On the night of January 17-18, 1943, the Luftwaffe launched a significant attack on London, codenamed as a retaliation for a recent RAF bombing of Berlin. The raid came just three days after RAF bombers had hit the German capital on January 16th, the first such attack since November 1941. German command ordered the attack specifically in response, seeking revenge against London. The attack consisted of two waves of German bombers targeting East London, including the King George V Docks, the West India Docks, and a railway complex on the Isle of Dogs.
However, British air defenses had significantly improved by this stage of the war, and combined with poor weather conditions, the mission proved largely ineffective. Many of the German crews were inexperienced and were deceived by British countermeasures, including decoy fires designed to trick bombers into releasing their payloads prematurely. Of the 115 tons of bombs dropped on Britain that night, only 43 tons actually landed on London itself. The Germans lost six aircraft during the operation.
Following this largely unsuccessful raid, German commanders decided to change their tactics. They turned to a fast, single-seat fighter-bomber that could evade the British defenses: the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. Using a tactic known as “tip and run” raids, groups of a dozen or more Fw 190s would fly across the English Channel at extremely low altitude, below radar detection, to bomb and strafe English coastal towns before fleeing before RAF fighters could respond. The success of these raids led German commanders to consider whether the same tactic could be used to attack London itself.
On January 20, 1943, three days after the night bombing raid, 28 Fw 190s of the 10th Staffel of Jagdgeschwader 26, each carrying a 500 kg bomb, took off from bases in northern France. Escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109s, they crossed the English Channel at wave-top height. British radar failed to detect the incoming raid, which crossed the coast at Beachy Head, flying at treetop height towards East London. The British barrage balloons that protected London were not fully operational at the time because a training exercise was taking place.
German pilots encountered no resistance and bombed and strafed their targets with impunity. Four RAF barrage balloon sites in Lewisham were attacked, and one Fw 190 used its cannons to set a gas holder alight at Sydenham. In Greenwich, one Fw 190 precisely bombed the President’s House at the Royal Naval College, while three more scored direct hits on the Deptford West power station, starting a huge blaze that required 30 fire engines to bring under control. The most notorious strike came when Captain Heinz Schumann dropped his bomb on Sandhurst Road School in Catford, hitting teachers and pupils as they were having lunch.
Whether Schumann deliberately targeted the school has never been settled. A direct hit on the Chichester pub on Evelyn Street in Deptford killed nine people, while machine gun and cannon fire cut down many more as the Fw 190s howled over the city. On reaching the coast, three of JG 26’s Fw 190s were shot down, along with four Messerschmitt Bf 109s from the escort, over the English Channel. It remained clear to all observers that had an air raid alert been sounded, the number of casualties would have been minimal.
In a remarkable coincidence, on the same day the Focke-Wulf 190s attacked London, a lone Belgian RAF pilot flying a 609 Squadron Typhoon carried out a similar attack, strafing Gestapo headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.