About the Allied Bombing of Denmark

During World War II, 3,269 explosives and 22,298 incendiary bombs were dropped on Denmark by Allied – mainly British – aircraft.

More than 25,000 bombs sound like a lot, but compared to what hit other countries, that’s a modest number. The total amount of bombs of 1,000 to 1,500 tonnes is somewhere between a third and a fifth of what was dropped over Germany in a single day.

Most bombs fell during allied flight over Denmark on their way to targets in Germany. Sometimes the bombs hit Denmark due to fault navigation – it was not uncommon for the bombers, when there was bad weather and low visibility, to end up hundreds of kilometres from their targets, so machines believed to be over northern Germany instead were over Jutland when they set off the bombs.

Other times, the bombings were emergency ejections from aircraft that had machine damage or had been hit by German fire and had to take off the bomb load before heading back to Britain.

Finally, in a small number of cases, Denmark was subjected to attacks by so-called last resort. If allied bombers could not find a target in Germany, they attacked factories, ports, railway lines or German military installations in Denmark on the return route.

Source: Schreiber Pedersen

Operation Carthage – Wikipedia

Read about WWII here