WW2 | Did British Maps Mislead the Luftwaffe?

Luftwaffe Bombers.

January 21, 2018 – When Hitler decided to move on from the London Blitz, having failed to break British morale, he opted to drop bombs by night all over Britain. These raids were collectively called the Baedeker Bombing, after the famed German travel guides. 

The Luftwaffe pilots used as their bombing guides German "Operation Sea Lion" maps and photographs. The Nazis planned to invade Britain and the German military prepared for this by generating maps of Britain with the bridges and factories marked on them.

What the Germans did was pick up British postcards for their target areas, as well as British Ordnance Survey maps that were marked with symbols of bridges, railway junctions, airfields and munitions factories.

Maps for the planned German invasion are available in Oxford at the Bodleian. They require a day's notice or more for retrieval from the library's off-site storage. The Bodleian has prepared a small book on the German invasion and was selling it in 2007 for £5.50 (http://bit.ly/2nhRFfS).

The Motor Works are identified in the Sea Lion invasion
maps under the L and E of COWLEY. But they are not
identified as RAF aircraft repair shops. The Motor
Works are shown as #13; the Postcard Number is 14.

Although the Luftwaffe dropped 4,100 bombs on Oxfordshire in World War II, Oxford was spared except for a couple of stray bombs. 

I found hard to understand why so little attention was paid to a major military target in Oxford, the Cowley Motor Works, where damaged military aircraft were repaired and sent back into service, sometimes using parts salvaged from German planes. The answer seems to be that the German military was using out-of-date maps and did not have information to update them.

Looking at the German maps, the Cowley factory appears to have been spared because it is not marked as a military-production site on the old maps the Germans used. 

The Morris Motor Works are identified on the Sea Lion invasion papers as No. 14,
whereas it is No. 13 on the map.

The maps and related postcards are available at the New York Public Library, for which they were acquired in September 1950. They are also stored off-site and require a day's notice to retrieve. 

The NYPL will routinely hold books for a week at the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division on the First Floor of the Schwartzman Building. This building is the name of the Main Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue – the building with the two lions in front, opposite 500 Fifth Avenue, where the Oxford North America Office is located.

WW2: Baedeker Raids Start, Apr 23, 1942

Target Handbook for
 the Baedeker Raids, 1942.

Apr 23, 2017—This day in 1942 Germans began their “Baedeker Raids” on England, bombing several medieval cities. Almost 1,000 English civilians were killed in the bombing attacks.

Unlike the earlier bombings of English cities in 1940-41, which were strategic, to kill civilians and destroy buildings to weaken  the English public's will to fight with Germany, the April-June 1942 bombings of cities were targeted at historic cities. They were a retaliation for the RAF raid on the German port of Lübeck on March 28, when 234 British bombers destroyed 2,000 buildings, killed 312 civilians and left 15,000 Lübeck residents homeless.

In reprisal, the Luftwaffe attacked English cathedral cities. The Germans called their air attacks “Baedeker Raids” for the German publisher of its famed tourist guidebooks. Exeter was the first city to be attacked. Much of the city was damaged and 70 people were killed. Baron Gustav Braun von Sturm of the Luftwaffe said: “’We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide." The task was given to Luftflotte 3.

Exeter was bombed again twice in the next fortnight. Bath was attacked April 25 and 26, York on April 28 resulting in the destruction of 15th-century Guildhall, and Norwich on April 27 and 29. The RAF then launched a "1000 Bomber" raid on Cologne (Köln). The Luftwaffe responded by targeting Canterbury, which was bombed on May 31, June 2 and June 6. It was reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi's statement: "An eye for an eye and the whole world is blind."

Despite the tit-for-tat vandalism, Oxford and Cambridge were spared. Oxford is on any three-star list in England. Dr Malcolm Graham, Head of Oxfordshire Studies at Westgate Library, in his book Oxfordshire At War, says that Oxford's escape from Baedeker raids "has never been satisfactorily explained."

Oxford had been one of the cities included in the invasion plans for 1940, which included only central Oxford, not the farther-out Morris Radiators factory on Woodstock Road or the Cowley works. A squadron of Heinkel III bombers was reportedly on its way to obliterate Morris Radiators and probably Cowley on August 30, 1940. It was attacked by RAF fighters and turned back, and no second attempt to bomb Cowley was tried.

See also: Why didn't Hitler bomb Oxford?