Allied Bombing – 80 Years Later

The exhibition “Allied Bombing – 80 Years Later, Kraljevo, Ruins – Mass Grave” will be opened in the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, on Thursday, October 17th, 2024, starting at 7 p.m. The authors of the exhibition are Silvija Krejaković, museum advisоr of the Belgrade City Museum and Aleksandar Berežnov, senior archivist of the Historical Archive Kraljevo.

The Allied bombing of Kraljevo and its surroundings is part of a wider military-strategic plan to stop the Second World War. In order to prevent the grouping of German forces and their movement from the Balkans to the Western Front, the commands of the Balkan Military Air Force (BAF) directed a series of aerial bombing missions against military-strategic targets in the Balkans. During 1944, the German army group “E” was attacked, which was retreating from Greece through the Moravian-Vardar valley in the direction of Yugoslavia.

As among the primary targets of the Allied bomber missions of the 205th RAF Group (Royal Air Force) of the British Army and the 15th US Air Force (15 Air Force), consisting of bombers and fighters, were military airports and railway infrastructure, Kraljevo was targeted by air it strikes as an important railway junction with the pre-war facilities of the Wagon Factory and the Aircraft Factory, as well as a military airport. Human losses and material destruction, as a consequence of the failures and misjudgments of the Allied air attacks, were therefore in the greatest number in the city’s residential districts. The railway and airport colonies, the city hospital, the Gymnasium building, the buildings of the Railway Workshop and Loghouse, the Catholic Church, part of the city cemetery and the Farmer’s Estate were affected. The map of the destruction also included the area around the railway bridge in Western Morava, railway lines: Kraljevo-Kragujevac (Vitanovac, Šumarice, Ratina), Kraljevo-Čačak (Grdica, Adrani, Samaila, Goričani, Zablaće) and Kraljevo-Raška (Čibukovac, Mataruška Banja, Polumir, Ušće). The names of 72 victims in the Kraljevo area and the chronology of the bombing in a series of allied airstrikes from July 22nd, on the night of 10th/11th, have been established. August, September 1st and 2nd, and the last one, September 19th, 1944. According to data established on the basis of sources, apart from 5 soldiers of the Serbian State Guard and the Yugoslav Army in the homeland, 67 victims were civilians. At most, 46 victims died in the night bombing on August 11th. Eight children under the age of 13 were among the victims.

Documents, photographs, lists of the Serbian Orthodox Church, German military reports, reports and aerial photographs of veterans of bombing missions preserved on the Internet testify to the extent of the suffering.