I have written about the bombing of Geleen before, but since today is the 81st anniversary, I thought it a good idea to revisit that awful day. Geleen is a town in the southeast part of the Netherlands.
It used to be a mining town. As a result, 83 residents died, and many were injured. The material damage was immense. Due to the bad weather, the British had dropped their explosive load randomly over a far too large area. On Monday evening, 5 October , a total of bombers took off in quick succession from various airfields in England. The crews consisted mainly of English and Canadians. The bombers were of the Wellington, Stirling, and Lancaster types.
It was important that the weather forecast for the bombing flight focused on destroying the German city of Aachen cooperated. The expectation was that rain and low clouds would occur up to the northern German coastal area.
A thunderstorm front over western France and southern England would also cause cloud cover above the Aachen target area. A cold front would cause difficulties in the area around Aachen. The bombers took off from the airfields with a formation over the Channel onto a Southern approach route—flying over the French town of Le Crotoy.
(mh=CopG1CSTwVm-f9xY)0.jpg "Prostitutes in Bergen")
However, to the North were the German air defenses—thus, this bombing could have been avoided. The squadrons of RAF bombers would be led by a group of so-called Pathfinders.
