Carthage
Operation Carthage took place on March 21st, 1945, 80 years ago this month. It was a precision bombing attack conducted by RAF 2TAF (2nd Tactical Air Force) on the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen as World War II was drawing to a close. The attack was carried out by three waves of six RAF Mosquitos flying at rooftop height.
The target was located in the center of a densely populated area, making precision essential. By this late stage of the war the RAF had become very skilled in low level bombing attacks, flying just above rooftop height and lobbing bombs into the fronts of buildings.
The damaged wing of the Shellhus and one of the attacking Mosquitos.
Shell House (Shellhus) in Copenhagen had been taken over by the Nazi Gestapo when Germany invaded and occupied Denmark. It was used by the Gestapo against the Danish Resistance movement as a prison, and interrogation and torture center. It also housed the Gestapo’s files on suspected members of the Resistance.
The raid was successful in destroying the Gestapo headquarters but was marred by a tragic accident. One of the first Mosquitos struck a lamppost (such are risks of low-level flying) and crashed into a nearby Catholic girls’ school, the Institut Jeanne d’Arc. Several aircraft in the later waves bombed the school, thinking it was the burning Shellhus. Alas, 87 of the girls were killed and 67 were wounded. Ten nuns died.
No more Gestapo HQ.
The Gestapo’s offices were totally destroyed. A total of 102 German and Danish personnel were killed, and 8 prisoners. No less than 18 prisoners were able to escape.
The RAF sent a total 18 Mosquito Mark VI fighter/bombers each with two 1,000lb bombs, 2 Mosquitos to film the event, and 30 P51 Mustang fighters as escorts. Four Mosquitos and 2 Mustangs were lost. The loss of 4 Mosquitos out of 18 was not unusually high for bomber aircraft; the RAF lost half its bomber crews in the war.
4 x cannons, and 4 x 500lb bombs.
Aarhus and Jericho
Operation Carthage followed two other remarkable attacks on prisons holding Resistance fighters. In October, 1944, six months before Carthage, 25 2TAF Mosquitos managed to destroy a single building in the University of Aarhus in Jutland which housed another Gestapo headquarters. This was part of the university dorms and immediately adjacent to hospital buildings.
* * *
Before that, in February, 1944, nine Mosquitos attacked a prison in northern France holding members of the French Resistance, shortly before many of them were due to be executed. The plan, in the aptly named Operation Jericho, was for Mosquitos to knock down the prison walls to let the prisoners escape while they were outside in the exercise yard.
A total of 258 prisoners escaped from Amiens prison, although 37 others were shot by prison guards as they ran for freedom.
Operation Jericho — the walls come tumbling down.
I think it is very important to remember, in these days of GPS and Starlink and laser guidance and Google maps and everything else, that these operations were conducted without any modern navigational aids and that the weapons were completely unguided. First you had to find the right town by dead reckoning, and then the right street and then the right building. Then you had to lob a bomb into the target from a height of 100 feet at 200 mph.
These were daylight raids, so you could count on enemy fighters and antiaircraft fire before during and after the attack.
As the RAF pilots used to say, ‘piece of cake!’
