Park Street was "smashed" and the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery hit, 207 people were killed and thousands of houses were destroyed or damaged.

The Jacobean St Peter's Hospital was destroyed, and the 17th century timber-framed Dutch House was damaged and subsequently demolished.

[7] The longest raid on Bristol occurred on 3–4 January 1941, and lasted 12 hours, during which the Luftwaffe dropped their biggest bomb on the city.

It was nicknamed "Satan", and weighed 2,000 kilograms (4,400 lb), measuring over 8 feet (2.4 m) long (without the tail), and 26 inches (66 cm) in diameter.

[10] Bristol was in danger of being hit by V-1 flying bombs, and by the A4/V2 rockets, whose launching platforms had already been built on the Cotentin peninsula in France in 1944.

These were known as starfish sites, and were designed to simulate Bristol under blackout conditions, even to the extent of mimicking the flickering lights of railway marshalling yards.