The decision to bomb the town was made by RAF Bomber Command in High Wycombe, west of London due to favorable weather conditions predicted for the sixteenth of March. The target had been relatively undamaged and was on the way to other targets including Nuremberg. The half-timber buildings and cramped old city promised the release of a firestorm. The author Detlef Siebert wrote that "Some ... like Würzburg or Pforzheim were primarily selected because they were easy for the bombers to find and destroy. Because they had a medieval centre, they were expected to be particularly vulnerable to fire attack".