Operation Gomorrah
Operation Gomorrah was the military codename for the Allied bombing of Hamburg (Battle of Hamburg) during World War II (24 July 1943 - 2 August 1943). The attacks during the last week of July in 1943, created one of the largest firestorms raised by the RAF and USAAF in World War II, killing at least 42,600 civilians (other sources account for up to 125,000 deaths) and wounding 37,000 more. 180,000 to 200,000 people in Hamburg were now shelterless, the terror bombers (de) had practically destroyed the entire city. Some one million German civilians fled the city.
Before the development of the firestorm (German: Feuersturm) in Hamburg there had been no rain for some time and everything was very dry. The unusually warm weather and good conditions meant that the bombing created a vortex and whirling updraft of super-heated air which created a 1,500-foot-high tornado of fire, a totally unexpected effect. Various other previously used techniques and devices were instrumental as well, such as area bombing, Pathfinders, and H2S radar, which came together to work particularly effectively. An early form of chaff, code named 'Window', was successfully used for the first time by the RAF - clouds of shredded tinfoil dropped by Pathfinders as well as the initial bomber stream - in order to completely cloud German radar.
American author and an authority on aeronautics and aviation Martin Caidin (1927-1997), one of the world’s foremost experts on the effects of bombing said:
- "Neither Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffering from the smashing blows of nuclear explosions could match the utter hell of Hamburg. The fire and horror lasted ten full days. This is what makes Hamburg - and the loss of some seventy thousand men, women and children - stand out as the worst of the disasters visited upon civilization during the insanity of World War II."
Bombing of Hamburg
During the night of 23 July 1943, British bombers took off for the German city of Hamburg, which delivered 2,300 tons of bombs to the city between 0100 and 0200 in the early morning of 24 July. This began Operation Gomorrah, a bombing campaign against Hamburg. Once again, 8,000-pound "blockbuster" and 4,000-pound "cookie" bombs, both explosive bombs, knocked out roofs and windows, and subsequent waves of bombers dropped 350,412 incendiary bombs to start fires. Crews of the Halifax bombers of the RAF 6 Group, which were among the latter waves, reported "a mass of raging fires with black smoke rising to 19,000 feet".
RAF bombing practice called for lead bombers to drop markers so that the following bombers would know where to release bombs in the dark. Hamburg resident Johann Johannsen, who manned a flak battery that night, recalled being directly underneath one such marker.
- High above us we could hear the drone of the enemy machines. Suddenly countless flares were above us, so that the whole city was lit up in a magically bright light.... With incredible swiftness the disaster was suddenly upon us. Before and behind our battery heavy chunks of metal were striking. Howling and hissing, fire and iron were falling from the sky. The whole city was lit up in a sea of flames!
Paul Elingshausen, the deputy air raid warden of his block, remembered the frustration of not being able to fight the massive fires.
- There was no running water, the Tommies had smashed the waterworks first... we had to abandon house after house. Finally Dr. Wilm's house caught fire, and I, as deputy air-raid warden, stopped fighting the fire since there was neither sand or water, and the flames were already licking the side of our roof. We started to save what could be saved.... I had all of fourteen minutes to rescue the most important things, some clothes and other stuff.... One cannot imagine how fast fire is, and how easily it can cut off your escape route; this is why I also gave up, no matter how much I would have liked to have this or that. And so I stood below with what little stuff I had, and was forced to watch, full of impotent anger, as our beloved building burned.
The RAF bombers' entrance over German air was aided by "Window", code name for strips of paper coated with foil on one side, which successfully blinded German short-range radar and the anti-aircraft flak weapons that depended on radar. Once they completed their attack on Hamburg, however, German night fighters arrived in response and shot down a number of British bombers.
Only 12 aircraft were lost during the raid of 24 July 1943.
At 1440 in the afternoon on the next day, 25 July, United States Army Air Force bombers arrived during daylight. The Americans, operating under a separate command, chose to follow up the British bombing for military reasons. Top American commanders noted Hamburg's aircraft parts factories and submarine builders, and the chaos caused by the British bombing the day before might increase the rate of success for the raid. Brigadier General Frederick L. Anderson, Jr. gave the order that day to launch his B-17 Flying Fortress Bombers, with the Blohm & Voß shipyards and the Klöckner aircraft engine factories as the primary objectives. When 109 bombers arrived at Hamburg, crews reported that the smoke rising from fires were so heavy that they were having trouble locating their targets. They thought the fires were caused by the first wave of American bombers; little did they know, the fires had actually been burning since the first British raid.
German fighters inflicted a heavy toll on the American bombers. Even as the bombers were fleeing after unloading the bombs, fighters hovered on the edges of the flight groups, looking for bombers that were unable to stay with the group. German fighters were typically afraid of flying into a group of B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, as the high concentration of defensive guns meant certain death. However, there were reports of fighters directly challenging bombers, with the most of them employing the strategy of flying from the direction of the sun to mask their attacks. The American bombers returned to Britain around 1930 in the evening, finding that they had lost 15 aircraft.
In the afternoon of Sunday, 25 July, Gauleiter of Hamburg Karl Kaufmann decided to seal the city. As the city continued to burn, he announced no one would be allowed leave, reasoning that it would maintain the manpower needed to fight fires and to help survivors. Little did he know that it was only the start of an entire bombing campaign on the city. Keeping the population in the city "ensured the deaths of thousands in the coming days", said Keith Lowe.
At dawn on 26 July, USAAF bomber crews gathered again for another mission. To their surprise, they found themselves staring at a map of Hamburg once again. They took off around 0900 that morning. When they arrived at Hamburg at noon time, they were once again blinded by smoke, but this time, the smoke was generated by German efforts to mask areas of the city. The attacking bombers released their 126 tons of bombs in a short one-minute window, scoring direct hits on the Blohm & Voß shipyards and MAN diesel engine works. Neuhof power station was hit by the 303rd Bomber Group, which disabled the power station for the coming two weeks. This precision bombing killed few civilians outside the intended military and infrastructure targets. Only two American bombers were lost on this raid.
The American bombings on 25 and 26 July did serious damage to the Blohm & Voß shipyards. Construction shops, ship fitters shops, engine shops, boiler house, power station, foundry, and tool stores were all seriously damaged, while two of the dry docks were also considerably damaged. The Howaldtswerke factory lost several furnaces, shipbuilding and machinery sheds, and the diesel engine shops. Oil stores near the Rosshafen rail station were hit. Putting the Neuhof power station out of commission was probably the most important achievement.
During the night of 26-27 July, 6 British Mosquito aircraft conducted a nuisance raid on Hamburg, just like the night before. They were not meant to cause much damage to the city. Instead, they were sent to keep the Hamburg residents on their toes. By depriving them of sleep, the RAF Bomber Commanded intended on destroying their morale bit by bit.
During the night of 27-28 July, 787 British bombers attacked Hamburg from the northeast. The direction was chosen so that creep-back would cause damage to a totally different part of town, thus systematically destroying the area from city center outwards. "Creep back" was the term used to describe the fact that, as subsequent bomber crews saw explosions and fires near the target caused by the first waves, they would grow more excited, which led them to release their bomb slightly early. Thus as each subsequent waves released their bombs earlier and earlier, the area of impact crept toward the direction that the bombers were coming from. As city center buildings were already damaged, the British Lancaster, Halifax, and Stirling bombers carried far more incendiary bombs tonight, instead of explosives. The 722 aircraft that reached Hamburg dropped more than 2,313 tons of bombs on Hamburg in the span of 50 minutes. The resulting fire destroyed 16,000 buildings and killed thousands of people. Trevor Timperley of 156 Squadron RAF, who flew two missions over Hamburg, recalled the city being "a sea of flames" on this night. Leonard Cooper, a British flight engineer aboard a 7 Squadron RAF Lancaster bomber, recalled smoke rising to the altitude of 20,000 feet, carrying the stink of burning human flesh. "It's not a thing I'd like to talk about", he told his interviewer emotionally. On the ground, the scene of destruction exactly mirrored what the RAF bomber crews imagined. Erich Titschak recalled his entire neighborhood engulfed in "one enormous sea of fire", while Hans Jedlicka expressed a similar experience, noting "[t]he whole of Hammerbrook was burning!" A 40-year-old survivor gave the following account, which without a doubt contributed to some of the awful smell that the RAF bomber crews took note of high above.
- The stretch of road upon which we now travelled brought ever worsening scenes of horror. I saw many women with their children held in their arms running, burning and then falling and not getting back up. We passed masses of people made up of four or five corpses, each probably a family, visible only as a pile of burned substance no larger than a small child. Many men and women fell over suddenly without having caught fire.... Silently and with the last of their force, women tried to save their children. They carried them pressed close. Many of these children were already dead, without their mothers knowing.
The British bombers that flew over Hamburg on the night of 27-28 July met a tougher defense. Realizing that "Window" took away their ability to use radar to direct flak, more stress was put on the use of night fighters. Particularly, Major Hajo Herrmann's Wilde Sau, or "Wild Boar", tactics were deployed; Wilde Sau tactics called for flak to explode at a the particular altitude that enemy bombers traveled, while night fighters hovered at a safe distance higher above. As the fighters flew high above, the fires on the ground easily contrasted the outlines of bombers, and Wilde Sau fighters would sweep down against targets of opportunity. Over Hamburg and on the British bombers' return journey, Wilde Sau and conventional fighters claimed many hits.
The 27-28 July raid killed about 42,600 people and destroyed over 16,000 residential buildings. Joseph Goebbels called this raid "the greatest crisis of the war" in his diary a few days later. British newspaper The Daily Express published, on the front page, the headline "RAF blitz to wipe Hamburg off the war map".
During the night of 28-29 July, four Mosquito aircraft performed a nuisance raid on Hamburg.
On the following night, 29-30 July, 777 British aircraft attacked the northern areas of Hamburg. En route, the bombers flew straight into a huge storm, and almost all crew members who participated in this raid reported the St. Elmo's fire phenomenon as their aircraft became electrified. Pilot J. K. Christie of a Lancaster bomber of the 35 Squadron noted his "spectacular experience" in his diary:
- There were huge luminous rings around the propellers, blue flames out of the wing-tips, gun muzzles and also everywhere else on the aircraft where its surface is pointed. For instance, the de-icing tube in front of my window had a blue flame around it. Electrical flowers were dancing on the windows all the time until they got iced up, when the flowers disappeared. The wireless operator told me afterwards that sparks were shooting across his equipment all the time and that his aerials were luminous throughout the lengths. I didn't feel a bit happy and tried to go down below the clouds.
The unexpected electrical storm was not the only danger the British bombers faced. With additional anti-aircraft weapons brought into the city, the density of flak at and below 4,500 meters altitude were far greater than during previous raids; above that altitude, aside from the dangerous storm clouds, Wilde Sau fighters continued to sweep down from above on unsuspecting bombers. 28 aircraft were lost during this raid. They caused damage, but did not start another firestorm.
The final large scale raid conducted on Hamburg took place on the night of 2-3 August, where 740 aircraft launched for Hamburg, but bad weather prevented many of the bombers from reaching the target; many of them were diverted to bomb secondary targets instead. 30 of the 740 bombers were lost.
In the mere ten days, Hamburg was utterly destroyed. Perhaps a personal correspondence from German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel to his wife dated 3 August 1943 captured the fear instilled in the German people after the bombings on the city:
- Hamburg has been a catastrophe for us, and last night there was yet another heavy air raid on it. The same must be expected for Berlin as soon as the nights are long enough for the longer flying time involved. That is why I want you to leave Berlin as soon as possible in view of the enormous danger there now is of fires breaking out; fires are far more dangerous than high explosive.... I am afraid of vast conflagrations consuming whole districts, streams of burning oil flowing into the basements and shelters, phosphorus, and the like. It will be difficult to escape from the shelters then, and there is the danger of tremendous heat being generated. This will not be cowardice, but the sheer realization that in face of phenomena like these one is completely powerless; in the heart of the city you will be quite powerless.
Although the bombings put a halt on Hamburg's war industries, production was recovered relatively quickly. By the end of 1943, the aircraft industry was operating at 91% of pre-bombing levels, while electrical goods, optics, and precision tools either returned or surpassed pre-bombing levels. The chemical industry, which suffered greatly during the ten days, returned to 71% of pre-bombing capacity by end of 1943 as well. Most importantly, the submarine-building industry, which the Allies targeted, returned to near pre-bombing capacity within two months. René Ratouis, a French worker who witness the destruction of the shipyards, recalled his surprise when he returned in September and saw nearly no sign of any attack; by 28 September, submarine (U-Boot; Walter-Boot) of typ Wa 201 was completed and launched from the Blohm & Voß shipyards.
See also
Literature
- Lowe, Keith (2007). Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943. Viking. ISBN 0-670-91557-2.
- Friedrich, Jörg (2006). The Fire: The bombing of Germany, 1940-1945. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-13380-4.
- Grayling, A. C. (2006). Among the Dead Cities. New York: Walker Publishing Company Inc. ISBN 0-8027-1471-4.
- Hansen, Randall (2009), Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany. New York: New American Library. ISBN 978-0-451-22759-1
- Nossack, Hans (2004). The End: Hamburg 1943. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-59556-0.
- Sebald, Winfried (2003). On the Natural History of Destruction. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-50484-2.
- Wilson, Kevin (2005). Bomber Boys. UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-84637-6.
