On July 25 1943, following a 5-month air campaign against Germany’s industrial Ruhr district, the RAF began a 10-day series of air raids on Hamburg known as Operation Gomorrah.
Due to unusually hot and dry weather, the July 27 raid on the city’s working class districts produced a swirling vortex of superheated air that ignited a firestorm with temperatures reaching 800°C. Many civilians jumped into waterways; others were asphyxiated in bomb shelters as the firestorm consumed oxygen. Over 10 days, 42,600 citizens of Hamburg were killed and 37,000 injured in Operation Gomorrah.
__________________________
In May 2014, my wife and I visited Hamburg on a research trip for the book I am writing about the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942. Our visit to the St. Nikolai Church memorial museum beneath the bombed-out church was one of the most moving experiences I’ve had.
Lira Walter was here. Mother is alive. Father is dead.