At 17,000 feet, a night fighter attacked the Sgt. R. Lewis-piloted Halifax II of 77 Squadron (KN-D, JB837), which thereafter blew up in a tremendous explosion
The Battle of the Ruhr, the first concentrated bombing operation carried out by the RAF Bomber Command between March and July 1943, had as its sole objective the total destruction of the German war machine’s industrial base.
The Battle of the Ruhr proved to be far larger and much more complicated than the infamous “Dambusters” single-raid attack on the Ruhr dams, which frequently overshadowed it. The enormous, industrial Ruhr region was home to numerous war-related enterprises, including steelworks and synthetic oil factories, in addition to some of the most well-known and significant arms manufacturers, such as Krupp of Essen.
The Ruhr was one of the areas in Europe that was most fiercely protected because it was such a desirable target. The picture in this post, which was taken from the Richard Worrall and Graham Turner book The Ruhr 1943, shows an event that happens after a British airstrike.
The 77 Squadron Halifax II (KN-D, JB837), piloted by Sgt. R. Lewis, was attacked by a night fighter at 17,000 feet and blew up in an enormous explosion on May 25 and 26, after several British aircraft had finished bombing Düsseldorf and were leaving the target area in search of Jülich near the Dutch-German border.
The massive explosion took down two nearby Stirling IIIs, one from 7 Squadron (MG-B, EF361) flown by P/O J.E.G.F. Berthiaume (RCAF), and the other from 15 Squadron (LS-L, BF534) flown by F/O I.S. Thomson (RCAF), whose Stirling III’s tail was completely severed. Six of the 18 fatalities were from the Royal Canadian Air Force, and there were no survivors.
Three of the 27 aircraft lost during this operation—which finally failed because the Pathfinders discovered layer cloud had obstructed the aiming point—were those three. Only a few scattered fires broke out in Düsseldorf and the neighbouring town of Neuss due to the inaccurate marking.
The Ruhr 1943 is published by Osprey Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by Graham Turner via Osprey
