York city centre — the Baedeker raid of 29 April 1942
29 April 1942 · York, North Yorkshire
View this record on the map →- Date
- 29 April 1942
- Record type
- Historic bombing area
- Bomb type
- mixed
- Location
- York, North Yorkshire
- Position accuracy
- Confirmed event, area-level point only (exact site not verified)
What happened
Between about 02:36 and 04:40 on 29 April 1942, roughly 70 aircraft attacked York with high explosive and incendiaries. It was a Baedeker raid — a reprisal attack aimed at a historic city chosen for its cultural value rather than its industry — and it fell hardest not on the medieval centre but on the terraced streets of Clifton, Holgate and Leeman Road.
Casualty note
Published totals for the raid are 92 (History of York) or 94 (BBC, Raids Over York). The 94 figure matches the number of individually named dead in the project's casualty register dated 29 April 1942. This is a CITY-WIDE total for the night and belongs to no single location — the per-site figures on the other York records are counts of named individuals recorded at those addresses.
Also worth knowing
York Minster was not hit. The Guildhall, St Martin-le-Grand and the railway station were. Published counts of the high-explosive bombs dropped that night range from 69 to 95, and the Raids Over York project itself declines to settle on one; 14 bombs failed to explode.
Photographs
Photographs of the Baedeker raid
Raids Over York has a large photographic record of this night. The images belong to the York Press, Explore York, the National Railway Museum and private collectors — not to us, and not to the project either — so this links to them rather than copying them.