[Günther Ott]

DublinCity Archives: Records of the Donore Area Bombing 1941:

“On the first three days of January 1941, German bombs were dropped at a number of locations along the east coast of Ireland, including counties Carlow, Kildare, Louth, Meath, Wexford and Wicklow, but without any loss of life. On successive nights, 2 and 3 January 1941, German bombs were dropped for the first time on Dublin City in the Donore area, around the South Circular Road and in Terenure, districts where many Jewish families resided. The excuse offered by Hitler’s government for the January bombings, as for the Campile bombing, was that German aircraft had mistaken the Irish east coast for the west coast of Britain. The view most commonly held in Ireland was that the German bombings resulted from aircraft off-loading supplies to ensure a safe return to base.”

Luftflotte 3 records for the period in question are quite extensive and detailed but do not show any involvement of I./K.G.40 or Fw 200 in night bombing activities on 2nd or 3rd January 1941.

Taking the statements from Oblt. Burmeister’s POW interrogation, it also needs to be reflected that peculiar situation. Notably a previous statement regarding the bombing of London by aircraft of K.G.40 had to be adjusted in this report A.I.1.(K) No.20/1941 in a way that it would be theoretically possible with a bomb-load of 5,000 kilos if the aircraft were, in fact, to attack London.

But they never did so, and obviously interpreters might have had problems in this interrogation. We do not know how questions and answers were put forward (and translated) and how they were understood. Might that theoretical approach also apply for the statement on the Dublin bombing by K.G.40?

As already mentioned by Chris Goss in an earlier message, German documents do not give any hint of the Fw 200 being involved in bombing attacks on mainland Britain except for only a few isolated and pinpointed attacks on targets in Scotland between October and December 1940. Those dates do not match with any bombings of Dublin. After Hitler’s decision on 6th January 1941 to have K.G.40 to be subordinated under B.d.U. in support of U-Boat attacks, any excursions of that kind had come to an end with immediate effect.

Regards, Günther