The Baedeker BliTz13
LUCKY ESCAPE: Much of the historic city of Bath survived to tell the tale returned to rain down terror and more than 70 people were killed.
The previously unscathed city of Bath, famed for its Roman remains and elegant Georgian terraces, was next to come within the sights of the German bombers. At 11pm on April 25 three waves of aircraft, numbering about 80 Dornier 17 and Junkers 88s, dropped 400 high explosives and 4,000 incendiaries on the city.
In a pattern that would be repeated in the other raids the planes also flew low to indiscriminately strafe civilians with machine gun fire. Actress Helen Shingler would later recall: “Bullets were flying past me, making a strange whistling sound.”
A direct hit on an air-raid shelter near the Scala cinema killed at least 20 people and by the end of the raids on Bath a total of 417 people – including women and children as young as one – were dead. Another 1,000 were injured.
Over 19,000 buildings were damaged, with the city’s iconic Assembly Rooms left gutted. The trail of destruction would continue that Monday as a series of raids with 500-kilo bombs began on the city of Norwich.
THEY would go on until June and leave more than 200 people dead. Yet somehow the magnificent Norman cathedral survived the onslaught with only minor damage. And when the city’s leading department store Bond’s was damaged the owner reopened within days selling what could be salvaged from the ruins in the car park. He even opened a restaurant for customers in a corrugated iron building.
The focus switched to the ancient city of York on April 29 when 94 people were left dead in a two-hour attack. While the 500-year-old Guildhall was destroyed, the city’s famous minster was left standing.
In the early hours of May 4, Exeter was hit again. Targeting the cathedral the German aircraft rained down 10,000 incendiaries and 75 tons of high explosive bombs on the city in just over an hour. Fires broke out all over the city and, fanned by strong winds, it was said the glow could be seen 30 miles away. A police officer recalled: “The raid consisted of a violent attack on the city with concentration on the shopping centre.”
Again planes came in low to machine-gun firefighters and rescue workers. This time 163 people would be killed and 600 injured with over 4,200 buildings wrecked.
About 30 acres of the city had been obliterated, including the library with a million documents and books destroyed. A chapel of the medieval cathedral was damaged but the main structure narrowly escaped.
One of the German pilots, Ernst von Kugel, would later admit: “It was a night of terror for the Exeter people… people were running everywhere and firemen were frantically trying to deal with the flames.” The next day a German radio broadcast declared: “Exeter is the jewel of the west; we have destroyed that jewel and we will return to finish the job.”
They never did and much of historic the war.
On June 1, 1942, a raid on Canterbury in Kent began involving 130 high explosive bombs. It was one of three sorties that would leave 48 dead and destroy a fifth of the old city including the Corn Exchange and City Market. But once more the German bombers managed to miss the 800-year-old cathedral.
aExeter actually survived LTHOUGH more minor raids would continue until 1944, the Baedeker raids were soon called off having proved futile. The Luftwaffe had been unable to throw the numbers of bombers into action needed to cause overwhelming destruction – and their losses were becoming unsustainable with the increasing effectiveness of Britain’s radar and night fighter defences. In total the raids left 1,637 Britons dead and 50,000 homes destroyed.
Yet compared to the 41,000 death toll of the earlier Blitz, casualties had been relatively minor. The bombing had failed to flatten Tuesday April 18 2017 significant landmarks such as the cathedrals, while the historic heart of most of the locations in the firing line remained intact. In the case of Bath, for example, historian Barry Cunliffe observed: “Given the scope for large-scale devastation the escape of so much of Georgian Bath was remarkable.”
Just as in 1940 when the cry had been “Britain can take it” the Baedeker raids had also shown little sign of denting British morale as the Nazi leadership had hoped.
They had also thought that the Baedeker raids might deter the RAF from attacking German cities. In fact they had merely shown up the weaknesses of the Luftwaffe.
Arthur “Bomber” Harris would step up the campaign on Germany with devastating RAF raids, involving hundreds of aircraft on the cities of Cologne and later Hamburg and Dresden.
As Harris put it the Nazis had “sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind”. He urged the crews of his Wellington bombers to let the enemy have it, “right on the chin”.