On the night of April 30, 1944, a German strike force attempted one of the most ambitious precision bombing missions of World War II: a direct attack on a Royal Navy battleship anchored safely in its home port of Plymouth. The target was HMS Howe, a modern King George V-class battleship undergoing maintenance after serving in the Italian campaign. At 45,000 tons fully loaded and armed with ten 14-inch guns, she was being prepared for operations in the Far East and represented a high-value prize for the Luftwaffe. The weapon chosen for the mission was the Fritz X, a pioneering guided glide bomb that had already proven its devastating effectiveness against Allied warships in the Mediterranean.
The Fritz X was different from conventional bombs. Before its introduction, attacking a warship meant dive bombers had to fly directly into the teeth of anti-aircraft defenses to release their ordnance, with no way to steer the falling bomb afterward. The German solution was to build a glide bomb around a heavy armor-piercing warhead. It carried 710 pounds of high explosive, could reach speeds of 767 miles per hour, and was released from as high as 18,000 feet, well beyond the range of the target’s defensive guns.
A radio operator aboard the launch aircraft guided the bomb to its target using an early form of joystick control, sending signals to movable fins on the weapon’s tail. A flare on the bomb allowed the operator to maintain visual contact during its descent. The weapon had already demonstrated its killing power. On September 9, 1943, Fritz X bombs sank the Italian battleship Roma with the loss of 1,300 crew.
Two days later, the light cruiser HMS Uganda was struck off Salerno, the bomb penetrating seven decks before exploding beneath the ship. Days after that, the battleship HMS Warspite was hit, the bomb passing through six decks before detonating in a boiler room, putting her out of action for nine months. The success of these attacks led to a bold plan to strike at the heart of British naval power. The chosen unit was elements of the 100th Combat Wing, based in Toulouse, France.
Twelve Dornier 217 bombers were assigned, each carrying a single Fritz X. This was a night mission, a significant departure from the daylight operations used in the Mediterranean. British anti-aircraft defenses and night fighters made daylight raids over southern England prohibitively costly, and the mission would require navigating the bombers to the target in darkness. The mission was led by Captain Feiffer.
The aircraft took off from Toulouse-Francazal late in the evening of April 29, flying in a single formation while preparing to attack independently once over the target. They routed toward Morlaix on the Brittany coast to pick up a German radio guidance beam for night bombing over England. The plan called for German Junkers Ju 88 reconnaissance aircraft to arrive over Plymouth ahead of the Dorniers, dropping flares to illuminate the target for the Fritz X operators. The Dorniers arrived first, however, reaching the area around 3:30 a.
m. British radar had detected the incoming raid. Night fighters were scrambled, anti-aircraft batteries were alerted, and crucially, smoke generators were activated to shroud HMS Howe and the dockyard in thick artificial fog. The visual guidance system that made Fritz X effective was rendered nearly useless.
The conditions over the target were so poor that Feiffer circled Plymouth four times searching for a gap in the smoke screen before releasing his bomb. Most of the other crews dropped their weapons blindly by estimation, with most bombs falling into the sea. One bomb struck a playing field in Orestone, leaving a large crater and damaging surrounding houses. Of the twelve bombs carried, only four hit land, and damage was minimal.
British night fighters now closed in. Squadron Leader D. J. Williams of the Royal Canadian Air Force, flying a Mosquito Mark 12 with No.
406 Squadron, shot down two Dornier 217s. The first, at 3:45 a. m. , was Captain Feiffer’s aircraft, hit in its right engine.
Feiffer crash-landed in Plymouth Harbor and was listed as missing in action. One crew member was killed, while another two survived and were captured at Whitsand Bay. The second Dornier crashed on a farm in Devon at 4:02 a. m.
Three crew members parachuted to safety and were captured, while a fourth was killed. The raid claimed the distinction of being the only attempt by the Luftwaffe to strike England with Fritz X guided bombs. German reconnaissance planes had identified targets in Plymouth back in April 1944, and HMS Howe had been designated a key target, but the mission failed because the flare-dropping aircraft never arrived on time and the British smoke screen was quickly and effectively deployed.
The attack was a sound concept badly executed, costing the Germans two of their twelve aircraft with nothing to show for it.