"Black Monday" in Gelsenkirchen

6th November 1944: German civilians are burnt alive as Allied bombing intensifies the attack on the Nazi war machine

Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mark V, N1463 'GE-L', of No. 58 Squadron RAF, takes off on a night sortie from Linton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire. This aircraft later went missing during a bombing sortie to Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on 17/18 June 1940

The crew of Avro Lancaster B Mark III, ED831 'WS-H', of No 9 Squadron RAF, captained by Squadron Leader A M Hobbs RNZAF, boarding their aircraft at Bardney, Lincolnshire, for a raid on the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen, on the shores of Lake Constance (Bodensee), Germany in June 1943. Six days later, Hobbs and his crew were shot down and killed in ED831, while returning from a raid on Gelsenkirchen, Germany

Close up of the nose insignia on Handley Page Halifax B Mark III, LV907 'NP-F' "Friday the Thirteenth", of No. 158 Squadron RAF, after returning to Lissett, Yorkshire, from its 100th operational sortie, a night raid on Gelsenkirchen, Germany, flown by Flight Lieutenant N G Gordon and crew. LV907 was so named because it was delivered to the Squadron on 13 January 1944, and was accordingly painted with depictions of various unlucky omens. However, it completed 128 successful sorties before being struck off charge in May 1945.

As the Allied Air forces returned to the destruction of the industrial centre of the Ruhr, the town of Gelsenkirchen was still high on the target list. Not only was it an industrial town but nearby lay a synthetic oil facility, creating fuel oil from coal. Air warfare strategists had argued that these synthetic oil plants should be the very top priority. Post war analysis suggested that their comprehensive destruction across Germany, beyond the very considerable levels of damage that were achieved by the bombing that did take place, might well have hastened the end of the war.

Navigational Route No.s 408/426 Squadrons RCAF from Linton on Ouse 6th November 1944.

Very probably many of the German civilians here would have welcomed the Allies as liberators, just as they had at Aachen. When the Scholven oil plant had been hit in September dozens of Jewish slave workers from Hungary had been killed. Doctors from Gelsenkirchen had treated seventeen injured women survivors, and the hospital medical staff had collaborated to hide them from the Gestapo, enabling them to survive the war.

Children and women were crying hysterically, cursing and praying loudly, threw themselves on the ground, whimpering, pleading in vain for mercy of the invisible God.