Bombing of Bologna in World War II
Bombing of Bologna | |||||
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Part of World War II | |||||
An air raid on Bologna in 1943 | |||||
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Belligerents | |||||
United Kingdom United States |
Kingdom of Italy (1943) Italian Social Republic (1943-1945) |
During
History
In the summer of 1943 the marshalling yards of Bologna, among the largest in Northern Italy, had been included by British commands in a list of railway objectives that would have been useful to attack in order to hamper the movements of German troops and supplies from the Brenner to Rome and from Udine to Florence, as well as on other secondary lines.[1] The San Donato marshalling yard was the largest railroad freight terminal in Italy, and one of the largest in Europe.
1943
In the first three years of war, Bologna was relatively safe from air attacks, as it was outside of the range of British bombers that operating from
The second air raid on Bologna, on 24 July 1943, was far heavier; 51
The proclamation of the Armistice (8 September 1943) did not change the situation; Bologna was swiftly occupied by German troops, which kept using its marshalling yards for their movements, and thus the city continued being an objective for the Allied air forces. On 25 September 1943 Bologna suffered the bloodiest air raid in the entire war: 71 B-17 bombers of the 12th Air Force, out of 113 that had taken off from Tunisia, dropped 210 tons of bombs against the marshalling yard, but heavy cloud cover resulted in the bombers dropping the bombs over the entire city. The old city centre was among the hardest hit areas, but the suburbs, the Bolognina district and the area around the city's hippodrome also suffered heavy damage. 295 buildings were completely destroyed, 199 partially destroyed and 371 damaged; due to delay in issuing the air raid alarm (the Italian sighting network had ceased to exist with the German occupation, and the Germans had not yet set up a new network) the population was caught off guard, and this, along with the crowding caused by the market day and by the return of many evacuees who had believed that the Armistice meant that the Allied air raids had ended, resulted in a heavy death toll: between 936 and 1,033 people were killed, over a thousand were wounded. Hundreds of people were killed in the collapse of an air raid shelter in Via Leopardi, hit by a bomb.[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]
A further two raids took place in late 1943; on 1 October, three or four bombers of the 12th Air Force, having failed to reach their primary objective at
By the late autumn of 1943, about 120,000 of Bologna's 318,000 inhabitants had left the city.[24]
1944
The first raid of 1944 took place on 29 January, by thirty-nine B-17s of the
Another raid was carried out on 22 March by 88 Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers of the 15th Air Force (out of 134 that had originally taken off), which dropped 224 tons of bombs on Bologna's marshalling yard; once more many bombs fell on the city, destroying completely 70 buildings, destroying partially 130, damaging 300 and causing about two hundred civilian dead (many of whom in the Via Leopardi air aid shelter, hit again by a bomb and partially collapsed like on 25 September) and 110 wounded. On 7 April, 130 or 200 bombers of the 15th Air Force dropped 240 tons of bombs on the San Donato marshalling yard; the target was hit, but many bombs also fell on the outskirts of the city, hitting 100 buildings (30 completely destroyed, 30 partially destroyed, 40 damaged) and causing 51 dead and 52 wounded.[29][30][31][32][33]
The following three raids caused little damage and a dozen victims: on 30 April, by 100 bombers; on 2 May, by 70 bombers; on 12 May, by a single bomber. On 13 May, instead, Bologna was attacked by 200 bombers of the 15th Air Force (that had taken off from San Giovanni in Fiore), which dropped 380 tons of bombs on the central station and the San Donato and San Ruffillo marshalling yards; again the bombs hit both the targets and the city, causing damage to 105 buildings (31 destroyed completely, 31 partially destroyed, 45 damaged) and causing over a hundred dead and 220 wounded among the civilians.[34][35][36]
On 19 May, Bologna's marshalling yard were attacked by a hundred bombers of the 15th Air Force; 34 buildings were hit (16 completely destroyed, 6 partially destroyed, 12 damaged), with 47 dead and 10 wounded. On 5 June 76 American bombers took off from
Minor attacks, which caused light damage, took place on 26 June (22 dead and 23 wounded), 5 July (five dead and one wounded), 21 July (nine wounded), 24 July (three dead), 29 July (three dead and eight wounded), 7 August, 9 August, 16 August, 22 August (three deaths) and 23 August. On 24 August 76 bombers of the Royal Air Force dropped 190 tons of bombs on the marshalling yard; again the bombs hit the city was well, especially the Sant’Orsola and Bolognina districts, leveling 48 buildings, destroying partially 46 and causing damage to 142. Victims were about one hundred. Minor raids followed on 25, 26, 27, 28 and 31 August.[41][42][43]
On 1 September 75 RAF bombers dropped 160 tons of bombs on the marshalling yard, hitting both the target and the city, especially the Arcoveggio and Bolognina districts. Seventeen buildings were completely destroyed, 44 were partially destroyed, 52 were damaged; casualties were about one hundred. On 5 September a minor raid caused one death and four wounded, and on the following day 51 British bombers (out of 67 that had taken off; one was shot down) dropped 177 tons of bombs on the marshalling yard, hitting both the objective and the city and causing nine dead and eight wounded. On 12 September 84 RAF bombers dropped 241 tons of bombs on the San Donato marshalling yard, hitting again both the target and the city (one victim, four buildings completely destroyed, six partially destroyed, twenty-one damaged). Two minor air raids took place on 13 and 14 September. In the September raids, the RAF made use of 4,000-lb
On 16 September, 120 bombers of the 12th Air Force attacked the marshalling yard, but most of the bombs fell on the city, especially the northern suburbs; 72 buildings suffered damage (14 were destroyed completely, 13 destroyed partially, 45 damaged) and 59 civilians lost their lives, with eighteen wounded. On the following day, another attack by thirty bombers caused seven dead, six wounded, the complete destruction of six buildings, the partial destruction of twelve and damag to another six; on 18 September a raid by ten bombers caused one victim. Minor attacks followed on 23, 24 (eight dead and four wounded), 26 and 27 September (three victims) and 3 October; on 4 October, as Allied troops gradually advanced northwards, Bologna was shelled for the first time by American
On October 11, 123
After this devastating raid, most of the remaining population left Bologna; future mayor Giuseppe Dozza would describe in his memoirs the Bologna of late 1944 as a dead city: "Bologna strangely appeared as a dead city to the citizen who had been born in it more than forty years earlier. (…) That incredible silence and the absence of men were oppressive and unbearable. The scenes of Wells's novel on the war in the year 2000 came to mind".[56] Tens of thousands of evacuees fled to the surrounding countryside or to the villages on the Bolognese Apennine.
The 12 October raid was the last major raid suffered by Bologna during 1944; in the final months of the year, the city was only subjective to minor raids (on 13, 14, 15, 21, 24 and 30 October, 6, 11 and 22 November, 1, 10, 14, 18, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 December).[57] The dwindling intensity of air raids on the city, along with the movement of the frontline, with the Gothic Line turning the Bolognese Apennine into a battlefield, reversed the evacuee situation; most of the people that had left Bologna during the previous months returned to the city (whose historic centre had been declared "Sperrzone", area where military traffic was interdicted, by the German command), and along with them came tens of thousands of inhabitants of the Apennine villages, fleeing the fighting that was now ravaging their valleys. As a consequence of this, in the winter of 1944-1945 the population of Bologna nearly doubled from that of 1940; between residents and Apennine refugees, some 600,000 people were now living in the city.[58][59] Many of the Apennine farmers brought their livestock with them; the ruins of the Neoclassic Teatro del Corso were turned into stables and haylofts, as were other buildings.[60] In order to house the refugees and the homeless, the Municipal Assistance Authority requisitioned 11,450 apartments and built collective accommodation for 60,000 people, but these measures weren't enough; many camped amid the ruins of destroyed buildings.[61]
1945
On 5 and 12 January, strafing attacks took place; on 16 and 17 January minor night attacks were carried out, causing twenty deaths and six wounded on 17 January. On 22 January another strafing attack took place, followed by further minor attacks on 23 and 25 January. More strafing and minor attacks took place on 4, 5, 6 and 8 February, 2, 8, 10, 21 and 22 March (on 8, 10 and 21 March there were six, two and four victims, respectively), 3 and 8 April. On 15 April, after the beginning of
On 19 April a minor attack on Pontevecchio, Borgo Panigale, San Luca and San Michele in Bosco caused four victims; on 20 April another minor attack caused the last civilian casualties of the war in Bologna, nine dead and six wounded. On 21 April 1945, Allied troops entered Bologna; on that day and the following day a few German aircraft dropped some bombs on the city, causing little damage and no casualties. The last air raid alarm ended at seven in the morning of 23 April 1945.[65][66][67]
Damage and casualties
Bologna suffered the highest death toll of any Northern Italian city from air raids: 2,481 civilians were killed, 2,074 were wounded.[68][69][70][71][72][73]
Damage to housing stock was considerable. Out of 13,400 homes that existed in 1940, 1,336 were completely destroyed (9.7%), 1,582 were partially destroyed (11.9%) and 2,964 were damaged (21.6%). Out of 280,000 rooms, 38,500 were completely destroyed, 16,500 were partially destroyed, and 66,000 damaged; altogether, depending on the source, between 43% and 49% of the city was destroyed or damaged.
Of the city's industries, the Ducati plant (the biggest factory of Bologna, with over 6,000 workers) was largely destroyed, and heavy damage was likewise suffered by the SABIEM foundry, the Manifattura Tabacchi, the SASIB, the Officine di Casaralta, the Officine Minganti and other smaller factories.[81][82]
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