Blue Connelly, a wireless operator with 57 Squadron RAF, had been christened Langton, but his red hair ensured he would never be known as anything but Blue. Born in Bangalow, on the New South Wales north coast, in 1925, Blue had helped his butter-maker father during the Depression before taking a job at the Murwillumbah Post Office, where he learned Morse Code. Called up in 1943, he wanted to be a pilot but when the RAAF heard him bragging that he could tap out twenty-six words a minute in Morse, his fate was sealed. Blue asked why he was to be wireless operator and was told, ‘Son, do you think we’re crazy? You’re already trained, so why would we bother to train somebody else?’
Arriving in England, Blue completed twenty-nine ops with 57 Squadron RAF. The final few months of the war were relatively ‘pleasant’, he recalled later—with one exception. ‘I wasn’t happy about Dresden. That fire, it made me resolve I didn’t want to go to hell when I die. It was bloody awful.’ To be in Dresden on the night of 13 February 1945, was indeed to experience hell on earth.
Over the previous four months, most of Bomber Command’s raids had been against industrial cities and railway hubs. However, during this period, American bombers had carried out sporadic daylight raids on Dresden’s outer industrial areas and marshalling yards, and a few weeks earlier more than 300 civilians died when a residential area was hit.
By December 1944, the bombers had hit eighty per cent of all German cities with prewar populations of more than 100,000. As the year ended, the German Army was retreating on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, but Hitler would not admit defeat. Pressing reasons existed for continuing with bombing in early 1945: the Germans were still hitting London and the prospect of victory, so seemingly close just a few months earlier, had receded sharply after the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s great winter offensive, in December 1944, in which 250,000 German troops caused more American casualties than in any other battle in Western Europe.
Early in 1945, the Allies began considering how they might aid the advancing Soviet Army by strategic bombing of Berlin and several other cities in eastern Germany. In the summer of 1944, the Air Ministry had discussed plans for a major offensive targeting these cities under the code name THUNDERCLAP, but shelved on 16 August. Now it was decided to go ahead with a more limited plan. Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, noted on 26 January 1945 that ‘a severe blitz will not only cause confusion in the evacuation from the East, but will also hamper the movement of troops from the West’.
On 27 January, Sir Norman Bottomley, Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, issued orders to Sir Arthur Harris to undertake attacks on Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz as soon as moon and weather conditions allowed, ‘with the particular object of exploiting the confused conditions which are likely to exist in the above mentioned cities during the successful Russian advance’. On the same day, Winston Churchill pressed the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, saying he had asked the day before ‘whether Berlin, and no doubt other large cities in east Germany, should not now be considered especially attractive targets. Pray report to me tomorrow what is to be done’. Sinclair replied that ‘available effort should be directed against Berlin, Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig or against other cities where severe bombing would not only destroy communications vital to the evacuation from the East, but would also hamper the movement of troops from the West’.
In the east, the Soviets were pushing the Germans westward. But the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had concluded that by March 1945 the Germans could reinforce their eastern front with up to forty-two divisions—or half a million men—from other fronts. That conclusion was backed up by ULTRA intelligence, gained from decrypting the Germans’ Enigma code. Hindering the reinforcement could aid the Soviet advance and shorten the war.
The inspiration for attacking Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz thus did not come from Harris but from the Air Ministry and the JIC. Keen to have something to tell the Soviets at the forthcoming Yalta conference with Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt on 4 February 1945, Churchill took a direct hand in the final planning and hurried the idea along. During the conference, the Soviets raised the issue of hampering the reinforcement of German troops from the western front by paralysing the junctions of Berlin and Leipzig with aerial bombardment. But they made no specific mention of Dresden. In response, the British drew up a list of objectives to be discussed with the Soviets, including oil plants, tank and aircraft factories, and the cities of Berlin and Dresden.
As head of Bomber Command, Harris was responsible for carrying out bombing operations but not formulating strategy. However, he and his colleagues questioned and double-checked the decision to attack Dresden, which the Americans were backing. Harris wrote in his autobiography that he knew ‘the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admitted that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself’—a pointed reference to Churchill.
But Harris was not the only one who thought this. Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, Harris’s deputy, who was directly responsible for the planning of the raid and was a supporter of the strategy of area bombing, had serious doubts about the Dresden raid from the beginning: ‘I was not in any way responsible for the decision to make a full-scale air attack on Dresden. Nor was my Commander-in-Chief, Sir Arthur Harris. Our part was to carry out, to the best of our ability, the instructions we received from the Air Ministry. And, in this case, the Air Ministry was merely passing on instructions received from those responsible for the higher direction of the war.’
Although the city had not previously been rated as a major target, the railway marshalling yards had been identified as a possible target three years earlier. An Air Ministry report on 27 February 1942 noted: ‘In view of the exploitation of Czech industry, damage to the railway here would cause considerable confusion to rail transit, apart from the probable destruction of goods being sorted in sidings.’ By early 1945 it had become a target because it was an administration, transportation and communication base for German armies on the southern part of the eastern front. Flying Officer Percy Rodda recalled that ‘According to intelligence reports available in 1945 and which I, as a special duties officer, had access to, Dresden was the centre of the German High Command’s communication base.’
On the surface, Dresden did not seem like a city that should be bombed. Unlike the industrial Ruhr valley, or the coal- and steel-rich Silesia, Dresden had no smokestack factories. Instead, its manufacturers specialised in precision work. In 1944 the German Army High Command’s Weapons Office listed 127 factories in Dresden that were making military equipment. Among these were Zeiss Ikon, Germany’s leading optical goods maker, which made bomb sights, and Radio-Mende, which produced radios, fuses and communications equipment. Other factories made aircraft components, poison gas, anti-aircraft guns and field guns, X-ray apparatus, gears and differentials, and electric gauges. As well, cigarette factories had turned their machinery over to rolling out bullets.
In February 1945, these enterprises were reported to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone. As the Dresden Stadt Museum today acknowledges, ‘Many Dresdeners participated—as soldiers or in the war industry—in the Second World War, and many local businesses profited from the exploitation of prisoners of war and forced labourers.’ Nonetheless, compared with military manufacturing centres such as Nuremberg or Essen, Dresden was well down the scale.
Besides the contribution it was making to Germany’s total war effort, Dresden was also a key rail hub, with lines running north– south to Berlin-Prague-Vienna as well as east–west to Munich-Breslau and Leipzig-Hamburg. By October 1944 twenty-eight military trains, carrying almost 20,000 officers and men, were passing through the city each day. Dresden was not only a German administrative, industrial and communications centre, by early 1945 it was near the front line—and increasingly prominent on the Allies’ radar.
The initial strikes against Dresden were to have been made by the US Eighth Air Force on 13 February, but these were called off because of poor weather and it was left to Bomber Command to open the campaign that night. In a statement to groups and squadrons outlining that night’s op, the Command made it clear that the raid would provide support for Soviet Marshal Ivan Koniev in his push towards Dresden.
Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester, is also the largest unbombed built-up area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first class importance, and like any large city with its multiplicity of telephone and rail facilities, is of major value for controlling the defence of that part of the front now threatened by Marshal Koniev’s breakthrough.
The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front, to prevent the use of the city in the way of further advance, and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.
The attack, by two waves of bombers, was intended to cause massive disruption by destroying as much of the city centre as possible. But because of the need to carry extra fuel for the long flight, bomb loads would be smaller than usual.
All the aircraft going in the first wave came from 5 Group, including fifteen from 463 Squadron and seventeen from 467 Squadron. Mid-upper gunner Brian Fallon was one of the airmen in 463 Squadron who read the message as he prepared for what would be the twenty-fourth op of his tour in Bomber Command. Brian, who had just turned twenty, came from Northbridge in Sydney and had enlisted two years earlier. He was now in pilot Don Huxtable’s crew. They carried one, 4000-pound Blockbuster and 5000 pounds of incendiaries when they joined 244 Lancasters and nine marker Mosquitos in the first wave of the attack.
Also on the battle order for that night was Gel McPherson, rear gunner with 186 Squadron RAF. He would be in the second wave.
At [the] briefing we were informed that Russian authorities had requested the raid because their offensive about 40 miles from Dresden was temporarily held up by German troop movements flowing through Dresden. We were also informed that precision instruments such as binoculars and bombsights etc. were manufactured in Dresden for the German Armed Forces. It was also announced that a diversionary raid would be made on Chemnitz, a city south west of Dresden.
Gel’s Lancaster was loaded with a Blockbuster and four cans of incendiaries. At 44 Squadron, Alick Roberts attended the specialist briefing for bomb aimers, where he was told that they would drop their Blockbuster from 30,000 feet. ‘We were briefed on how the aiming-point would be marked, and were told that each aircraft would run in on a pre-determined heading with a delayed release to be timed by the navigator. Obviously it was to be in our jargon a “Blitz”, the area bombing of a city,’ Alick recalled.
At the main briefing, the station commander announced that the op was to be a special one to a target beyond the normal range of operations, and that it was being mounted at the specific request of the USSR in support of their front line. Wall charts were uncovered and the target revealed as Dresden. ‘We were told the identities of three German army headquarters and four major supply organisations with their depots stated by the Russian authorities to be located in Dresden,’ Alick said.
After a pre-flight meal, the bomber force took off shortly before 1800 hours and, still cautious about night fighters despite the Luftwaffe’s weakened state, zig-zagged their way over France and Germany towards Dresden, intent on keeping the German defences guessing. Don Huxtable remembered that ‘We did not have much trouble.’ But the nervous strain was too much for the Canadian navigator in 467 Squadron pilot Bill Kynoch’s Lancaster. They were beyond the half-way point when he suddenly fell off his stool and blacked out on the floor. Thirty-year-old Bill, from Melbourne, had no option. He told his crew: ‘We’re going back, no point going on without an accurate fixing.’ To Bill, Dresden was ‘just another target, and that was it’.
With about twenty minutes to go, the bomber stream set course directly for Dresden. It had been a mild, pre-spring day and in the city’s streets, the Shrove Tuesday celebrations had wound down. At 2200 hours, the Pathfinders began marking, dropping green flares to define the city centre, followed by 1000 white magnesium flares to illuminate the ground. Red flares were then dropped to mark the aiming point, a football stadium just west of the Elbe river.
As he approached, Alick Roberts saw that the outskirts of the city were clearly visible in the light of perhaps 100 parachute flares. Alick noted that the first wave’s timing was impeccable.
We had a copybook bombing approach with only light opposition. After release, checking bomb bay clear and calling ‘bomb doors closed’ it was my duty on the run out to keep a watch for other aircraft as well as observing the target area. There was the usual pattern of cookies exploding within an increasing perimeter, followed by the development of a swathe of twinkling white lights across the area of each explosion as the incendiaries ignited. We soon lost sight of the target as we headed for our western-most turning point, from where we clearly saw artillery explosions along a portion of the Eastern Front.
The first Blockbuster ‘cookies’ fell just after 2200 hours. From his vantage point, flying on a lower course than Alick Roberts, Brian Fallon noted that the markers were accurate. Dropping the bombs ‘resulted in a horrific firestorm’. In fifteen minutes, the first wave dropped 881 tons of bombs, of which almost 380 tons were incendiaries. Their task was made easier by the lack of anti-aircraft guns, most of which had been moved to the eastern front.
Three hours later, as firefighters struggled to control the fires from the first attack, 1 and 3 Groups hit the city even harder with bombs from 529 Lancasters, twenty-four of which came from 460 Squadron. Sitting in the rear turret of his 186 Squadron Lancaster, Gel McPherson looked down on Dresden and saw a mass of flames. ‘At this point I was mostly concerned that if German night fighters were above us, they could easily spot us with the fires below. There didn’t appear to be much flak over the target.’ His bomber had dropped one Blockbuster and four cans of incendiaries. The second wave dropped more than 1800 tons of bombs with great accuracy.
On the streets below, a disaster was unfolding. City leaders had failed to prepare Dresden for an attack, lulling the population into a false confidence that this city of fine architecture and art would be spared. Ironically, while Dresden produced anti-aircraft guns, it had almost none for its own defence, and few effective air-raid shelters except those reserved for the city’s Nazi hierarchy. In 1940, Dresden had been omitted from a government list of eighty-one cities and towns ordered to begin building bomb-proof shelters. Its preparations consisted almost exclusively of air-raid drills and the outfitting of cellars and basements as shelters. So basic were the precautions that Dresdeners were merely encouraged to keep buckets of sand and water at hand to deal with fires.
When the bombers arrived, thousands of civilians trooped into their underground shelters only to be buried alive, suffocated to death or poisoned as the raging firestorms sucked oxygen from the air and produced deadly carbon monoxide. Old timber buildings were quickly consumed in the spreading bonfires. There was mass panic.
Dresden’s agony did not end with Bomber Command returning home. The next day, which aptly happened to be Ash Wednesday, the USAAF sent 310 Flying Fortresses to shower another 750 tons of bombs through the vast pall of smoke still rising to 15,000 feet above Dresden. Melbourne-born bomb aimer Jack Rose, a flying officer in 15 Squadron RAF, had been in the last Lancaster through Dresden. When he rose from bed at midday on Wednesday, he heard the news of the American bombing. ‘We just looked at each other and said, “What for?”’
The bombing devastated thirty-four square kilometres of Dresden and obliterated its factories, stores and rail facilities. A month later, on 15 March, a final Dresden police report sent to the chief of police in Berlin estimated the death toll as at 10 March at 18,375, with 2212 seriously injured and 350,000 homeless. Shortly after, the death toll was revised to 20,204, with a predicted death toll of up to 25,000. Josef Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry multiplied this figure by ten and released to the press via German embassies in neutral countries the total of 202,040.
Accusing the Allies of abandoning strategic bombing for terror tactics, the reaction was just as Goebbels wanted. Years later, even the American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr, in his novel Slaughterhouse– Five, perpetrated a figure of 135,000 dead—a figure he drew from the discredited historian, David Irving. The Dresden Commission of Historians concluded in 2010 after a five-year study that the original figures were essentially correct: between 18,000 and 25,000 people had been killed. By then, however, the Nazi figures had taken hold in popular consciousness, making Dresden a symbol of area bombing’s horrendous destructive power.