Operation Carthage

Operation Carthage, on 21 March 1945, was a British air raid on Copenhagen, Denmark during the Second World War which caused significant collateral damage. The target of the raid was the Shellhus, used as Gestapo headquarters in the city centre. It was used for the storage of dossiers and the torture of Danish citizens during interrogations. The Danish Resistance had long asked the British to conduct a raid against the site. The building was destroyed, 18 prisoners were freed and Nazi anti-resistance activities were disrupted. Part of the raid was mistakenly directed against a nearby school; the raid caused 123 civilian deaths (including 87 schoolchildren and 18 adults at the school).¹ The incident was dramatised in the 2021 Danish film The Shadow in My Eye. A similar raid against the Gestapo headquarters in Aarhus, on 31 October 1944, had succeeded.

Background

The raid was requested by members of the Danish resistance movement to free imprisoned members and to destroy the records of the Gestapo, to disrupt their operations. The RAF initially turned down the request as too risky, due to the location in a crowded city centre and the need for low-level bombing but they approved the raid in early 1945 after repeated requests. Once approval had been given, planning for the raid took several weeks; scale models of the target building and the surrounding city were built for use by pilots and navigators in preparation for a very low-level attack.

Raid

The attacking force consisted of RAF de Havilland Mosquito F.B.VI fighter-bombers of No. 140 Wing RAF (comprising No. 21 Squadron RAF, No. 464 Squadron RAAF, and No. 487 Squadron RNZAF). The aircraft flew in three waves of six aircraft, with two reconnaissance Mosquito B.IVs from the to record the results of the attack. Thirty RAF fighters gave air cover from German aircraft and these also attacked during the raid.