Air raid on Cologne

On Saturday 18 May 1918, the eve of Whitsun, British bombers attacked Cologne in broad daylight, one of the largest cities of the Reich and the main railway junction on the Rhine. Six two-seat Airco DH.4 aircraft of No. 55 Squadron, Royal Air Force, dropped bombs on stations and factories. The city was not warned in time, so the casualties were much heavier than was usual on such raids. It was the first time British aircraft had appeared over the city by day since October 1914, when a naval airman dropped a few small bombs on the main station. Since then Cologne had been attacked only by a single Handley Page bomber on the night of 24–25 March 1918.

Bombers from Lorraine

No. 55 Squadron belonged to the 41st Wing, a bomber formation which General Hugh Trenchard had set up in October 1917 near Nancy to attack the industry and railways of western Germany. It was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Newall, and on 1 February 1918 the formation was raised to the status of VIII Brigade. Until May 1918 No. 55 Squadron was its only day-bomber squadron; the other two attacked by night. Its crews had already bombed Mainz, Stuttgart, Mannheim and Metz. The day before the raid on Cologne twelve of its pilots attacked Metz-Sablon station, where, according to H. A. Jones’s British official history of the war in the air, eleven German officers were killed.

The raid of 18 May was led by Captain F. Williams. The aircraft took off at 6.35 a.m. from the airfield at Tantonville south of Nancy, nearly three hundred kilometres from the target in a straight line. After two and a half hours in the air they reached Cologne and dropped their bombs from a height of about 4,400 metres. The targets were railway lines and industrial plants.

A city taken by surprise

According to Jones, the German observation service failed and the inhabitants heard no alarm. Jones writes of about forty killed and roughly a hundred injured, and of serious damage to 38 buildings, valued at 340,000 marks. German documents gave various figures. The highest of them are 41 killed, 83 seriously and 40 slightly injured. According to the Cologne press, 19 children were among the 41 dead.

German fighters attacked the bombers three times. One of the British observers shot down a German aircraft but was himself mortally wounded.

Consequences

The raid shook the Rhineland much as the earlier German raids on London had shaken the English. Deputies in the Reichstag took up the matter, and alarm gripped the towns along the Rhine. The Cologne police had already, after the March attack on Mainz, urged inhabitants to take shelter immediately when the alarm sounded. According to Jones, after 18 May many influential circles in Germany began to demand that the government reach an agreement with the Allies to give up or limit bombing from the air.

The British meanwhile were expanding their bomber force. On 6 June 1918 the Independent Force was formed from VIII Brigade under Trenchard’s command; until the end of the war it bombed factories and railway junctions in western Germany. Cologne, however, lay at the limit of its range, and before the autumn it was reached only a few more times, mostly by night.