Выбрать главу

Inferno

Inferno

The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943

KEITH LOWE

VIKING

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

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