X3489 - Luftkriegsarchiv Köln

263 aircraft took off for the night raid on Cologne. On this moonlit night, the bombers were attacked by very heavy anti-aircraft fire.

The Wellington III, X3489, was hit by the flak, caught fire and broke up in the air. The front part of the aircraft crashed in the Heinzbergstr./Kyffhäuser Str. area. The pilot was rescued alive but seriously injured and placed in a hallway, where he remained for several hours without any medical assistance and then died(1). (The police report gives the crash site as "Moselstr./KyffhäuserStr.")

The largest part of the Wellington crashed into a yard and garden in the area of Robert-Koch-Str./Gyrhofstr. Many residents of the neighbouring houses left their cellars and bunkers to see the crash site. Rescue teams and the fire brigade arrived to remove the dead from the wreckage. About three quarters of an hour after the crash, the bomb charge suddenly exploded, killing 16 civilians and rescue workers and injuring over 60, some of them seriously.

The detonation of the explosive bombs caused extensive glass damage in the surrounding area, including the LINDENBURG hospital, the gynaecological clinic and the Weyerthal reserve hospital.

This catastrophe was even mentioned in a Cologne newspaper (2). And a few days later, another article was published here. However, this article did not mourn the dead, but accused the dead and injured of being to blame for their own fate. After all, they could have stayed in the safe shelters (3)