NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Operation Gomorrah

Operation Gomorrah was the military codename for a series of air raids conducted by the Royal Air Force on the city of Hamburg beginning in the end of July 1943. It was at the time the heaviest assault in the history of aerial warfare and was later called the Hiroshima of Germany by British officials. Firestorm due to the Bombing of hamburg in WW2 Source: [www. ... Firestorm due to the Bombing of hamburg in WW2 Source: [www. ... A code name or cryptonym is a word or name used clandestinely to refer to another name or word. ... The Royal Air Force (often abbreviated to RAF) is the air force branch of the UK Armed Forces. ... Position of Hamburg in Germany Hamburgs central broadway Jungfernstieg at the Alster lake, between 1900 and 1914 This article is about the city in Germany. ... July is the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... 1943 is a common year starting on Friday. ... Aerial warfare can be documented back as far as the American Civil War with the use of hot-air and lighter than air gas balloons used for artillery observation and reconnaisance, and exemplified in the extreme by the WW2 German raid on Rotterdam in the Netherlands in May of 1940...

The operation was originally formulated by British Air Marshal Arthur Travers Harris ("They have sowed the wild wind and shall now reap the whirlwind") and was actually a joint effort between the RAF Bomber Command and the United States Army Air Force (specifically 8th Air Force Bomber Command), who combined to create an "around-the-clock" bombing mission spanning 8 days and 4 nights--the Americans conducting the daylight raids with the British following after nightfall. Harris signed the order for the operation "Bomber Command Order No. 173" on May 27th. Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet (April 13, 1892 - April 5, 1984), commonly known as Bomber Harris, and often within the RAF as Butcher Harris[1], was commander of RAF Bomber Command and later a Marshal of the Royal Air Force during the latter half of World War II. In... RAF Bomber Command was the organisation that controlled the RAFs bomber forces. ... The United States Army Air Forces, or USAAF, was a part of the U.S. military during World War II. The direct precursor to the U.S. Air Force, the USAAF formally existed between 1941 and 1947. ... The Eighth Air Force was a World War II, United States Army Air Force unit, which carried out day-time bombing operations in western Europe from airfields in eastern England from 1942. ...

The operation was conducted almost a month later. On July 24th, at approximately 00:57AM, the first bombing started by the RAF and lasted almost an hour. A second daylight raid by US Air Force was conducted at 2:40PM. A third raid was conducted on the morning of the 26th. The night attack of July 26th at 00:20AM was extremely light (due to a severe thunderstorm and high winds over the North Sea during which a considerable number of bombers jettisoned the explosive part of their bomb loads) with only two bomb drops reported. That attack is often not counted when the total number of Operation Gomorrah attacks is given. There was no day raid on the 27th. The North Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, located between the coasts of Norway and Denmark in the east, the coast of the British Isles in the west, and the German, Dutch, Belgian and French coasts in the south. ...

On the night of July 27th, shortly before midnight, 739 aircraft attacked Hamburg. Owing to unusually warm weather, along with the deliberate planning of the raids (which trapped the city's firefighters in the bombed-out center of the city by following-up with incendiary bombing of the periphery), the bombings culminated in the spawning of the so-called "Feuersturm" (firestorm). Quite literally a tornado of fire, this phenomenon created a huge outdoor blast furnace, containing winds of up to 150 mph (240 km/h) and reaching temperatures of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius). It caused street asphalt to burst into flame, cooked people to death in air-raid shelters, sucked pedestrians off the sidewalks like leaves into a vacuum cleaner and incinerated some eight square miles (21 km²) of the city. Most of the casulties (40,000) of Operation Gomorrah were suffered this night. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (800x742, 276 KB)Lancaster over Hamburg. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (800x742, 276 KB)Lancaster over Hamburg. ... This is an article about a specific circumstance of combustion. ...

On the night of July 29, Hamburg was again attacked by over 700 aircraft. The last raid of Operation Gomorrah was conducted on August 3rd. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (798x601, 352 KB)Burned-out buildings in Hamburg - picture possibly taken sometime in 1944 or 45 Imperial War Museum - picture scanned by me Ian Dunster from: The Battle Of Hamburg by Martin Middlebrook - Cassell - 2000 - ISBN 0-304-35345-0 and... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (798x601, 352 KB)Burned-out buildings in Hamburg - picture possibly taken sometime in 1944 or 45 Imperial War Museum - picture scanned by me Ian Dunster from: The Battle Of Hamburg by Martin Middlebrook - Cassell - 2000 - ISBN 0-304-35345-0 and...

Operation Gomorrah caused at least 50,000 deaths and left over a million German civilians homeless. Approximately 3,000 aircraft were deployed, 9,000 tons of bombs dropped, and 250,000 houses destroyed. Hamburg was hit by air raids another 69 times before the end of World War II. Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air. ...

The British Bomber Command lost 12 bomber the first day of the attack, on the whole 440 with the top of this city during the war.

Download high resolution version (1024x1024, 83 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Bombing of Hamburg. ...

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The U.S. bombing of Tokyo during World War II took place between 1942 and 1945. ... The Bombing of Warsaw in World War II refers both to the terror bombing campaign by Luftwaffe during the September Campaign and to the German bombing raids on Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising. ...

Categories: World War II strategic bombing | Hamburg The Royal Air Force (often abbreviated to RAF) is the air force branch of the UK Armed Forces. ... Strategic Bombing during World War II was unlike anything the world had previously witnessed. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air. ... RAF Bomber Command was the organisation that controlled the RAFs bomber forces. ... Bomber Command is an organizational military unit, generally subordinate to the air force of a country. ... Strategic bombing is a military strategem used in a total war style campaign that attempts to destroy the economic ability of a nation-state to wage war. ... The aerial bombing of cities became a common tactic in World War II. World War I The first ever aerial bombardment of civilians was on January 19, 1915, in which two German Zeppelins dropped 24 fifty-kilogram high-explosive bombs and ineffective three-kilogram incendiaries on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Kings... Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso (then Sir Archibald Sinclair) (October 22, 1890-June 15, 1970) was leader of the UK Liberal Party from 1935 until 1945. ... RAF Air Chief Marshal Charles Portal (left) and Polish Commander in Chief Władysław Sikorski (right) visit an airbase of the 300th Polish Bomber Squadron in England. ... Air Chief Marshal Sir Norman Bottomley KCB CIE DSO AFC ( September 18, 1891 - August 13, 1970) was the Yorkshire-born successor to Arthur Bomber Harris as Commander-in-Chief of Royal Air Force Bomber Command in 1945. ... Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet (April 13, 1892 - April 5, 1984), commonly known as Bomber Harris, and often within the RAF as Butcher Harris[1], was commander of RAF Bomber Command and later a Marshal of the Royal Air Force during the latter half of World War II. In... Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder (July 11, 1890 - June 3, 1967) was a signficant British Marshal of the Royal Air Force. ... Professor Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell (April 5, 1886 - July 3, 1957) was a physicist who became an influential scientific adviser to the British government and a close associate of Winston Churchill. ... The term Battle of Berlin is sometimes restricted to the Royal Air Force for a bombing campaign on Berlin between November 1943 and March 1944. ... View from the city hall tower, which remained standing. ... Firestorm in Hamburg Operation Gomorrah was the military codename for a series of air raids conducted by the Royal Air Force on the city of Hamburg beginning in the end of July 1943. ... The city of Kassel in Germany was severely bombed during World War II. Kassel is in the northern part of the federal state of Hesse, between Frankfurt (190 km south), and Hanover (160 km north). ... The Bristol Type 142 Blenheim was a high-speed light bomber used extensively in the early days of World War II, built by Bristol Aeroplane Company. ... Halifax W1057 ZA-X of No. ... The Handley Page HP.52 Hampden was a twin-engine medium bomber of the Royal Air Force that was one of the main front-line bombers at the start of World War II. Along with the Whitley and Wellington bombers, the Hampden bore the brunt of the early bombing war... The Avro Lancaster was a four-engined World War II bomber aircraft made initially by Avro for the Royal Air Force. ... The de Havilland Mosquito (the wooden wonder) was a military aircraft that excelled in a number of roles during World War II. It was a twin engine aircraft with the pilot and navigator sitting side-by-side. ... The Stirling was a World War II heavy bomber design built by Short Brothers. ... The Vickers Wellesley was a 1930s light bomber built by Vickers for the Royal Air Force. ... The Vickers Wellington was a twin-engine, medium bomber designed in the mid-1930s at Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey, by Vickers-Armstrongs Chief Designer, R.K. Pierson. ... The Armstrong Whitworth A.W.38 Whitley was one of three twin-engine, front-line medium bombers in service with the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of World War II. Along with the Handley Page Hampden and the Vickers Wellington, it bore the brunt of the early fighting, seeing... Window was the WWII UK codename for a system called chaff, intended to confuse German radar. ... The H2S radar was used in bombers of RAF Bomber Command, it was designed to identify targets on the ground for night and all weather bombing. ... GEE was a British radio navigation system used during World War II. It used a series of broadcasters sending out precicely timed signals, and the aircraft using GEE, Bomber Commands heavy bombers, examined the time of arrival on an osciloscope at the navigators station. ... For the musical instrument of the woodwind family see Oboe Oboe was based on radio transponder technology. ... G-H was a radio navigation system developed by Britain during World War II to aid RAF Bomber Command. ... Monica was a range-only tail warning radar for bombers, introduced by the RAF in June 1943. ... The United States Army Air Forces, or USAAF, was a part of the U.S. military during World War II. The direct precursor to the U.S. Air Force, the USAAF formally existed between 1941 and 1947. ... The Luftwaffe (literally, air weapon, pronounced looft-vaaf-feh) is the air force of Germany. ...

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