On 24 April 1942, the Luftwaffe opened what became known as the Baedeker raids, with Exeter among the first British cities struck. These attacks were retaliatory in character and aimed not chiefly at industrial concentration, but at places valued for their cultural and historic significance. For the RAF and for Britain more broadly, the raids were a reminder that the air war had long since moved beyond purely military targets in any narrow sense. Cities, civilians and heritage were all exposed to attack from above.
Retaliation and the logic of air war
The term ‘Baedeker raids’ came from the notion that historic towns identified in travel guides had become targets. Whatever the label, the essential point was that these were attacks intended to punish and unsettle as well as to destroy. Exeter’s selection reflected that logic. The city was not attacked because of symbolism alone, but symbolism plainly mattered. In the broader context of 1942, the raids demonstrated how air power could be used for reprisal, propaganda and psychological effect alongside physical damage.
For Britain’s air defence system, such attacks posed familiar yet still painful challenges. Warning, interception, civil defence and rescue all formed part of the national response, but none could guarantee immunity. The RAF had already fought through the Blitz and understood that even where the enemy did not pursue decisive strategic effect, bombing could still inflict heavy civilian suffering and disruption. Exeter’s experience was thus part of a larger wartime pattern in which local tragedy and national endurance were closely linked.
Why Exeter’s ordeal is remembered
Historic cities carry memory in their buildings as well as in their people. When such places are bombed, the damage is measured not only in casualties and wreckage, but in wounds to continuity and identity. That was part of what made the Baedeker raids so resonant. They sought to turn cultural value itself into a vulnerability. In doing so, they revealed something harsh about total war: the enemy may attack what a society treasures precisely because it is treasured.
From an RAF perspective, these raids also reinforce the importance of home defence as part of the service’s wartime identity. The RAF’s story in the Second World War is often told through its overseas offensive operations, but the defence of the United Kingdom remained an enduring obligation. Every attack on British cities renewed that responsibility and reminded the service that air power’s consequences were felt most directly by civilians on the ground.
The opening of the Baedeker raids on 24 April 1942 deserves remembrance as more than a footnote to the bombing war. It marked the start of a distinct phase of retaliatory attack directed against places of historic character, with Exeter suffering early in that sequence. The raids did not break British resistance, but they did leave scars in lives and streetscapes that lasted long after the bombs had fallen. In that enduring damage lies much of their historical significance.