David Watson
11-22-2009, 04:50 PM
Being a newbie, I hope I’m posting this in the right place and not committing any cardinal offences against LWAG etiquette. My interest is in pinning down what has proved to be an elusive detail about the Luftwaffe’s raid on London on December 29th/30th, 1940.
Most sources that I have seen, which include The Blitz: Then and Now, Ken Wakefield’s history of Kampfgruppe 100, Ulf Balke’s history of Kampfgeschwader 100, and the accounts by M.J. Gaskin and David Johnson of the December 29th raid, indicate that the City of London was the designated target and that most of the pathfinder force’s target-marker incendiaries were dropped with considerable accuracy. The elderly, but respected Air Ministry history, The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force 1933-1945, however, tells (p. 95) the following, very different, story:
“The year 1940 closed with a sharp attack on London in the evening of December 29th. The raid was called off by the Germans some two hours after its commencement owing to a deterioration in weather conditions; nevertheless, in this short attack the main part of the City area of London was destroyed by fire. It is interesting to note that, contrary to a common belief, this raid was not a premeditated attempt on the part of Goering to destroy the City of London by fire – no order to that effect appears in the German Staff documents covering that period – but was to be merely another routine night raid on London. That evening, the ‘X’ beam was, in fact, directed on London as an aid to navigation by KG. [sic – should be KGr.] 100, the pathfinder force, but the line of the beam was actually laid in a S.E.-N.W. direction over the Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road. A fresh south-west wind was blowing at the time and the pathfinders, evidently giving insufficient allowance for this wind, placed the first incendiary marker-bombs about a mile to the East and immediately to the North-West of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The aircraft of the main bomber force, seeing the resultant fires, contributed their loads of H.E. and incendiary bombs without further question. Thus, was the City of London burned.”
I have not seen any other source which explicitly confirms or denies this version, although E.R. Hooton’s generally well researched Eagle in Flames does record (p. 36) that “unexpected high winds blew incendiaries into the publishing area to create the ‘Second Great Fire of London’.” The most detailed description of the actual dropping of the incendiaries that I have seen – besides that in the Air Ministry history – is David Johnson’s in The City Ablaze. He maintains (p. 78) that Kampfgruppe 100’s CO, Hauptmann Aschenbrenner, dropped his incendiaries 1,000 yards too far to the south, in Southwark, but goes on to say (p. 82) that “most of the other crews managed to put their bombs right on target, with a little luck and the help of a slight north-easterly wind.” The histories by Balke and Wakefield, which I had hoped might provide the most authoritative detail, proved disappointingly vague. Balke even maintains (p. 64) that the attack was directed against London’s “industrial district”!
Does anybody have any further information on this question, or know of a source which is likely to provide it? I am inclined to suppose that the Air Ministry historian must have been mistaken, but his account was based on captured German documentation, and the detail about the placing of the beam is so specifically circumstantial as to leave me in some doubt.
Most sources that I have seen, which include The Blitz: Then and Now, Ken Wakefield’s history of Kampfgruppe 100, Ulf Balke’s history of Kampfgeschwader 100, and the accounts by M.J. Gaskin and David Johnson of the December 29th raid, indicate that the City of London was the designated target and that most of the pathfinder force’s target-marker incendiaries were dropped with considerable accuracy. The elderly, but respected Air Ministry history, The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force 1933-1945, however, tells (p. 95) the following, very different, story:
“The year 1940 closed with a sharp attack on London in the evening of December 29th. The raid was called off by the Germans some two hours after its commencement owing to a deterioration in weather conditions; nevertheless, in this short attack the main part of the City area of London was destroyed by fire. It is interesting to note that, contrary to a common belief, this raid was not a premeditated attempt on the part of Goering to destroy the City of London by fire – no order to that effect appears in the German Staff documents covering that period – but was to be merely another routine night raid on London. That evening, the ‘X’ beam was, in fact, directed on London as an aid to navigation by KG. [sic – should be KGr.] 100, the pathfinder force, but the line of the beam was actually laid in a S.E.-N.W. direction over the Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road. A fresh south-west wind was blowing at the time and the pathfinders, evidently giving insufficient allowance for this wind, placed the first incendiary marker-bombs about a mile to the East and immediately to the North-West of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The aircraft of the main bomber force, seeing the resultant fires, contributed their loads of H.E. and incendiary bombs without further question. Thus, was the City of London burned.”
I have not seen any other source which explicitly confirms or denies this version, although E.R. Hooton’s generally well researched Eagle in Flames does record (p. 36) that “unexpected high winds blew incendiaries into the publishing area to create the ‘Second Great Fire of London’.” The most detailed description of the actual dropping of the incendiaries that I have seen – besides that in the Air Ministry history – is David Johnson’s in The City Ablaze. He maintains (p. 78) that Kampfgruppe 100’s CO, Hauptmann Aschenbrenner, dropped his incendiaries 1,000 yards too far to the south, in Southwark, but goes on to say (p. 82) that “most of the other crews managed to put their bombs right on target, with a little luck and the help of a slight north-easterly wind.” The histories by Balke and Wakefield, which I had hoped might provide the most authoritative detail, proved disappointingly vague. Balke even maintains (p. 64) that the attack was directed against London’s “industrial district”!
Does anybody have any further information on this question, or know of a source which is likely to provide it? I am inclined to suppose that the Air Ministry historian must have been mistaken, but his account was based on captured German documentation, and the detail about the placing of the beam is so specifically circumstantial as to leave me in some doubt.