When the bombing raids took place both the German and the British planes tried to drop their bombs where they would do the most damage.

Dropping bombs from a fast flying plane accurately is far from easy, and this map was produced for a British raid on Dresden in 1943.

The colours and the shading were intended to help the planes drop their bombs on target. Red indicates the city centre, the red lines the suburbs, the dark colour the railways and docks and the blue shading and crosses other target areas.

Note

A year after this map was made, Dresden suffered one of the heaviest raids of the war when 2000 bombers attacked the city. 65,000 incendiaries (or firebombs) were dropped on the area marked in red on this map, and the city was destroyed by the firestorm they created. Thousands of people were killed.

If you go to the other map of Dresden in this section you can see what the city looked like before this raid took place.