Which cities were bombed the worst during ww2?

[PanzerKing]

I once read checked out a book tht had mainly pictures of Berlin from June/Juny of 1945, right after the war. I was so shocked at the destruction of Berlin. Entire city blocks with nothing but skeleton structures where buildings used to be.

Of course, a lot of it was from street fighting and artillery, not just bombing.

[frcoplan]

This is out of memory i think i read it in one of the Soviets generals memories, anyway he stated that they dropped more explosives on Berlin in 3 weeks than western allies during the whole bombing campaing. So destruction due to artillery and tactical bombing must have been huge.

frcoplan

[Number24]

Another definition of "most bombed" is suffering the highest number of bombing raids. I don't know about cities, but according to sources Valetta on Malta was the most bombed and Kirkenes in the far north of Norway wcame second as the most frequently bombed towns in Europe. During WWII Kirkenes saw more than 1000 bombing alarms and more than 300 bombing raids.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Number 24,

In 1941 and 1942 Malta was most bombed in terms of raids. However, "only" about 1,500 people died as a result. This is less than in dozens, possibly hundreds of individual raids.

Thus "worst" requires more definition before this can become a useful discussion.

Cheers,

Sid

[Helmut0815]

In Germany, fe. Hamburg, Dresden, Nuremberg and Berlin very heavily bombed, but when you look at the percentage of houses being destroyed, f.e. Wuerzburg and Pforzheim suffered more. There is a german statistic, but I didn´t found it yet in the net. But I think it was mentioned here. Does anyone know the link?

In Germany medium-sized towns suffered most, while metropolises like Cologne (12th, 70% destroyed) or Dresden (16th, 60% destroyed) rank lower.
Number one is the city of Düren, bombed to rubbles and ashes by 51 air raids, 99.2% destroyed. From over 10,000 houses only 15 survived the war untouched.
Flight over Düren in March 45 (USAAF Special Film Project 186): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:SFP ... ueren.webm
After the war there had been plans to abandon the lunar landscape and rebuild the city at another place.
Number two on the list is Wesel (97%) followed by Paderborn (96%).


regards


Helmut

[Natter]

There are many criterias to consider.
In terms of "most frequently bombed", Valletta (Malta) is on top of the list of European cites, followed by Kirkenes in northern Norway.
Kirkenes endured 328 soviet bombing-sorties (1012 air warnings were triggered), concentrated over a relative short period of time towards the end of the war, with up to 50 attacks each month.