The bombing of Wieluń was an air raid on the Polish town of Wieluń by the "Luftwaffe" on 1 September 1939. The "Luftwaffe" started bombing Wieluń at 04:40, five minutes before the shelling of Westerplatte, which has traditionally been considered the beginning of World War II in Europe. The air raid on the town was one of the first aerial bombings of the war. About 1,300 civilians were killed, hundreds were injured, and 90 percent of the town centre was destroyed. The casualty rate was more than twice as high as Guernica. A 1989 Sender Freies Berlin documentary stated that there were no military or industrial targets in the area, except for a small sugar factory in the outskirts of the town. Furthermore, Trenkner stated that German bombers first destroyed the town's hospital. Two attempts, in 1978 and 1983, to prosecute individuals for the bombing of the Wieluń hospital were dismissed by West German judges when prosecutors stated that the pilots had been unable to make out the nature of the structure due to fog.