GIVEN the nature of warfare in urban environments and the limitations of past technologies, it is regrettably inevitable that civilian targets nearby an area under attack—such as museums—would be struck amid the chaos.
Since World War Two ended in 1945, it has been claimed that the US Army Air Force once accidentally bombed the area where Muzium Negara currently stands.
Did this happen in March 1945, as claimed?
VERDICT:
TRUE
The bombing took place on March 10, 1945.
According to "The Army Air Forces in World War II: Combat Chronology, 1941-1945" by Kit C. Carter and Robert Mueller, this occurred when 24 Boeing B-29 bombers struck a railway yard in then-Japanese-occupied Kuala Lumpur.
The railway yard in question is where KL Sentral stands today, and it was during this raid that the former Selangor Museum was struck; the grounds of this museum now house Muzium Negara
The incident of the accidental bombing itself was confirmed on a resource page for one of the Selangor Museum’s architects, Arthur Bennison Hubback.
“This museum and many of its priceless artefacts were accidentally destroyed in Allied bombing to dislodge the Japanese.
It was mistakenly bombed by a US B-29 bomber of the Allied Forces on 10 March 1945. The National Museum of Malaysia was rebuilt on the same site, completed in 1963,” it said.
This was also cited on Pacific Wrecks, a resource website for crash sites of aircraft shot down in Southeast Asia and across other areas in which fighting against Japanese forces took place in WW2.
“One B-29 accidentally bombs the Selangor Museum next to the train station, killing civilians. The Japanese then used the accidental bombing of civilians in the Penang Shimbun newspaper,” it added.
Interestingly, this wasn’t the first raid by American bombers on Kuala Lumpur in 1945; around 50 of these aircraft attacked the Central Railroad Repair Shops on Feb 19, some bombing from as low as 1,000ft (305m).
REFERENCES:
Carter, Kit C.; Mueller, Robert (1991). The Army Air Forces in World War II: Combat Chronology, 1941-1945. Washington, D.C.: Center for Air Force History.
https://archive.org/stream/
https://www.abhubback.com/
https://pacificwrecks.com/
