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Originally Posted by mongoose44
I am looking for online/book info which gives routes of BC raids; inparticular from July '43 to March '44. Any Ideas?
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Hi,
if you really want the information straight from the horse's mouth, rather than buying a book, trying ordering the relevant reports from the British National Archives:
AIR 14/3374 Interception and tactics: night reports 1942 June-1943 Jan.
AIR 14/3375 Interception and tactics: night reports 1943 June- Dec.
AIR 14/3376 Interception and tactics: night reports 1944 Jan.- May
These files contain the Bomber Command Operational Research Section reports relating to the Bomber Command effort vis-a-vis the German Defense.
A report was made for each day/night of operations and each contain:
(a) a statistical summary of all Bomber Command raids in a night, identified by target, total number of sorties, number that claimed to have attacked the target, number of aircraft missing, time on target and height bands used.
(b) the geographical co-ordinates of the routes used on the main raids
(c) details of the weather forecast and weather encountered
(d) details of the German defensive effort
(e) a route map
If you are interested in particular raids between July 1943-March 1944 then by visiting the National Archives Website (http://www.catalogue.nationalarchives.gov.uk/), you can order online paper copies of documents from these files.
The copies are usually A3 size and each report will run from 2-5 pages. It costs GBP10 to make the initial request (but this cost is deducted from the total amount of your order) and they will provide a quotation for the copies that you want. Admittedly, this can be expensive if you require a lot of reports but, to be honest, you could buy fifty books and still not get the information in these reports...
In the National Archives ordering system, you can specify the file and then write down what information you want off the file (i.e. reports for raids on such-and-such a date).
'hoping that this is of some help and good luck
RodM