The bombing of Peenemünde in World War II was carried out on several occasions as part of the overall

Operation Crossbow ''Crossbow'' was the code name in World War II for Anglo-American operations against the German V-weapons, long range reprisal weapons (V-weapons) programme. The primary V-weapons were the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, which were launched agai ...

to disrupt German secret weapon development. The first raid on

Peenemünde Peenemünde (, ) is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is part of the ''Amt (country subdivision), Amt'' (collective municipality) of Used ...

, on the

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...

coast of Germany, was Operation Hydra of the night of 17/18 August 1943, involving 596 heavy bombers of the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

. Intelligence about the existence and location of the programme was said by some to have been obtained from the secretly recorded conversations of a German officer, Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, who was a prisoner of war of the British. However, von Thoma is not mentioned in declassified files and the story may have been fabricated in order to protect members of the Belgian and Luxemburg resistance. The official history of MI6 by Prof Keith Jeffery cites several sources including a tip-off from forced labourers drafted to work at Peenemünde. Subsequent attacks were carried out in daylight raids by the US Army Air Force's

Eighth Air Force The Eighth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) is a numbered air force (NAF) of the United States Air Force's Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). It is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The command serves as Air Forces S ...

. Among those on the ground at Peenemünde were Walter Dornberger, noted rocket expert Wernher von Braun, and Nazi female test pilot

Hanna Reitsch Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a German Pilot (aeronautics), aviator and test pilot. Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight-tested many of Germany's new aircraft during World War II and received many hono ...

, who later claimed to have slept through the raid. Some markers were dropped too far south, and ultimately a number of buildings remained undamaged, while many bombs hit the forced labour camps, killing between 500 and 600 prisoners. However, sufficient damage was caused to delay the V-weapons programme for some months, and the senior engineer Dr Walter Thiel was among the dead.

Operations

References and notes

;Notes ;Bibliography * Clare Mulley, ''The Women Who Flew for Hitler'' (Macmillan, 2017)

External links

National Collection of Aerial Photography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peenemunde Bombing of Peenemünde World War II strategic bombing of Germany World War II strategic bombing conducted by the United Kingdom Aerial operations and battles of World War II involving the United States Bombing of Peenemünde Bombing of Peenemünde