Nuremberg 30-31 Mar 44
Eighty years ago tonight, at 2116 on 30 Mar 44, Lancaster JB736 piloted by Fg Off Guy Johnston of 103 Sqn based at RAF Elsham Wolds took off to fly a short air test before setting course for Nuremberg. Between then, and 0725 on 31 Mar 44 when WO Bill McGown crash landed his Lancaster in a Hertfordshire field some 96 bombers out of the 795 dispatched had been shot down, and another 10 had been written off in crashes. In human terms this amounted to approximately 545 aircrew killed, and around another 160 taken prisoner.
This was the greatest single-night loss in Bomber Command’s long war.
Nuremberg marked the nadir of Bomber Command’s fortunes in the first half of 1944, and although certainly the lowest point of a period of particularly heavy losses, unfortunately it wasn't alone: on 19-20 Feb 44 78 bombers out of 823 dispatched to Leipzig failed to return; on 24-25 Mar 44 (‘The Night of the Big Wind’) 72 out of 811 bombers sent to Berlin failed to return; and on 3-4 May 44, on a raid to a supposed ‘soft’ target, the Panzer depot of Mailly-le-Camp in France, 42 Lancasters out of 346 attacking the target were shot down – some 11.6% of the force.
To survive a tour of Ops in Bomber Command at this period of the war you had to be incredibly fortunate, or blessed - skill and experience may have played some small part, but a crew on their final op of a first (or even second) tour could get the ‘chop’ equally as well as a youngsters on their first.
In the immortal words of Laurence Binyon ‘We will remember them’.
For completion - all of WO McGown’s crew survived the crash landing, but Fg Off Johnston and five of his crew were killed when their Lanc was shot down by flak near Westerburg en route to the target.
PS…Mods if you this this is better suited in ‘History and Nostalgia’ then please move it. But given the significance of the date in the annals of RAF history, I think that it would get much more footfall in the ‘Military Aviation’ pages.