RA524
Crashes > of the R.A.F.
858 bombers arrive over Cologne on the morning of 02 March 1945. A hitherto unimaginable bombardment ploughs up the city centre of Cologne once again. To this day, the number of civilians and Wehrmacht soldiers killed cannot be precisely quantified, but it runs into the hundreds.
In this inferno, the Lancaster BI, RA524, crashed after being hit by flak in the immediate vicinity of the bridge portal of the Hohenzollern Bridge on the left bank of the Rhine and exploded with its full bomb load in a fireball. This happens during the bombardment, so that in the next few days not a single part of the plane is found. There are also no eyewitnesses on the ground who could describe the exact location of the crash. Only eyewitnesses from other bombers saw the crash and reported it.
Some of the crew parachute out, but die during the bombardment before they reach the ground. Their bodies are recovered days later, after the capture of Cologne by American forces on 8 March, and buried in Hotton War Cemetery in Belgium.
This was the last Royal Air Force raid on Cologne in the Second World War.
