![]() ![]() On the night of May 30–31, more than 1,000 bombers were dispatched against Cologne, where they did heavy damage to one-third of that city’s built-up area. The characteristic feature of the new program was its emphasis on area bombing, in which the centers of towns would be the points of aim for nocturnal raids. These attacks, which were aimed against factories, rail depots, dockyards, bridges, and dams and against cities and towns themselves, were intended to both destroy Germany’s war industries and to deprive its civilian population of their housing, thus sapping their will to continue the war. Targeting a cathedral, even one this large, was simply very difficult with the technology of the day.Įarly in 1942 the RAF bomber command, headed by Sir Arthur Harris, began an intensification of the Allies’ growing strategic air offensive against Germany. ![]() The pilots were lucky if even a fraction of their bombs landed over their real targets. Lower-level bombers were more accurate in hitting their targets, but high-level bombers were notoriously inaccurate. ![]() ![]() Many in the military wanted to respect the buildings due to their cultural significance. The attacking pilots used the cathedral as a reference to their location, but this would not have been so important in the last days when the Allies had complete air superiority. The twin spires are said to have been used as an easily recognizable navigational landmark by Allied aircraft raiding deeper into Germany in the later years of the war, which may be a reason that the cathedral was not destroyed. It did not collapse but stood tall in an otherwise flattened city. The cathedral suffered fourteen hits by aerial bombs during the war. Seen here is an aerial black and white photo of the famous Cologne Cathedral during World War II. The Cologne Cathedral stands tall amidst the ruins of the city after Allied bombings, 1944 ![]()
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