Navigation to the target over a blacked-out wartime landscape was extremely poor, as was bombing accuracy if the target city (let alone the actual military target) could be found. Initially, only military targets were attacked. RAF Bomber Command had made raids on Germany from the early days of World War II. The name Gomorrah comes from that of one of the two Canaanite cities of Sodom and Gomorrah whose destruction is recorded in the Bible: "Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens."īackground Political and military pressure The raids inflicted severe damage to German armaments production in Hamburg. An early form of chaff, code named 'Window', was successfully used for the first time by the RAF – clouds of aluminium foil strips dropped by Pathfinders as well as the initial bomber stream – in order to completely cloud German radar. Various other previously used techniques and devices were instrumental as well, such as area bombing, Pathfinders, and H2S radar, which came together to work with particular effectiveness. ![]() The unusually warm weather and good conditions ensured that the bombing was highly concentrated around the intended targets, and helped the resulting conflagration create a vortex and whirling updraft of super-heated air which became a 460-metre-high (1,510 ft) tornado of fire. Before the development of the firestorm in Hamburg, there had been no rain for some time and everything was very dry. Careful research was done on behalf of both the RAF and USAAF to discover the optimum mix of high explosives and incendiaries. Hamburg also contained a high number of targets supporting the German war effort and was relatively easy for navigators to find. ![]() Hamburg was selected as a target because it was considered particularly susceptible to attack with incendiaries, which, from the experience of the Blitz, were known to inflict more damage than just high explosive bombs. Īs part of a sustained campaign of strategic bombing during World War II, the attack during the last week of July 1943, code named Operation Gomorrah, created one of the largest firestorms raised by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces in World War II, killing an estimated 37,000 people in Hamburg (and wounding 180,000 more), and destroying 60% of the city's houses. As a large city and industrial centre, Hamburg's shipyards, U-boat pens, and the Hamburg-Harburg area oil refineries were attacked throughout the war. The Allied bombing of Hamburg during World War II included numerous attacks on civilians and civic infrastructure.
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