GOMORRAH, OPERATION (JULY–AUGUST 1943)

[The SC]

When

Beginning the night of July 24 and continuing through August 3, 1943
Where Hamburg, Germany
Who Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Royal Air Force Bomber Command, and Maj. Gen. Ira C. Eaker, U.S. Army Air Forces Eighth Air Force
Why One of the Third Reich’s largest cities, Hamburg was a major port and industrial center on the Elbe River, 70 miles inland from the North Sea. Its factories, shipyards, U-boat pens, oil refineries and depots were of first-class importance to the Nazi war effort. The bombing campaign was intended to inflict devastating blows to both German armaments production and the morale of German industrial workers. Harris believed a devastating attack on a symbolic target like Hamburg would push the Nazis into seeking a peace deal.
What Operation Gomorrah, named after the evil Biblical city that God destroyed, was a strategic aerial bombing campaign directed against the North German city of Hamburg. The aerial bombardment is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Hamburg. Conceived by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Air Chief Marshal Harris, Operation Gomorrah was the first coordinated, sustained bombing campaign between the RAF and the USAAF Eighth Air Force, with the RAF bombing by night and the Eighth Air Force conducing precision strikes by day. Approximate 3,000 aircraft were deployed and 9,000 tons of bombs dropped.
On the night of July 24, 740 RAF bombers descended on Hamburg. Led by radar target locating and marking de Havilland Mosquito medium bombers, the Avro Lancaster heavy bombers struck their targets and returned home with a loss of only 12 aircraft (1.5 percent of the force). The next afternoon 68 American B-17 Flying Fortresses struck Hamburg’s U-boat pens and shipyards. That was followed up by another daylight raid that destroyed the city’s power plant. At that point American raids ceased due to smoke settling over the city and obscuring the B-17 targets. The high point of the operation, if it could be called that, came on the night of July 27, when 739 RAF bombers created a 1,500-foot-high tornado of fire with 150 mph winds and temperatures of 1,500°F. The firestorm, which lasted three hours, caused coal, coke, and lumberyards to explode, asphalt streets to ignite, and fuel-soaked waters in the harbor and canals to burn. The majority of German deaths occurred as a result of fire crews being overwhelmed by the monster inferno.
Outcome Called the “Hiroshima of Germany” by British officials, Operation Gomorrah was at the time the heaviest assault in the history of aerial warfare. The air assault destroyed a significant percentage of Hamburg. Ten square miles of the city were reduced to rubble, over 214,350 dwellings out of 414,500 were destroyed, over one million residents were rendered homeless, and 40,000–50,000 civilians were killed, with another 37,000 wounded. The city’s labor force was reduced permanently by ten percent. The industrial losses were equally severe: 183 large factories and 4,118 smaller factories were put out of commission and Hamburg never recovered to full production. Losses to the city’s infrastructure were staggering: 90 percent of its gas works, 60 percent of its water system, and 75 percent of its electric works were destroyed. In the immediate wake of the raids, over two-thirds of Hamburg’s population, approximately 1.2 million people, fled the city. The raids severely shook the Nazi leadership, leading Hitler to be concerned that similar raids on other cities could force Germany out of the war. Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief of armaments production, warned Hitler that six more raids with similar levels of destruction could halt the Reich’s armament production. The crushing aerial punishment, coupled with the relatively small loss of aircraft, led Allied commanders to consider Operation Gomorrah a success. Even then, Hamburg continued to be hammered by air raids another 69 times before the end of the war. An American observer in 1946 said that the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki did not do as much fire damage as the extended airstrikes on Hamburg.



Silent German Film of Hamburg’s Devastation by Anglo-American Bombers During and After Operation Gomorrah, July–August 1943

https://ww2days.com/gomorrah-operation-july-august-1943.html

 

[dBSPL]

Operation Gomorrah is just as bloody and devastating as any nuclear attack. And for the same reason, just like the massacre of the Japanese people, this event is pushed into the background in popular history. Maybe that's why this massacre is called the Hiroshima of Europe.

The operation takes its name from the biblical explanation of the utter destruction of the corrupt cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by sulfur and fire. As its codename, there was such a great massacre that it is said that the crew of the bomber planes participating in the operation was affected by the smell of burnt flesh of thousands of people who died, coming from the smoke rising from the burning city.

*

In the darkest days of the second world war Stalin urged the British and the Americans to open a second front in the west. In the year of Soviet withdrawals, when Stalin did not see themselves as ready, he proposed mass bombing campaigns to paralyze military-industrial capabilities in Europe and Germany. The first strategic bombardments of German cities began at Hanseatic and Lübeck in March 1942, followed by Cologne on 30 May 1942 . After awhile, all major German cities began to be the target of more or less significant air raids.

The Battle of Hamburg, codenamed Operation Gomorrah, was a campaign of air raids which began on 24 July 1943 night and lasted for 8 days and 7 nights. It was at the time the heaviest assault in the history of aerial warfare and was later called the Hiroshima of Germany by British officials.

In the first week after the raid, about one million people evacuated the city. 60% of the housing stock was destroyed. Approximately 3,000 aircraft were employed, 9,000 tons of bombs were dropped and over 250,000 homes and houses were destroyed. Other losses included damage to or destruction of 580 industrial concerns and armaments works, 299 of which were important enough to be listed by name. Local transport systems were completely disrupted and did not return to normal for some time. Dwellings destroyed amounted to 214,350 out of 414,500. Hamburg was hit by air raids another 69 times before the end of World War II. In total, the RAF dropped 22,580 long tons of bombs on Hamburg.

The death toll from Operation Gomorrah will always be uncertain, but the most accepted single number is now at least 37,000. Most of the dead were unidentified. By 1 December 1943, there were 31,647 body found, but of these only 15,802 were based on the identification of a body. In some cases, the numbers of people who had perished in cellars converted into "air protection rooms" could only be estimated from the quantity of ash left on the floor.

 

[LeGenD]

Horror Of 'Firestorm' Introduced By Europe’s Deadliest Bombing Raid 80 Years Ago

Operation Gomorrah, a combined British and U.S. raid on the port city of Hamburg left unimaginable destruction and a problematic legacy.

www.thedrive.com

Operation Gomorrah involved strategic bombing of a German industrial city Hamburg in 1943.

Notice the timing. This is but one of the operations aimed to damage German industrial capability when the Wehrmacht was engaged in the Battle of Kursk in the East. US-led forces were making sure that the USSR will win in the Battle of Kursk.

@aziqbal