Bombings of Switzerland in World War II

Bombings of Switzerland in World War II consisted of initially sporadic bombing events that became more frequent during the later stage of World War II.

Switzerland was a neutral country during World War II, but adjacent to and at times almost completely surrounded by Axis countries. On several occasions, Allied bombing raids hit targets in Switzerland resulting in fatalities and property damage. Such events led to diplomatic exchanges. While Allied forces explained the causes of violations as navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilots’ errors, in Switzerland fear was expressed that some neutrality violations were intended to exert pressure on the country to end its economic cooperation with Nazi Germany. In addition to bombing raids, air attacks by individual fighter planes strafed Swiss targets toward the end of the war.

During World War II, Swiss air space was violated by both sides. The Swiss Air Force was not in a position in terms of size of force or modern equipment to defend Swiss air space effectively. Thus, during the war, over 7,000 siren alarms were initiated in Switzerland. Some Allied bombers took advantage of this situation by using Swiss air space as a safer route than enemy air space on their bombing runs to and from targets in Germany, but more often, bombers in distress preferred to descend to neutral Switzerland for asylum rather than in German territory. As a result, Switzerland ultimately interned 1,700 American airmen.

From 1941 to 1942, allied bombers very rarely flew over Switzerland, because the Swiss authorities, under German pressure, prescribed black-outs in order to complicate navigation for the U.S. and British air crews. As the neutral Swiss territory was safe for allied bombers, Germany also pressured the Swiss into forcing the allied air crews to land in Switzerland, instead of letting them continue bombing runs.

The daylight bombing of Schaffhausen on 1 April 1944 by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was the most serious of all incidents. Approximately 50 B-24 Liberators of a larger force misidentified Schaffhausen as their target Ludwigshafen am Rhein near Mannheim (about 235 km north of Schaffhausen), and dropped bombs that led to 40 fatalities, numerous injuries, and property damage. At the insistence of the Swiss government for an explanation, Allied investigations into the incident found that bad weather broke up the American formation over France, and that high winds that nearly doubled the ground speed of the bombers confused the navigators. (Two other widely scattered cities in Germany and France were also mistakenly bombed during the same mission.) As Schaffhausen is situated on the right bank (north side) of the Rhine river, it was apparently assumed to be the German city. By October 1944, 4 million dollars had been paid in restitution.

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