Air raid on Giessen on December 6, 1944

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During the air raid on Giessen the city was largely destroyed by units of the British RAF Bomber Command on the night of December 6th, 1944 . The attack operation was carried out under the code name Hake (" pike ").

The attackers

The attack, followed by a firestorm , was ordered by Air Marshal Arthur Harris of No. 5 Bomber Group of the Royal Air Force , which was a unit specialized in the systematic destruction of civilian land targets. The No. 5 Bomber Group was responsible, among other things, for the area bombing of Dresden , Kassel , Braunschweig , Pforzheim , Hamburg , Königsberg , Stuttgart , Darmstadt and Würzburg . The unit used a combination of high explosive and incendiary bombs . In the best military case, this combination led to a firestorm. The fire multiplied the damage caused by the explosive and incendiary bombs used. The command background of the bombing was the British Area Bombing Directive (instruction for area bombing).

The preparation

The exact selection of the districts to be bombed was made on the basis of aerial photographs , population density maps and fire insurance cadastre maps. The cadastral maps had been deposited by German fire insurance companies with British reinsurance companies before the war. The old town of Giessen was selected as the core area of ​​the attack, as the proportion of wood in the total building mass was highest here. This made it the ideal core target area for igniting a firestorm in Gießen. The track harp in front of Kleinlinden was also attacked.

Before the bombing, the fan-shaped target area was Mosquito - Quick bombers by red and green marker body (so-called Christmas trees) delimited. This was monitored by a master bomber flying at high altitude, which was connected to the marker pilots via radio. The attack began shortly before 8 p.m. with the placement of a white marker. Starting from this center, the marker fliers set the marker body chains (red and green marker chains). Then the master bomber checked the Gießen target area again on a deeper flight path, determined the exact approach heights and released the attack.

The bombing

The target area of ​​the attack on Gießen was essentially the densely populated city center - especially the medieval old town. The bombardment began at 8:03 pm. It took about half an hour to 8:35 p.m. The Royal Air Force used 254 Lancaster bombers. The bombers dropped around 1,000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on Gießen.

Victims and damage

An estimated 390 people died that night from the bombs dropped. The bombings sparked a firestorm in the old town. Attempts to extinguish the fire that were supposed to contain the resulting wildfire could only be carried out in isolated cases and to a completely inadequate extent. 86% of the city center was destroyed. The urban traffic, supply and communication infrastructure collapsed to a large extent. The damage in the city was increased again by another air raid on December 11, 1944.

literature

  • Jörg Friedrich: The fire: Germany in the bombing war 1940-1945. Propylaea Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-549-07165-5 .

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