Air raids on Wilhelmshaven

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During the Second World War , the Western Allies carried out 102  air raids on Wilhelmshaven , 16 of which were so-called large-scale attacks. Two thirds of the city's buildings were destroyed. Due to the numerous air raid shelters (built before the war) , only 435 people died. Wilhelmshaven was the first major German city to be targeted by British air raids in World War II.

Attacks

The British Air Force (RAF) flew the first air raid on Wilhelmshaven on September 4, 1939; he did little damage. On December 18, 1939, the RAF undertook another air raid on Wilhelmshaven. The Luftwaffe flew its first radar-guided interception mission against 22 British bombers and shot down 12 of 22 RAF bombers over the German Bight .

On the night of December 28th to December 29th, 1941, RAF bombers flew simultaneous attacks on the cities of Wilhelmshaven, Hüls (district of Marl ) and Emden .

On January 27, 1943 Wilhelmshaven was the first German city to be attacked by US bomber units of the 369th and 306th US bomber squadrons. This daytime attack was directed against the port facilities and warehouses. In the documentary Memphis Belle , u. a. documented this attack.

On October 15, 1944, the old Wilhelmshaven, especially the densely populated city center, was almost completely destroyed in an RAF night raid under the Area Bombing Directive . The last air raid took place on March 30, 1945.

memorial

Most of the aerial warfare deaths were buried in row graves in the municipal cemetery in Aldenburg . A memorial there has been commemorating the civilian bomb victims in the city since 1978.

literature

  • Markus Titsch: Bunker in Wilhelmshaven . Brune-Mettcker, Wilhelmshaven 2005, ISBN 3-930510-29-4 .
  • Friedrich August Greve: The air defense in the Wilhelmshaven section 1939-1945 . Jever 1999. ISBN 978-3-9806885-0-5 .
  • Rolf Uphoff: When day turned into night - and night into day: Wilhelmshaven in the bombing war. Holzberg, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-87358-373-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. bunker-whv.de ​​- attacks and statistics , accessed on March 18, 2014
  2. ^ A b Adolf Galland [1954]: The First and the Last: The Rise and Fall of the German Fighter Forces, 1938–1945 . Ballantine Books, New York 1968 Ninth Printing - paperbound, pp. 20,105.
  3. according to some sources wrongly Hüls / Krefeld , but the main target was the Buna plant in Marl, cf. Hans Vogt, Herbert Brenne: Krefeld in the air war, 1939-1945. L. Röhrscheid Verlag, Bonn 1986, p. 178.
  4. ^ Campaign Diary . In: Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary . UK Crown. Archived from the original on December 7, 2008. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 19, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.raf.mod.uk
  5. ^ Paul Bruppacher: Adolf Hitler and the history of the NSDAP, Part 2, 1938–1945, p. 399
  6. ^ Walt Lang [1989]: United States Military Almanac . Salamander Books Ltd., London 1998, ISBN 0-517-16092-7 , p. 102.
  7. Heimat am Meer No. 22/2010: A bad Sunday: a hail of bombs smashed a lot in Wilhelmshaven. (PDF; 1 MB), accessed on March 10, 2013