12-18 January 1945

Overview

Missions this week concentrated on attacking synthetic oil plants in Germany – there was always a shortage of oil during the war in Germany, their only source being Romania, so they developed a way of extracting oil from coal supplies, but it never reached the higher octane levels used by the Allies based on US oil. Four aircraft were lost this week, with 22 aircrew killed and 6 becoming POW’s.

Also this week, there was an explosion of 2 time delay bombs in the Fusing Shed, adjacent to the bomb dump and, unfortunately, 3 armourers were killed.