In 1981 Matthew Cooper wrote that the most significant event in 1943 for the was the increase in strategic bombing, the RAF and USAAF dropping of bombs, more than 300 per cent of the 1942 total. Bomber Command dropped of bombs in area attacks and killed about 181,000 civilians. Essen in the Ruhr was attacked on 5/6 March with of bombs, the first of the 43 attacks of the Battle of the Ruhr. The British dispatched 18,506 sorties against targets marked by Oboe, accurate to , dropping about of bombs. In one raid, in fifteen minutes, 90 per cent of Wuppertal-Barmen was destroyed and 2,450 people killed. On 10 April, after visiting Essen to see for himself, Josef Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, wrote in his diary,
