6 Group Unavailable
602 aircraft - 316 Halifaxes, 258 Lancasters, 28 Mosquitoes - of I, 4, 6 and 8 Groups. 11 aircraft - 6 Lancasters, 4 Halifaxes, 1 Mosquito - lost. This raid was split into 2 parts, with a 3-hour interval. The first force - of 226 nlrcraft -was directed against the important railway yards at Kornwestheim, a town lo the north of Stuttgart, and the second was against the north-western Stuttgart suburb of Zuffenhausen, where the target is believed to have been the Hirth aero¬engine factory. The target area was mostly cloud-covered for both raids and the bombing, on sky-markers, was scattered.
Bombs fell in many parts of Stuttgart's northern and western suburbs. The important Bosch works, in the suburb of Feuer¬bach, was hit. The attack on Kornwestheim was the worst suffered by that town during the war; the Kornwestheim local report shows that the local people felt they had been bombed by mistake and that the main target was in Stuttgart. 14 high, explosive bombs fell in the industrial area of the town and in the railway yards. Fires burned for up to I2 hours. 123 people were killed in Stuttgart and 41 in Kornwest-. heim. A large number of bombs fell outside Stuttgart, particularly in the east around a decoy fire site which was also firing dummy target-indicator rockets into the air, The village of Weilimdorf, situated not far away, complained bitterly about its damage and casualties!
This was the last large R.A.F. raid on Stuttgart. Herr Bardua says that the city had endured 53 major raids, most of them by the R.A.F., during which 32,549 blocks of flats or houses were destroyed (67·8 per cent of the total). After the war, 4·9 million cubic metres of rubble had to be cleared. 4,562 people died in the air raids, among them 770 prisoners of war or foreign workers. Stuttgart's experience was not as severe as other German cities. Its location, spread out in a series of deep valleys, had consistently frustrated the Pathfinders and the shelters dug into the sides of the surrounding hills had saved many lives.The Bomber Command War Diaries, Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt
