The RAF raid on Hamburg of 26/27 July

On the night of 26/27 July 1942 RAF Bomber Command carried out its largest raid yet on Hamburg in terms of the number of aircraft. A total of 403 aircraft set out for the city – practically every machine the regular bomber squadrons could put up that night. The weather over the target was good, and high-explosive bombs together with large quantities of incendiaries started hundreds of fires in residential and commercial districts. According to Hamburg’s figures, 337 people were killed and more than 14,000 were made homeless. The British paid for this with 29 aircraft, over 7 per cent of the force dispatched. The raid is usually dated 27 July, because its bombs fell after midnight.

Bomber Command in the summer of 1942

The commander of Bomber Command, Air Marshal Arthur Harris, had just had his most spectacular weeks since taking up the post in February. At the end of May and in June he had sent more than a thousand bombers in turn against Cologne, Essen and Bremen, but for such large operations he had had to draw in the aircraft and crews of training units. In July he returned to the usual rhythm: a few hundred aircraft of the regular squadrons in a single raid. On 8/9 July the bombers attacked Wilhelmshaven, and from 13/14 July Duisburg in a series of four raids, each time with meagre results: the bombs were scattered in cloud, haze and industrial smoke. On 11 July 44 Lancasters flew against the U-boat yards in Gdańsk (Danzig) in Bomber Command’s longest-range raid to date, bombing just before dusk; some crews arrived late and dropped their bombs on the city after dark.

The experience of the spring, especially the raid on Lübeck and the raids on Rostock, had convinced Harris and his staff that in night attacks on densely built-up cities the most effective weapons were incendiaries, dropped in large quantities and supported by high-explosive bombs, which blew out windows, tore off roofs and hampered firefighting. The Air Ministry directive of February 1942 named the morale of the civilian population, and in particular of industrial workers, as the objective, and the built-up areas of cities as aiming points. Hamburg, the second-largest city in the Reich, its largest port and a centre of U-boat construction, was an obvious target. Since 1940 it had been through more than a hundred raids, but none had yet done it serious damage. The last major operation, in April 1942, had scattered in storms and cloud.

The night of 26/27 July

On the evening of 26 July 403 aircraft took off: 181 twin-engined Wellingtons, 77 Lancasters, 73 Halifaxes, 39 Stirlings and 33 Hampdens. According to the Bomber Command operations record, this was probably a full “maximum effort” by the regular squadrons, without the participation of training units. Over the North Sea and on part of the route the crews met cloud and icing, but over Hamburg itself the sky was clear. Returning airmen reported good bombing results.

This time the reports were largely borne out. Hamburg’s reports, cited in post-war British studies, recorded severe and widespread damage, chiefly in residential and mixed residential and commercial districts rather than in the port and industrial plants that were the formal target. The fire brigade and civil air defence fought more than 800 fires, 523 of which were classed as large. 823 houses were destroyed and more than 5,000 damaged. 337 people were killed, 1,027 were injured and more than 14,000 residents lost their homes. This was a higher death toll than in the raid on Lübeck and approached that of the thousand-bomber raid on Cologne in May, in which about 470 people had died.

Hamburg’s defences – strong anti-aircraft artillery and night fighters waiting in the coastal belt – took a heavy toll. 29 aircraft failed to return: 15 Wellingtons, 8 Halifaxes and two each of Hampdens, Lancasters and Stirlings, or 7.2 per cent of the force dispatched. At such loss rates the command was losing more than a hundred and fifty trained airmen in a single raid. That same night British Bostons and Blenheims attacked German airfields; one Boston of No. 226 Squadron – the same squadron with which the first Americans had flown on 4 July – was lost over Jever, the first Boston loss in such operations.

The second raid, 28/29 July

Harris wanted to follow up his blow. Much larger forces were detailed against Hamburg for the night of 28/29 July, but bad weather over the airfields of Nos. 1, 4 and 5 Groups prevented them from taking off. 256 aircraft did take off: 165 from No. 3 Group and 91 from the Operational Training Units. The weather quickly deteriorated and the training aircraft were recalled; three of them nevertheless flew on and bombed Hamburg. The rest of the force became scattered, many crews turned back, and only 68 aircraft dropped their bombs over the city. Hamburg recorded 13 killed, 48 injured and 56 fires. The attackers’ losses, by contrast, were very heavy: No. 3 Group lost 16 Wellingtons and 9 Stirlings, more than 15 per cent of the aircraft dispatched, and on top of that four training Wellingtons and a Whitley that came down in the sea were lost.

These two nights illustrate well the position of Bomber Command at the time. In good weather a few hundred bombers could already inflict serious wounds on a large city, but they still could not hit specific factories, and any change in the weather turned a raid into a scattered and costly failure. Losses of more than 5 per cent per raid meant that a crew had little chance of surviving a full tour of thirty operations.

Place in the war

The July raid was a warning to Hamburg. The city expanded its shelters and air defences; in 1942 work began in St. Pauli on the first of Hamburg’s anti-aircraft towers (Flaktürme), built with the help of forced labourers. Bomber Command also drew its conclusions. In August 1942, despite Harris’s opposition, a force of specialised crews was formed to find and mark targets, and at the turn of 1942 and 1943 more accurate navigational and radar devices came into service. Bomber Command sent several more raids against Hamburg in 1942, but only these innovations, together with the growing number of heavy bombers, changed the scale of the raids.

A year later, in the last days of July 1943, Hamburg became the target of Operation Gomorrah. During a series of RAF and American raids, on the night of 27/28 July, a firestorm broke out and destroyed entire districts east of the centre. According to accepted estimates, about 34,000 people were killed, most of them civilians. Compared with that, the raid of July 1942, with its 337 victims, was a foretaste: it showed that the city was within reach of large raids and that fire was Bomber Command’s most dangerous weapon.