Skyggen i mit øje WWII British bombing of Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen

A manslaughter is a very embarrassing and painful thing, and in war, it is very difficult to avoid.World War II saw a number of mistake-downs, many of which, for various reasons, the people involved did not want to talk about and faded into history.One of the more famous ones is the incident in which the British bombed the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen and mistakenly bombed a nunnery.On April 9, 1940, German troops invaded Denmark, and the Danish king was forced to surrender that day. The battle actually lasted only four hours, with only nine Danish troops killed in action and six other civilians who rose up to resist being killed.

Subsequently, Germany did not directly intervene in the military administration, but reorganized the government and appointed a high commissioner to rule indirectly behind the scenes. In short, compared with other occupied countries in Central and Southern Europe, the Nazi occupation of several countries in Northern Europe was relatively lenient.

Of course, no one wanted to be occupied by the enemy, and subsequently the Danish underground party was established and started a long struggle against it.

In March 1945, the Normandy landings (1944.6.6) had been completed for 9 months, the Third Reich was faltering under the US and Soviet Union, a large number of German troops were annihilated, and 1 month later the Allies would attack Berlin!

The Nazis all over the world had a premonition that the time of their demise was near, and at this time, it became the time of their greatest madness and cruelty, one because of their faith, and two because they had a lot of blood on their hands and knew they could not be forgiven.

The Gestapo (secret police of the Reich Security Directorate) in Denmark captured and killed a large number of resistance members. By the end of 1944, many resistance leaders were captured, important organizational lists were seized, and resistance members had to abscond in all directions, so they contacted the British army several times and asked them to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Denmark and destroy the resistance archives!

Due to the weather and the war, the British army could not pull out their forces until March 1945, when the RAF finally agreed to an air raid on the Gestapo headquarters on March 21, at the strong request of the Danish underground. The Gestapo also knew that the British would come to bomb the headquarters, so they put the 26 resistance leaders they had captured on the roof of the headquarters building as human shields!

By this time the German occupation was already densely packed with anti-aircraft units, so the RAF made a plan to fly ultra-low to avoid radar and divide the team into 3 groups, taking different routes to confuse the Germans. Bombing in turn to ensure the destruction of the target.At 8:55 a.m. on March 21, 1945, 20 Mosquitoes of the 2nd Bomber Group and 30 Mustangs of the 11th Fighter Group took off from Norfolk Airport and headed straight for Copenhagen. Eighteen of the 20 Mosquitoes were fighter-bombers carrying a total of 44 227 kg bombs, and two were reconnaissance aircraft dedicated to photography.

The first phase went well and all the planes reached Copenhagen, but when the first formation entered the city at low altitude, one Mosquito accidentally hit a pole about 30 meters high (flying so low, the RAF was still good) and crashed into the nuns’ school next to it and burned with thick black smoke. The other planes in the same group found the Gestapo headquarters without any problems and dropped their bombs.

However, when the second group of planes came, they were confused by 2 different thick smoke, and because of the low altitude and short judgment time, only one plane found the right target, while the rest had dropped their bombs on the nun’s school.

The third group of planes came in the same situation, dropping their bombs to the place where the flames were the most intense.

The Gestapo headquarters was hit by eight 227 kg bombs, six hitting the west side of the headquarters building and two hitting the east side. The fire started immediately on the west side of the building and then got out of control, growing larger and larger, while a strong westerly wind was blowing that day, and the fire quickly spread to the rest of the building, eventually collapsing.

Eighteen of the 26 resistance leaders in the building survived (the bombs did not fall from the sky, but went in sideways), the Germans killed and wounded about 50, and another 50 were Danish auxiliary police!

Yet 123 civilians were killed by the bombing, including 87 children!

And the British Air Force lost 4 Mosquitoes, in addition to the one that started to crash, 3 others were shot down by the Germans after dropping bombs to leave, and another Mustang fighter crashed north of the Gestapo headquarters, giving the British a total of 5 aircraft lost and 9 pilots sacrificed.

Despite the big mistake, the stated objective was achieved and the Danish resistance thanked the British for it afterwards.

There was a similar incident in old China, where

River Asia Ship It was originally built in 1939 by Harima Shipyard of Kobe Steel for “East Asia Shipping Co. The speed was 18 knots, and the original design could carry 1,186 passengers.

After the victory of the war, the ship was taken over by the Naval General Headquarters. In order to compensate for the loss of the state-run China Merchants Bureau during the war, the National Government transferred five ships, including the enemy ship Jiang Ya, to the Ministry of Communications for operation by the China Merchants Bureau. After the renovation of China Merchants, the ship could carry 2,250 passengers, with a special restaurant, lounge, etc. It was one of the six new passenger ships of Shanghai Merchants, and its appearance and equipment were all excellent at that time.

On December 3, 1948, the shadow of war was spreading everywhere, and people in Shanghai were on edge. At 18:45, when the ship reached the mouth of the Yangtze River, the stern suddenly exploded and the stern sank rapidly, and the ship’s cabin soon took on water. Although other ships passing by came to rescue the ship, but too many people were overcrowded, only about 900 people were rescued and about 3,000 people were killed, making it the largest maritime disaster in Chinese history.

After the investigation, the cause was that a bomber of Shanghai Naval Air Force flew to Haizhou on a mission and a heavy bomb hanging from it unhooked and crashed into the sea in the air outside Wusongkou. It happened to fall on the head of “Jiang Ya”.

In 1956, the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government salvaged the ship and restored it in 1959, and it was used on the route between Shanghai and Wuhan (the quality was still good).

In November 1966, the ship was renamed “Jiang Ya” to “Dong Fang Hong No. 8” and on January 30, 1979, the ship “Jiangxia” and “Dong Fang Hong In 1983, the vessel was decommissioned and moored at the Moon Bay Pier of Wuhan Port as a water base for the fleet of Changzhou Wuhan Company. In June 2000, it was sold to individual shipbreakers in Wenzhou, and before the Spring Festival in 2001, the wreckage of “Dongfanghong No. 8” was dismantled and sold as scrap steel.May the world be peaceful and free from war.