Cleveland: 'We'll keep the river on for you'.
Around 10am there was an ominous buzzing in the air, then over the next 20 minutes 4 waves of American B-24 bombers dropped their payload on the neighborhood of Saint Roch, just behind the Nice Port.
Map of Saint Roch neighborhood in NiceThere were 29 bombers in all, each carrying 5-6 tons of explosives. The targets were a Saint Roch warehouse stocking metal (from the Jette de la Casino?) and the Saint Roch train station which sent the supplies to the North. But the bombs were dropped from such a high altitude, especially with the resulting smoke, that precision was not possible and the bombs fell everywhere…
The catastrophic result: an entire quarter destroyed: 384 people killed, 480 injured, and 600 buildings damaged or completely destroyed.