Luftwaffe target codes

[bill norman]

Chris,
Thanks for the list. Fortuitous - I live 6 miles from Middlesbrough! I assume that the prefix is generic and that the suffix corresponds to, say, a specific industrial installation that is also identified by its commercial name. If that is so, in the national scheme of things each suffix must be unique to a particular installation. Is that right? If that is correct, presumably there must have been a Luftwaffe list of specific installations, the names of which each corresponded to a unique suffix. I seem to be labouring this a bit but I hope that you get the drift. Does anyone know of such a Luftwaffe list? Bill

[Chris Going]

Bill

You are quite right. The first two digit code is for the class, the second is the Unique target identifier. Not all targets have original target document sets surviving though -many can only be identified if they appear on annotated prints distributed with intel reports of one kind or another. Much of the Dick Tracy TM-3 class consists of these annotated prints. The giveaway that this is not an original target doc is the picture citation, which usually appears as (for example) Bild 2468 z 10, or Bild 2336 z 45, or some such. After later 1941/2 even original target documents started to carry this kind of descriptor whioch is a puzzle. Anyway to cut a long story short you should be able to identify all of the targets from surviving annotated prints of Middlesborough, but there is no list, to my knowledge.

Best

Chris G

[bill norman]

Thanks, Chris. You're in the Acknowledgements already! (ww.billnorman.co.uk). Bill