Operation Steinbock
in London, United KingdomCategory: Attraction
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Nelson's Column, London WC2N 5DU, UK Print route »
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Baby Blitz or Operation Steinbock (German: Unternehmen Steinbock) was a strategic bombing campaign by the German air force (the Luftwaffe) during the Second World War. It targeted southern England and lasted from January to May 1944. Steinbock was the last strategic air offensive by the German bomber arm during the conflict.In late 1943 the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive was gathering momentum against Germany. The Allied air forces were conducting a strategic bombing campaign day and night against German industrial cities. In retaliation, Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to prepare a bombing operation against the United Kingdom. The bombing offensive also served as propaganda value for the German public and domestic consumption. The operation ran parallel to Bomber Command's campaign against Berlin (November 1943 – March 1944).
The German Luftflotte 3 (Air Fleet 3) assembled 474 bomber aircraft for the offensive. The attacks were mainly aimed at and around the Greater London area. In Britain, it was known as the Baby Blitz due to the much smaller scale of operations compared to The Blitz, the campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940–1941. The operation began in January and ended in May 1944. It achieved very little, and the German force suffered a loss of some 329 machines during the five months of operations—an average of 77 per month—before it was abandoned. Other senior Luftwaffe commanders intended to use the bomber force against the Western Allied invasion fleet, which they predicted would land in northern France sometime in the spring or summer of 1944.
Eventually, the revenge attacks gave way to attempts to disrupt preparations for the impending Allied invasion of France, codenamed Operation Overlord, but Steinbock had worn down the offensive power of the Luftwaffe to the extent it could not mount any significant counterattacks when the invasion began on 6 June 1944. The offensive was the last large-scale bombing campaign against England using conventional aircraft, and henceforth only the V-1 flying bomb cruise missiles and V-2 rockets – pioneering short-range ballistic missiles – were used to strike British cities.
