6 Group Unavailable
149 aircraft- 384 Halifaxes, 336 Lancasters, 29 Mosquitoes - 1, 4, 6 and 8 Groups. 23 Halifaxes and 5 Lancasters were lost; German night fighters caused most of the casualties. 346 (Free French) Squadron, based at Elvington, lost 5 out of its 16 Halifaxes on the raid.
This was a particularly successful attack based upon standard Pathfinder mark¬. ing techniques. Severe damage was caused to the centre of Bochum. More than 4,000 buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged; 980 Germans and 14 foreigners were killed. Bochum's industrial areas were also severely damaged, particularly the important steelworks. This was the last major raid by Bomber Command on this target.
source: The Bomber Command War Diaries, Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt
Halifax aircraft MZ 896 failed to return from a night trip to Bochum, Germany. Flight Lieutenant L.R.B.Loving DFC; . P/O.s G.A. Running, Al. Flatt, J.P. Durkin, F/O. A.D. Chapman, P/O.s B. McGarrity (RAF), and W.C. Davidson (RAF) were killed.
On 1944-11-04, Squadron Leader A. Ross Dawson, the Chief Technical Officer with 424/433 Sqns at Skipton on Swale, wrote in his diary:
"After postponing the op twice we finally got them all away tonight at 5:00 o'clock â€" 15 from 424 & 16 from 433. No non-starters nor early returns which was a good thing. The target was Bochen & we had 11,150 lbs of bombs up. It was very successful too. These targets are getting bad since we lost two again tonight. Another for 424 "Q"' Queenie (Flying Officer Loving) &"F" Freddie (433) Flying Officer Mountford so that's 5 we have lost in 3 ops so far this month. Flight Lieutenant Wood, the F/Eng leader for 424 was lucky in that this morning he found he had and infection on his arm which had come up overnight & the M.O wouldn't let him fly tonight. They exchanged him at the last minute for a spare in "Q" which of course went missing. He feels pretty bad about it too since Loving only had 4 more trips to do in his second tour & was a pretty good guy"
Diary of A Ross Dawson, courtesy CWM