This Day in History: First Bombs Dropped on Germany

On this day in 1943, American bombers launch their first attack on German soil. “U.S. Airmen,” newspapers soon reported, “flying Fortress and Liberator bombers—their biggest—dealt the first all-American assault to the German homeland today.”

The “heavy aerial wallop,” these reports concluded, kept the American promise to “hit them and hit them hard.”

But what had taken so long? After all, it had been more than a year since the United States entered World War II.

It’s easy to forget life as it was at the end of 1941. Americans didn’t have the efficient Air Force that we have today. Instead, we were just getting started. At least in Europe, much of that burden fell on General Ira Eaker, commanding general of the then-newly established Eighth Air Force.

Historian William J. Daugherty explains that “General Eaker had to: bring the Eighth from only seven officers, no troops, no airplanes, no airfields, and no infrastructure to a planned force of nearly two hundred thousand men (and women) and hundreds of heavy and medium bombers and fighters by the end of 1943.”

Men needed to be trained. Intelligence systems needed to be established. The range of aircraft needed to be improved.

We often hear about the accomplishments of the well-trained, efficient Army Air Forces that existed at the end of the war, but in 1942 and 1943, “all experiences were new, too many circumstances were unknown, and too often essential equipment was everywhere but where it was most desperately needed,” Daugherty concludes.

The Eighth Air Force undertook a few small operations during 1942, but its first major attack came after a January 1943 conference—the Casablanca Conference—between Winston Churchill and FDR. As the two leaders pondered strategy, Churchill pushed for Americans to engage in nighttime bombings, which is what the Royal Air Force had been doing.

But Americans were more interested in daytime precision bombing.

“If the RAF bombs by night and we bomb by day,” Eaker reportedly noted, “bombing around the clock, the German defenses will get no rest.”  It was a keen observation that brought Churchill around.

Mere days later, on January 27, Americans would launch the first of these attacks, aimed at the vital port of Wilhelmshaven. The mission was composed of about sixty bombers, launched from England. Of these, just over fifty arrived at Wilhelmshaven, ultimately dropping more than 137 tons of munitions.

Lt. Frank Yaussi was the lead bombardier that day, tasked with looking for his target and dropping the first bomb. There was just one problem: Wilhelmshaven was almost completely obscured by clouds, and the target was overshot on the first pass.

A second pass was more successful.

“We made a left turn to come back, and through a break in the clouds we saw some sort of construction near the harbor entrance—either sub pens or part of the new locks,” Yaussi later described.  It wasn’t his intended target, but it would have to do. He released his bomb, which was the signal for everyone else to cut loose.

Our boys had caught the Germans by surprise, and the bombing run proved relatively easy, with only mild German resistance.  “We didn’t see a thing except some flak,” pilot Lt. Edward Hennessy later said. “I guess we just surprised the hell out of them. They sure weren’t expecting Americans over there in daytime.”

In the end, Americans lost just 3 bombers, while German losses may have been as high as 22 aircraft—plus the damage on the ground, of course.

It had been a good day for the new Eighth Air Force.

“[I]t is a relief to drop bombs on the square German towns instead of the French,” bomb group commander Curtis LeMay concluded in a letter to his wife.

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Primary Sources:

• 1942 Independence Day Raid was Eighth Air Force’s First Mission (National Museum of World War II Aviation)

• 306th Bomb Group (American Air Museum in Britain)

• Alfred E. Wall, Daylight Raids Tell Axis About Action Program (Buffalo News; Jan. 27, 1943) (p. 1)

• Benjamin Paul Hegi. From Wright Field, Ohio, to Hokkaido, Japan: General Curtis E. LeMay’s Letters to His Wife Helen, 1941–1945 (Alfred F. Hurley, ed. 2015)

• Brief History of the Eighth Air Force (National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force)

• Lance Thompson, First Over Germany (WWII History Mag., Feb. 2018) (reprinted HERE)

• Maj. Richard Komurek, The Wilhelmshaven bombings: A mission of valor (8th Air Force Public Affairs; Jan. 27, 2010)

• The 8th United States Army Air Force (USAAF) bombing the German port of Wilhelmshaven, 27 January 1943 (National Army Museum)

• The Army Air Forces in World War II: Vol. 2: Europe: Torch to Pointblank, August 1942 to December 1943 (W.F. Craven & J.L. Cate eds.; 1983)  

• US Air Force bombs Germany: Jan. 27, 1943 Wilhelmshaven, Duitsland (Anne Frank House)

• Walter Cronkite, ‘It’s a Cinch,” Say Yank Bombers After Slamming Reich Cities (Buffalo News; Jan. 27, 1943) (p. 1)

• William J. Daugherty, The US Eighth Air Force in World War II: Ira Eaker, Hap Arnold, and Building American Air Power, 1942–1943 (2024)