“We were not aware at that time of the firestorm, but we did realize that the target was well and truly alight, for as we looked back even halfway across the North Sea we could see the smoke,” Chris Dickenson, Short Stirling flight, engineer
The formidable Short Stirling was the first of the RAF’s three four-engined heavy bombers to enter service in August 1940. Before the type was officially decommissioned in July 1946, the Royal Air Force (RAF) manufactured and flew a total of 2371 units. The Stirling was at the forefront of the British night bombing campaign against Germany from its first operation in February 1941. The RAF’s largest wartime bomber was deployed by 12 squadrons at the height of its operational service with Bomber Command in 1943 before unacceptably high losses necessitated its retirement to second-line tasks.
The preparations for destroying Hamburg using all of the RAF’s available heavy bomber squadrons, including the nine Stirling units in No 3 Group, were laid out in an order that “Bomber” Harris gave to all of his heavy bomber groups on May 27, 1943. A series of nighttime strikes with maximal effort were to be supplemented by daytime attacks by heavy bombers from the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force.
The RAF’s raid planners were familiar with Hamburg because Bomber Command had attacked it 98 times since the war’s start. With a population of more than 1.5 million, it was the second-largest city in Germany, and its complete destruction would have a negative impact on the Third Reich’s industrial and civilian morale.
In the book Short Stirling Units of World War 2, Jonathan Falconer explains why Hamburg was a crucial choice as a target for two tactical factors. First off, the city’s location at the entrance of the Elbe river meant that it would be easily visible on H2S radar screens even if it was beyond of Oboe range (although this was of little help to the Stirling crews as their aircraft were not so equipped).
Second, the city was a perfect testing ground for the RAF’s top-secret new radar jamming device, codenamed “Window,” because it was protected by 15 radar-equipped defense boxes and night fighter stations in the Kammhuber Line (the name the Allies gave to the German high air defense system established in July 1940 by Oberst Josef Kammhuber).
On the night of July 24–25, a force of 791 bombers, including 354 Lancasters, 239 Halifaxes, 120 Stirlings, and 68 Wellingtons, made their first attack on the city. As each aircraft approached Hamburg across the North Sea, bundles of “Window” were thrown down its flare chute, and as was expected, the German early warning radar systems broke down. More than 2396 tons of bombs were dumped on the undefended city during the hour-long operation. Only 12 bombers, including three Stirlings, failed to return, thanks to the “Window” effect.
On the night of July 25–26, 705 aircraft from Bomber Command’s squadrons attacked Essen while the shock of “Window” was still fresh in people’s minds. Among the 26 bombers that did not return, seven aircraft from Stirlings had a poor performance.
Hamburg residents were suffering in an unexpected heatwave since late July had been much hotter than anticipated. The weather on the 27th was significantly warmer than it had been the previous days, and Harris ordered 727 bombers to attack the city that night using largely the same strategies as on the 24th and 25th. The Stirling and Halifax aircraft’s capacity for incendiary to high explosives was boosted for operational reasons, a move that resulted in unexpectedly greater destruction than before.
That night, the crew of Flt Sgt “Speedy” Williams’ No 75 (NZ) Sqn in Stirling EH936/W brought 20 small bomb containers (SBCs) with them. Chris Dickenson, a flight engineer, wrote “smoke up to 16,000 ft.” in his logbook. A vast number of fires started to spread as a result of the heatwave’s high temperature, low humidity, and concentrated bombing. These fires eventually joined forces and sucked in all the available oxygen with the intensity of a storm, and the conflagration that resulted became known as a “firestorm.”
It burnt out of control for several hours as a result of about 2300 tons of bombs, and the blaze only died down once every flammable material had been reduced to ashes. In the firestorm, about 40,000 residents died, and in the days that followed, 1.2 million people fled the city.
Chris Dickenson remembered: “We were not aware at that time of the firestorm, but we did realize that the target was well and truly alight, for as we looked back even halfway across the North Sea we could see the smoke.”
The second raid’s casualties, with just 17 aircraft, represented a very low 2.2% mortality rate. Only one Stirling didn’t make it back.
On July 29-30, 777 aircraft launched a third night attack on the still-burning city. The extremely intensive bombing set off numerous fires, but fortunately for those who were remaining in Hamburg, no firestorm developed. By now the city’s defenses had recovered from their initial paralysis, with night fighters and flak claiming 28 of the attacking force. At 3.6 percent of the force, of which four were Stirlings, this level of casualties was nonetheless considered acceptable by the statisticians of Bomber Command’s Operational Research Section.
740 aircraft launched the fourth and last raid of this catastrophic string of assaults on the night of August 2-3. (329 Lancasters, 235 Halifaxes, 105 Stirlings, 66 Wellingtons, and five Mosquitoes).
The operation quickly devolved into a disaster for the RAF when a big thunderstorm over Germany produced towering cloud formations that reached as high as 20,000 ft. Due to their subpar height performance, several of the attacking forces turned around early or, like the Stirlings, bombed alternate objectives. Unfavorable weather is certainly to blame for some of the 30 lost planes. Among the missing were three Stirlings.
In the four raids, more than 8600 tons of bombs were thrown on Hamburg. Together, they showed the terrible results of repeated area bombing and nearly sent the Nazi leadership into a panic. The impact of these bombings, according to Reich Armament Minister Albert Speer, could only be compared to a significant earthquake, and more severe assaults against six more German cities would have brought Germany to its knees. However, “Bomber” Harris missed this chance because he was reluctant to take the chance of having his men return repeatedly to the same targets.
Photo by Charles E. Brown and Ian Dunster via Wikipedia