Shortly after 9pm on 21st April 1943, as dusk fell, Aberdeen experienced its worst bombing raid of World War II. About 30 Luftwaffe Dornier 217E aircraft, each carrying over two tons of bombs each hit the Woodside, Hilton, Kittybrewster and George Street areas of the city. In a raid lasting only an hour, a mixture of 129 incendiary, high explosive and cluster bombs was dropped, and the streets were straffed with cannon and machine gun fire. A total of 9668 homes were hit killing 98 civilians and 27 servicemen at Gordon Barracks. 93 people were seriously and 139 less injured.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/8485102.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8485420.stm
http://www.mcjazz.f2s.com/Blitzkreig.htm
A German paper actually recorded the raid with the headline “So Griffen wir Aberdeen An”. "So handles we to Aberdeen" (So we hand it out to Aberdeen?)
Aberdeen had two disadvantages during the war. Most of the buildings were made of the Aberdeen granite which meant these buildings gleamed on a clear moonlight starry night and so were an easy target for the German bombers. The second disadvantage was, in common with a lot of north-east coastal towns, their simple convenience: German planes would off-load any spare armaments on return from elsewhere in the UK before they headed out over the North Sea. As a result, Aberdeen was on the receiving end of more than its fair share of raids from the Luftwaffe and earned its gruesome war-time nickname of "Siren City", one of the most frequently bombed cities in the UK.
Between 1939 and 1945 there were:
· 32 attacks by the Luftwaffe
· 364 Air Raid Warnings
· 7 Raids without warning
· 265 high explosive bombs dropped (250-500kg)
· 100 incendiaries dropped
· 78 houses completely destroyed
· 117 houses irreparably damaged
· 828 houses badly damaged by repairable
· 12,175 houses sustainaing some "slight" damage
There were also lots of unexploded bombs maybe because so many were dropped very low and did not correctly fuse. One commentator noted that often "houses were not too badly damaged, even by near misses, as they were made of good Aberdeen granite".
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