousands of tons of incendiary bombs destroyed tens of thousands of lives, buildings, and acreage.
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/4657/ham750pxavrolancasterbijp2.jpg
Avro Lancaster. Backbone of the RAF bomber force. Each Lancaster disgorged seven tons of incendiary bombs over its target. These incendiary devices were essentially canistered bundles of stick-like highly flammable material. On release, the canister fell some distance, then fell apart as the sticks ignited. Devoid of their wrapper, the blazing sticks unbundled and tumbled to the surface igniting anything flammable on which they landed -- imagine thousands of big outdoor trash barrels filled with hundreds of burning highway hazard flares dropped over your neighborhood from altitude
But the night of 28/29 July 1943 saw destruction unique in more than three years of bomb attacks: In just 43 minutes, 2,326 tons of bombs were dropped, creating a firestorm (a word that entered English parlance for the first time as a result of these events).
Low humidity, a lack of fire-fighting resources (exhausted from battling blazes caused by the previous nights' raids), and hurricane-level winds at the core of the storm literally fanned the flames, scorching eight square miles of Hamburg.
The firestorm lasted for about three hours, consuming approximately 16,000 multi-storyed apartment buildings and killing an estimated 42,000 people, most of them by carbon monoxide poisoning when all the air was drawn out of their basement shelters. Fearing further raids, two-thirds of Hamburg's population, approximately 1,200,000 people, fled the city in the aftermath.
It has been referred to as Germany's Hiroshima
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/8477/ham435pxgedenktafelfeuelt3.jpg
Many Hamburg houses rebuilt after World War II show a memorial plaque with the inscription "Destroyed 1943 - ... Rebuilt" to remind of their destruction during the air raids in July 1943.
One British flight lieutenant recalled seeing
"not many fires but one. ... I have never seen a fire like that before and was never to see its like again." Despite the terrible loss of civilian life, there strange and awful irony: The horrific bombing runs affected Hitler's war machine only marginally.
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/8624/ham6a00d83452a98069e200pc7.jpg
Hamburg. Night of July 29, 1943
It did more to wound the morale of the German people and its army officers than it did to the production of munitions, which was back running full speed within a matter of weeks.
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/1728/ham796pxhamburgaftertheqv1.jpg
Post-war photo of Hamburg depicting the aftermath of this week in 1943
65 years ago tonight in 1943, the worst British bombing raid on Hamburg so far virtually sets the city on fire, killing 42,000 German civilians.
The operation was originally formulated by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill with help from Air Chief Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris and was actually a joint effort between the RAF Bomber Command, the RCAF, and the USAAF (specifically 8th Air Force Bomber Command), who combined to create an "around-the-clock" bombing mission spanning 8 days and 7 nights — the Americans conducting the daylight raids with the British following after nightfall.
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/3605/hamgomorrah03la3.jpg
Arthur "Bomber" Harris. Harris was unique in that he alone was ignored by the Crown for special honors post-war. All other RAF air marshalls (four-star equivalents) were granted hereditary titles of nobility after the war by a grateful Crown. Harris was merely knighted. It's pretty clear that although the British government abided his approach, they didn't like it.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
– Arthur Travers Harris, "Bomber Offensive"
On July 24, British bombers began the nocturnal portion of Operation GOMORRAH, repeated bombing raids against Hamburg and its industrial and munitions plants. Sortie after sortie dropped fire from the sky, as thousands of tons of incendiary bombs destroyed tens of thousands of lives, buildings, and acreage.
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/4657/ham750pxavrolancasterbijp2.jpg
Avro Lancaster. Backbone of the RAF bomber force. Each Lancaster disgorged seven tons of incendiary bombs over its target. These incendiary devices were essentially canistered bundles of stick-like highly flammable material. On release, the canister fell some distance, then fell apart as the sticks ignited. Devoid of their wrapper, the blazing sticks unbundled and tumbled to the surface igniting anything flammable on which they landed -- imagine thousands of big outdoor trash barrels filled with hundreds of burning highway hazard flares dropped over your neighborhood from altitude
But the night of 28/29 July 1943 saw destruction unique in more than three years of bomb attacks: In just 43 minutes, 2,326 tons of bombs were dropped, creating a firestorm (a word that entered English parlance for the first time as a result of these events).
Low humidity, a lack of fire-fighting resources (exhausted from battling blazes caused by the previous nights' raids), and hurricane-level winds at the core of the storm literally fanned the flames, scorching eight square miles of Hamburg.
The firestorm lasted for about three hours, consuming approximately 16,000 multi-storyed apartment buildings and killing an estimated 42,000 people, most of them by carbon monoxide poisoning when all the air was drawn out of their basement shelters. Fearing further raids, two-thirds of Hamburg's population, approximately 1,200,000 people, fled the city in the aftermath.
It has been referred to as Germany's Hiroshima
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/8477/ham435pxgedenktafelfeuelt3.jpg
Many Hamburg houses rebuilt after World War II show a memorial plaque with the inscription "Destroyed 1943 - ... Rebuilt" to remind of their destruction during the air raids in July 1943.
One British flight lieutenant recalled seeing
"not many fires but one. ... I have never seen a fire like that before and was never to see its like again." Despite the terrible loss of civilian life, there strange and awful irony: The horrific bombing runs affected Hitler's war machine only marginally.
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/8624/ham6a00d83452a98069e200pc7.jpg
Hamburg. Night of July 29, 1943
It did more to wound the morale of the German people and its army officers than it did to the production of munitions, which was back running full speed within a matter of weeks.