The original Australian War Memorial caption to this photograph, probably written when the image was taken in May 1945, reads 'Weight of Bomber Command attacks on Hamburg. A grey, grimly-wrecked and deserted city'. This important seaport was one of the more bombed cities in Germany by both the British and Americans during World War II, with 75 percent of its built-up area being destroyed. No. 467 Squadron RAAF took part in the last major raid on the city on 9 April 1945, a daylight operation carried out by 263 Halifax, 160 Lancaster and 17 Mosquito bombers. German writer and novelist WG Sebald wrote what it felt like to roam as a boy around the bombed-out areas of a small rural town: The other ruin was the building known as the Herz-Schloss ... nothing was left of it now but its cast-iron garden railings and the cellars. By the 1950s the plot of land, where a few handsome trees had survived the catastrophe, was entirely overgrown, and as children we often spent whole afternoons in this wilderness created in the middle of the town. I remember that I never felt at ease going down the steps to the cellars. They smelled of damp and decay, and I always feared I might bump into the body of an animal or a human corpse. [WG Sebald, On the natural history of destruction, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2003, p.76; AWM UK2865]
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