Baby Blitz

Operation Steinbock
Part of World War II
Air Marshal Sir Roderic Hill inspects the wreckage of a Junkers Ju 188E-1 belonging to 2 Staffel Kampfgeschwader 6 (Bomber Wing 6) which crashed in Essex, 21 March 1944.
Date 21 January – 29 May 1944 Location Southern United Kingdom Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom	Germany
Commanders and leaders
Roderic Hill Frederick Alfred Pile	Dietrich Peltz Hugo Sperrle
Strength
~ 25 squadrons	524 bombers
Casualties and losses
1 destroyed in combat 5 damaged in combat 1 to friendly-fire 22 aircraft lost to other causes	329 destroyed

Baby Blitz or Operation Steinbock (German: Unternehmen Steinbock) was a strategic bombing campaign by the German air force (the Luftwaffe) during the Second World War. It targeted southern England and lasted from January to May 1944. Steinbock was the last strategic air offensive by the German bomber arm during the conflict.

In late 1943 the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive was gathering momentum against Germany. The Allied air forces were conducting a strategic bombing campaign day and night against German industrial cities. In retaliation, Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to prepare a bombing operation against the United Kingdom. The bombing offensive also served as propaganda value for the German public and domestic consumption. The operation ran parallel to Bomber Command's campaign against Berlin (November 1943 – March 1944).

The German Luftflotte 3 (Air Fleet 3) assembled 474 bomber aircraft for the offensive. The attacks were mainly aimed at and around the Greater London area. In Britain, it was known as the Baby Blitz due to the much smaller scale of operations compared to The Blitz, the campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940–1941. The operation began in January and ended in May 1944. It achieved very little, and the German force suffered a loss of some 329 machines during the five months of operations—an average of 77 per month—before it was abandoned. Other senior Luftwaffe commanders intended to use the bomber force against the Western Allied invasion fleet, which they predicted would land in northern France sometime in the spring or summer of 1944.

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