Inferno
Inferno
The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943
KEITH LOWE
VIKING
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2007
1
Copyright © Keith Lowe, 2007
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Maps by John Gilkes
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
List of Maps
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Author’s Note
Part One – Hamburg
1 City on the River
2 The Anglophile City
3 City of Rebellion
4 The Rise of the Nazis
5 Hamburg Prepares for War
Part Two – Darkness Falls from the Air
6 A Brief History of Bombing
7 The Grand Alliance
8 The British Plan
9 The First Strike
10 The Devastation Begins
11 The Americans Join the Fray
12 The Luftwaffe Strikes Back
13 The Americans Again
14 The Eye of the Storm
15 Concentrated Bombing
16 Firestorm
17 The ‘Terror of Hamburg’
18 Coup de Grâce
19 The Tempest
Part Three – The Aftermath
20 City of the Dead
21 Survival
22 Famine
23 The Reckoning
24 Redemption
Appendices
A Chronology of Hamburg
B Chronology of the Second World War
C Chronology of ‘Operation Gomorrah’
D Comparison of British, American and German Terms
E British Order of Battle, 24 July 1943
F American Order of Battle, 24 July 1943
G Luftwaffe Order of Battle of Fighters in the West, 24 July 1943
H Air Force Casualties
I Tables of Statistics
J Aircraft Specifications
K Financial Cost of the Hamburg Bombings
Notes
Archives Consulted
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
List of Maps
1 Hamburg and its defences, 1943
2 RAF route on the night of 24 July 1943
3 RAF bombs dropped on Hamburg on the night of 24 July
4 The American plan, 25 July 1943
5 USAAF route over Hamburg, 25 July
6 American bombs on Hamburg, 25 July
7 Attacks on 384th BG, 25 July
8 USAAF losses, 25 July
9 USAAF route, 26 July
10 American bombs on Hamburg, 26 July
11 Damage caused by British and American bombers, 24–26 July 1943
12 RAF route on the night of 27 July
13 RAF bombs dropped on Hamburg on the night of 27 July
14 The firestorm area
15 RAF losses on the night of 29 July
16 RAF bombs dropped on Hamburg on the night of 29 July
17 Damage caused on the night of 29 July
18 British and German losses on the night of 2 August
19 Total damage to Hamburg in the Gomorrah raids, 24 July–3 August
List of Illustrations
Section One
1 Churchill and Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference, where the Combined Bomber Offensive was first agreed (US Army)
2 Sir Arthur Harris, Commander-in-Chief, RAF Bomber Command (Imperial War Museum)
3 Major General Frederick L. Anderson, commander US VIII Bomber Command (US Air Force)
4 Hitler arrives at Hamburg’s airport on one of his many pre-war visits (Archiv Erna Neumann)
5 Karl Kaufmann, Hamburg’s gauleiter and a loyal disciple of the Führer (Studio Schmidt-Luchs)
6 Göring (left) was head of the Luftwaffe, but it was Erhard Milch (right) who ran the show. Chief of Air Staff Hans Jeschonnek (centre) shot himself shortly after the bombing of Hamburg (Private collection)
7 Colin Harrison: ‘One minute I was a schoolboy, next minute they called me a man and put me in an aeroplane.’ (Private collection)
8 Bill McCrea: ‘When we were detailed on the first Hamburg raid we thought, “Now we’ll see what it’s reallylike!” ’ (Private collection)
9 Doug Fry (centre), hours before he was shot down at the end of July 1943 (Private collection)
10 Baptism of fire: Ted Groom and pilot Reg Wellham’s first operation was the firestorm raid of 27 July (Private collection)
11 Hamburg before the war. Narrow streets like this allowed fires to spread rapidly (RAF Museum)
12 The bright lights of the Reeperbahn in the 1930s (Denkmalschutzamt Hamburg)
13 The docks and shipyards were the main target of the raids (Denkmalschutzamt Hamburg)
14 False streets and buildings were floated on the Alster lake in an attempt to disguise the city centre (Denkmalschutzamt Hamburg)
15 Secret weapon: a factory worker cuts strips of ‘Window’ to the right length (IWM)
16 RAF ground crew prepare bombs before loading them into a Stirling bomber (IWM)
17 Hamburg from the air, on the night of 24 July (IWM)
18 Streaks of flak over Hamburg (RAF Museum)
Section Two
19 A typical formation of B-17 Flying Fortresses, with German fighter aircraft above (US Air Force)
20 The lead crew of the USAAF’s 303rd Bomb Group before their mission to Hamburg on 25 July (Mighty Eighth Museum, Georgia)
21 American bombs fall on Howaldtswerke shipyards, 26 July (US Air Force)