The Bombing Campaign against Hitler’s Third Reich

5. The British launched the first deliberate terror raid of the war in December, 1940

On December 16, 1940, the RAF executed Operation Abigail Rachel, an experimental bombing raid on Mannheim using incendiary bombs. 134 bombers were dispatched to the German city. The leading eight carried incendiaries intended to mark the center of the German city. Following bombers were instructed to use the resulting fires as a target for their own bombs. The leading eight fouled up their navigation, missed the city center entirely, and the result was the following bombers (only 100 reached the city) also missed their target. Mannheim was selected as an experiment. For the next week, the RAF returned to the city, bombing it three more times, using the smoke of the previous fires to guide them to their targets.

Mannheim was a target for RAF bombers several more times through 1944. Finally, in 1945 the RAF used incendiary bombs on the city in an attack which included 300 bombers and created a firestorm. The early raids on Mannheim demonstrated the British were incapable of consistent precision bombing at night and had shifted to the widespread bombing of cities during their raids. All told, Mannheim was the target of over 150 raids throughout the war, though much of its industry remained intact into 1944 and beyond. Churchill described the initial raids on Mannheim to be retaliation for the German bombing of Coventry in November 1940, but planning for the widespread bombing raids had been underway since the preceding summer.