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Cologne is an important German city on the Rhine. It was therefore a major target of the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. In the spring of 1942 Air Marshall Arthur Harris, head of Bomber Command, decided to launch the first thousand bomber raid on Cologne. Given the code-name Operation Millenium, Harris used every serviceable aircraft available to the RAF for the attack.

On 30th May, 1942, 1,047 bombers attacked the city in a concentrated bombardment lasting around two hours. After the attack reconnaissance after the attack showed that 600 acres of Cologne had been destroyed by the raid.

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(1) Arthur Harris, Bomber Command (1947)

We made our preparations for the thousand bomber attack during May; it had the code word "Millenium".

The organization of the force involved a tremendous amount of work throughout the Command. The training units put up 366 aircraft. No. 3 Group, with its conversion units put up about 250 aircraft, which was at that time regarded as a strong force in itself. Apart from four aircraft of Flying Training Command, the whole force of 1047 aircraft was provided by Bomber Command.

The moon was full on the night of May 30th and that morning we were promised good weather over the home bases. On the other hand thundery cloud was known to cover much of Germany; the weather often helped the enemy throughout the war, and at this time it was much to his advantage that the winds which brought good weather over our bases tended to produce cloud over Germany. If I sent the force that night, the target might be cloud-covered, and the whole operation reduced to naught and our plan disclosed. From among a number of suitable targets only Cologne was at all likely to have reasonably good weather during the night, and there was no certainty about the weather over Cologne. I chose Cologne and dispatched the force.

Nearly 900 aircraft attacked out of the total of 1047, and within an hour and a half dropped 1455 tons of bombs, two-thirds of the whole load being incendiaries. The casualty rate was 3.3 per cent, with 39 aircraft missing, and, in spite of the fact that a large part of the force consisted of semi-trained crews and that many more fighters were airborne than usual, this was considerably less than the average 4.6 per cent for operations in similar weather during the previous twelve months. The medium bomber had a casualty rate of 4.5 per cent, which was remarkable, but it was still more remarkable that we lost scarcely any of the 300 heavy bombers that took part in this operation; the casualty rate for the heavies was only 1.9 per cent. These had attacked after the medium bombers, when the defences had been to some extent beaten down, and in greater concentration than was possible for the new crews in the medium bombers.

The figures proved conclusively that the enemy's fighters and flak had been effectively saturated; an analysis of all reports on the attack showed that the enemy's radar location devices had been able to pick up single aircraft and follow them throughout the attack, but that the guns had been unable to engage more than a small proportion of the large concentration of aircraft.

Reconnaissance after the attack showed that 600 acres of Cologne had been devastated and this in turn conclusively proved that the passive defences of Cologne had been saturated In just the same way as its guns and searchlights had been, together with the air defence of the whole of Western Germany, by concentration of attack. The damage had increased out of all proportion to the increase of bomb tonnage.

(2) Ralph Barker, The Thousand Plan (1957)

'Cologne,' said the briefing officer at one station, 'is one of the most heavily defended cities in Germany, and one of the most important. In and around Cologne are more than five hundred heavy and light anti-aircraft guns and about a hundred and fifty searchlights, which work in close co-ordination with the gunners. But with this very large force, the belief is that all ground defences will be saturated and overwhelmed. The same should apply to night-fighters. Your track will take you close to several night-fighter stations, but intruder aircraft from Fighter and. Army Co-operation Commands and 2 Group will be attacking these stations before and during the raid. Even so, look out for night-fighters. Tail gunners, be careful what you fire at. There will be a large number of friendly aircraft over Cologne. Don't mistake our own twin-engined bombers for Ju 88s.

The key to the success of this raid is saturation, which itself depends on getting these thousand aircraft over the target in the shortest feasible time-spread. Tonight's attack is to be concentrated 'into ninety minutes. This means accurate timing, not only for the saturation of defences but to avoid collision. Exact heights are just as important. Follow your briefed timings and course. If you don't, this raid instead of being the costliest in history for the enemy, could be the costliest in history for us.

(3) Group Captain Dudley Saward wrote about the Cologne raid in the book, The Bomber's Eye (1959)

By 24th July the stage was set. By nine-thirty on that morning Hamburg was doomed, and the operation, which went by the ominous code name of 'Gomorrah', was about to begin. As the last hours of that day were running out, a force of seven hundred and forty Lancasters and Halifaxes were nosing their way through the darkness across the North Sea in an easterly direction. Navigators were busily checking their position at regular intervals with Gee, maintaining with absolute accuracy their exact and pre-determined route to the target. Pilots were implicitly following the instructions of their navigators in the full knowledge that these emanated from accurate scientific devices which were fundamentally incapable of giving anything but the correct answer.

(4) George Orwell, BBC radio broadcast (6th June 1942)

On two days of this week, two air raids, far greater in scale than anything yet seen in the history of the world, have been made on Germany. On the night of the 30th May over a thousand planes raided Cologne, and on the night of the 1st June, over a thousand planes raided Essen, in the Ruhr district. These have since been followed up by two further raids, also on a big scale, though not quite so big as the first two. To realise the significance of these figures, one has got to remember the scale of the air raids made hitherto. During the autumn and winter of 1940, Britain suffered a long series of raids which at that time were quite unprecedented. Tremendous havoc was worked on London, Coventry, Bristol and various other English cities. Nevertheless, there is no reason to think that in even the biggest of these raids more than 500 planes took part. In addition, the big bombers now being used by the RAF carry a far heavier load of bombs than anything that could be managed two years ago. In sum, the amount of bombs dropped on either Cologne or Essen would be quite three times as much as the Germans ever dropped in any one of their heaviest raids on Britain. (Censored: We in this country know what destruction those raids accomplished and have therefore some picture of what has happened in Germany.) Two days after the Cologne raid, the British reconnaissance planes were sent over as usual to take photographs of the damage which the bombers had done, but even after that period, were unable to get any photographs because of the pall of smoke which still hung over the city. It should be noticed that these 1000-plane raids were carried out solely by the RAF with planes manufactured in Britain. Later in the year, when the American airforce begins to take a hand, it is believed that it will be possible to carry out raids with as many as 2,000 planes at a time. One German city after another will be attacked in this manner. These attacks, however, are not wanton and are not delivered against the civilian population, although non-combatants are inevitably killed in them.

Cologne was attacked because it is a great railway junction in which the main German railroads cross each other and also an important manufacturing centre. Essen was attacked because it is the centre of the German armaments industry and contains the huge factories of Krupp, supposed to be the largest armaments works in the world. In 1940, when the Germans were bombing Britain, they did not expect retaliation on a very heavy scale, and therefore were not afraid to boast in their propaganda about the slaughter of civilians which they were bringing about and the terror which their raids aroused. Now, when the tables are turned, they are beginning to cry out against the whole business of aerial bombing, which they declare to be both cruel and useless. The people of this country are not revengeful, but they remember what happened to themselves two years ago, and they remember how the Germans talked when they thought themselves safe from retaliation. That they did think themselves safe there can be little doubt. Here, for example, are some extracts from the speeches of Marshal Goering, the Chief of the German Air Force. "I have personally looked into the air-raid defences of the Ruhr. No bombing planes could get there. Not as much as a single bomb could be dropped from an enemy plane', August 9th, 1939. "No hostile aircraft can penetrate the defences of the German air force", September 7th, 1939. Many similar statements by the German leaders could be quoted.

(5) Konrad Adenauer, Memoirs 1945-53 (12th July, 1952)

The task confronting me in a war-ravaged Cologne was a huge and extra- ordinarily difficult one. The extent of the damage suffered by the city in air raids and from the other effects of war was enormous.

More than half of the houses and public buildings were totally destroyed, nearly all the others had suffered partial damage. Only 300 houses had escaped unscathed.

The damage done to the city by the destruction of streets, tram rails, sewers, water pipes, gas pipes, electrical installations and other public utilities, was no less widespread. It is hard to realize the threat this constituted to the health

of the people. There was no gas, no water, no electric current, and no means of transport. The bridges across the Rhine had been destroyed. There were mountains of rubble in the streets. Everywhere there were gigantic areas of debris from bombed and shelled buildings. With its razed churches, many of them almost a thousand years old, its bombed-out cathedral, with the ruins of once beautiful bridges sticking up out of the Rhine, and the vast expanses of derelict houses, Cologne was a ghost city.

(6) Konrad Adenauer, speech in Cologne (October, 1945)

The winter ahead of us will be very hard. We must above all provide food, fuel, and housing. We - you and we - will do everything in our power to create conditions that are at least tolerable. It will not be possible to do this to the extent you and we would like. But - and I am now addressing myself not to this hall alone but to all the citizens of Cologne - I ask all our fellow-citizens always to remember this: the guilty, those responsible for this unspeakable suffering, this indescribable misery, are those accursed men who came to power in the fatal year 1933. It was they who dishonoured the German name throughout the world and covered it with shame, who destroyed our Reich, who, when their own well deserved perdition was certain, systematically and deliberately plunged our misguided and paralysed people into the deepest misery. They did this not, as is often assumed, so that the German people should perish with them - though that idea may also have influenced them in their decisions and actions; they intended something much more devilish: they wanted and they still want the thought of revenge and retribution to re-animate the German people against its wartime opponents.