# Effectiveness of Heavy Bomber defensive fires vs LW Fighters



## kettbo (Nov 16, 2012)

I cannot seem to find a thread with the answer to this:

How effective were defensive fires from the B-17 and B-24 bomber boxes?

With the STURM attacks 1944, we have motivated pilots in armored planes (sometimes more armor, sometimes less), big radial engine up front usually armed with 2x 20mm and 2x 30mm cannon (weapons fit varied) vs tail gunners, sometimes turret gunners with twin .50s. Pretty easy firing solution for the tail gunners, tougher for all the other positions and fleeting targets. We have attacks from other angles, simultaneous attacks, etc, etc for other time periods. 

I have seen the shoot down claims for some of the missions. Often less than the LW recorded, totally understandable. But, am curious if anyone has studied this in any depth? Would be pretty interesting if someone has looked into a few missions, looked into the claims from DEF FIRE only. Wondering if there is any LW study addressing their losses from various attack angles.

Would be thrilled to see something like Fighters engaged, fighters damaged (how much), fighters shot down, pilot losses etc. and successes.
Curious too how the Bf109G holds up to DEF FIRE compared to the FW190

Thanks in advance


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## davparlr (Nov 17, 2012)

Good question. I am anxious to see good data on this as well.


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## Juha (Nov 17, 2012)

I haven’t time to dig up any numbers, but the def fire was fairly effective, it forced LW to adopt massed frontal attacks because easier rear attacks were too ineffective and costly. Of course gunners' claims were vastly exaggerated but they shot down substantial number of LW fighters and the firepower of US bomber formations left permanent impression to the memories of at least some LW aces. And the need of special Sturm units with specially armed and armoured planes was in itself a proof that the defensive fire of USAAF combat boxes was fairly effective.

Juha


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## drgondog (Nov 17, 2012)

Juha said:


> I haven’t time to dig up any numbers, but the def fire was fairly effective, it forced LW to adopt massed frontal attacks because easier rear attacks were too ineffective and costly. Of course gunners' claims were vastly exaggerated but they shot down substantial number of LW fighters and the firepower of US bomber formations left permanent impression to the memories of at least some LW aces. And the need of special Sturm units with specially armed and armoured planes was in itself a proof that the defensive fire of USAAF combat boxes was fairly effective.
> 
> Juha



I agree - the key point is that the defensive firepower was not enough to impose the will of the daylight bombing campaign without unacceptable losses. There is a reason the 8th AF lost more KIA than the USMC during WWII.


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## meatloaf109 (Nov 17, 2012)

Hence the need for the long range escorts.


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## stona (Nov 17, 2012)

drgondog said:


> I agree - the key point is that the defensive firepower was not enough to impose the will of the daylight bombing campaign without unacceptable losses. There is a reason the 8th AF lost more KIA than the USMC during WWII.



And there are reasons that those losses were mitigated by large and long range fighter escorts.

My records for Luftwaffe losses in Reich defence don't specify how a Luftwaffe fighter was shot down but it is noticeable that the rate of loss escalates around the time that comprehensive fighter escort was established and deeper raids became normal.

In the months September -December 1942 the Luftwaffe lost 29 fighters and 18 pilots (KIA/MIA)
In the same months in 1943 it lost 130 fighters and 68 pilots.

Of course its a biased comparison,in 1943 there were many more raids which spent much longer in enemy airspace,but I doubt that it was the bombers defensive armament doing the damage.

Steve


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## davebender (Nov 17, 2012)

> In the months September -December 1942 the Luftwaffe lost 29 fighters and 18 pilots (KIA/MIA)
> In the same months in 1943 it lost 130 fighters and 68 pilots.


That doesn't sound right. 

130 fighter aircraft lost over Germany during September to December 1943 is a very small number relative to the number of German aircraft sorties.


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## drgondog (Nov 17, 2012)

stona said:


> And there are reasons that those losses were mitigated by large and long range fighter escorts.
> 
> My records for Luftwaffe losses in Reich defence don't specify how a Luftwaffe fighter was shot down but it is noticeable that the rate of loss escalates around the time that comprehensive fighter escort was established and deeper raids became normal.
> 
> ...



Caldwell "Day Fighters in Defense of the Reich" has as follows: Ac Destroyed/KIA-MIA/
Q4 1942 35/21
Q1 1943 48/23
Q2 1943 125/52
Q3 1943 320/136
Q4 1943 573/330
Q1 1944 1263/679
Q2 1944 1288/704

Caldwell has accounted only for LuftMitte and Reich as well as LuftFlotte Reich defending against 8th and 9th AF.


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## stona (Nov 17, 2012)

Probably my maths,or I added the wrong figures......I added up from one of Caldwell's books 

The correct figures illustrate the point even better.

Steve


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## drgondog (Nov 17, 2012)

stona said:


> Probably my maths,or I added the wrong figures......I added up from one of Caldwell's books
> 
> The correct figures illustrate the point even better.
> 
> Steve



Steve - Table A, Page 449-450. The losses match up pretty well with 8th/9th AF FC credits but then you have to subtract RAF and credis and 8th AF BC to sort out the over credits... The other aspec t is that a lot of the credits in 1944 were German aircraft which crash landed (and credited as a kill) but were not salvaged - deemed less than 60% destroyed.


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## Erich (Nov 17, 2012)

hate to say it but you will never know the proper 100 % defined US 8th and 15th AF Bomber crew mg credits, too many variables, the two missions alone for credits of LW fighters in August/October 1943 over Schweinfurth and Regensburg alone should warrant a good warning right up till the last bomber missions over Germany in spring of 45.

by the way even with SturmFw's laying on their sides and exposing their bellys to bomber crews .50's as they zoomed through the bomber pulks - LW fighters were still hit and shot down.


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## TheMustangRider (Nov 17, 2012)

Another variable to consider when it comes to bomber's defensive fire is formation integrity.
It's well referenced by historians and veterans alike how tight combat box formations suffered less attritional rates than loose or scattered formations.
Flak, fighters and weather of course conspired time and again against the 8th combat boxes.


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## kettbo (Nov 18, 2012)

Thanks for reminding me, YES, massed DEF FIRES certainly forced different tactics, forced the LW pilots to flinch closing in....and yes, even the armored STURM planes got shot up and shot down.

For my amusement, I got out several of my small scale B17s, mounted them onto gaming stands. I have been wanting to do this for ages. This lead me to dig out a low-altitude scaled gaming mat or two, the camera, etc.

Pretty sure I have something close to a correct Bmr Group formation







Long ago I painted these Bf109G6 in JG300 markings with underwing cannon. These were to match a buddy's Schwarm. Having been on the threads here, doubt this is correct...oh well






The HOHEN guys arrive, Mustangs fast-tracking to intercept, then a FURBALL











then the STURM element arrives
















Lots of painting to do on the planes and some high altitude terrain mats to create


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## stona (Nov 18, 2012)

The formation of the Squadrons within the Group formation changed throughout the war. A scale model,no matter how good,can't give the iimpression of the amount of space within the Group formation,nor the differences in altitude. Early versions of the bomber box were 3,000ft "tall",in scale about 30 B-17 wingspans. Even late war boxes were still 7-800 ft from highest to lowest.

The box had to be a compromise between a formation offering mutual fire support and one allowing a concentrated bombing pattern,preferably without higher aircraft striking those in lower formations with their bombs. It was also important that a single shell burst should not damage several aircraft. Much careful thought was given to each evolution of the box.

Like an atom there was more nothing than something in the overall formation(s).

Cheers

Steve


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## Juha (Nov 18, 2012)

Yes, it is a well established fact that while fairly effective the defensive firepower of US heavy bomber formations wasn't effective enough to allow sustainable unescorted deep-penetration bombing campaign in ETO. Especially after Germans had had time to figure out effective counter measures. (new tactics, heavier armament etc)

Juha


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## drgondog (Nov 18, 2012)

Nicely done George..


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## Njaco (Nov 18, 2012)

Grabbed this from the book; "Half a Wing, Three Engines and a Prayer".....

.


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## davebender (Nov 18, 2012)

When enemy fighter aircraft have enough firepower to cripple a heavy bomber on a single firing pass nothing can protect them except escort fighters.


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## tyrodtom (Nov 18, 2012)

Most WW2 fighters already had the armament to bring a heavy bomber down in a single pass. If they were allowed to approach, undisturbed from the rear and concentrate on the bombers vital areas, it wouldn't take long. 
That was what the on board turrets were there for, them and the fire from nearby bombers forced the attackers to shorten their firing passes, make them break off attacks early, or force them to make firing from angles hard for the turret guns to track, but just as hard for the attackers to get strikes from.

All the uparming, uparmoring, and changes in attack stratagies by the aircraft tasked with bomber destuction is proof of the effectiveness of the bombers defensive firepower.


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## Njaco (Nov 18, 2012)

> All the uparming, uparmoring, and changes in attack stratagies by the aircraft tasked with bomber destuction is proof of the effectiveness of the bombers defensive firepower.



is that proof of the effectiveness of defensive firepower or quantity of bombers?


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## Erich (Nov 18, 2012)

totally the latter Chris, good observation by the way .....


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## tyrodtom (Nov 18, 2012)

They uparmed because they needed weapons that could disable a bomber quicker and from a longer range, thus exposing the fighters to less defensive fire.

The changing of attack strategies was enable the fighters to approach the bombers in a way that exposed the fighters to the least amount of return fire for the minimum amount of time.

I shouldn't have to explain why they uparmored.


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## tyrodtom (Nov 18, 2012)

And don't forget the FW190's modified for the bomber destruction missions were so over heavy they had to be protected from the escort fighters by lighter standard FWs or Me109s. I think it's evident why they had to do this.


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## Erich (Nov 18, 2012)

actually SturmFw tactics brought the Fw's within feet of US heavies and thus gave them more time to be exposed to defensive fire in from attacks from the rear. Höhenjägern or no the Fw's still attacked from the rear no matter what if they were overwhelmed by US escorts or not.

Dang wish my old web-site with Neil Page on the Sturmjager was still up and running...................not to brag but it was the best thing on the web, still is for that matter if you can find any of the old pages as much of the questions on this thread were answered.


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## tyrodtom (Nov 18, 2012)

How effective were the SturmFW tactics ?

But still the fact that they had to employ special aircraft and tactics sort of indicates the defensive fire wasn't totally useless.


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## drgondog (Nov 18, 2012)

Defensive fire was clearly effective, but from March 1944 to the end of WWII no attack from LW was guaranteed to be permitted for more than one pass. A 7'Oclock to 5'Oclock pass from the rear in a heavily armored Fw 190A-8 was the best chance to have the highest kill/sortie approach - and the 190A-8 Sturm suffered grievous losses from July through November, 1944. After November 1944 they were largely ineffective due to near complete coverage by Mustang escorts and superb bomber to fighter communication on C-Channel.

Erich knows more about Sturm tactics than any historian I have encountered.


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## tyrodtom (Nov 18, 2012)

I was reading some of the old post about the SturmFW's, very impressive. But even they got shot down by defensive fire sometimes.

Don't think i'm trying to say the defensive fire was enough, because combat proved different and quick. But it was a factor that even the SturmFWs couldn't ignore.

Without escorts, daylight bombing would not have been possibile for very long.


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## bobbysocks (Nov 18, 2012)

tyrodtom said:


> How effective were the SturmFW tactics ?
> 
> But still the fact that they had to employ special aircraft and tactics sort of indicates the defensive fire wasn't totally useless.



it wasnt useless...it was effective.... just not effective enough. it did not deter the LW from attacking but only to adopt other tactics and modifications to their aircraft. the LW inflicted enough losses on the usaac that they stopped daylight bombing...the bombers didnt inflict enough losses on the LW to stop them from coming up after them. it was a war of attrition that the usaac was on the wrong side of. the LW was losing planes and pilots but the bombers were losing more.


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## Njaco (Nov 18, 2012)

Erich, I may have those pages from your website saved on a CD. What are you looking for specifically?


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## TheMustangRider (Nov 18, 2012)

Great job there Kettbo


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## kettbo (Nov 19, 2012)

Thanks gents but they'll all look better some day when all the goodies are painted....and they are on a high-altitude terrain mats
Long way between now and THAT point.
Glad that you liked the visual. With the large size of the miniatures to the ground scale they are, by necessity, bunched-up. Why? The game boards cannot be infinite.

OK, so far we have determined that it was an escalating battle. More defensive weapons on the bombers. More and heavier weapons on the fighters. Edge going to the fighters in this battle, prohibitive losses prevented by long range fighters. So now, if my miniature fighters are approaching the big ol bomber miniatures, without HARD NUMBERS, now it is WILD ASS GUESS as to potential hits on the fighters, and mixed levels of damage up to destruction of the plane and or pilot
Will advise on some simple but common sense resolution to this. Do NOT want lots of time-consuming die rolls.

and YES, would have loved to see Erich's STURM site


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## CobberKane (Nov 19, 2012)

bobbysocks said:


> it wasnt useless...it was effective.... just not effective enough. it did not deter the LW from attacking but only to adopt other tactics and modifications to their aircraft. the LW inflicted enough losses on the usaac that they stopped daylight bombing...the bombers didnt inflict enough losses on the LW to stop them from coming up after them. it was a war of attrition that the usaac was on the wrong side of. the LW was losing planes and pilots but the bombers were losing more.



That just about sums it up. Certainly attacking a formation of B-17s in a fighter would have been a dangerous propoisition, but perhaps not as dangerous as being in the B-17! At the end of the day the pre-war concept of unescorted mutually supportive daylight bombers being able adequately protect themselves was proven whishful thinking. The Luftwaffe won the air war over Europe in 43-44. But we all know what happened after that.


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## stona (Nov 19, 2012)

Towards the end of the war the squadron formation within the group changed from this







As posted in Njaco's diagram of a bomber box to this






Is this a reflection of the Luftwaffe's inability to mount effective interceptions or something else?

I suspect that the newer formation would provide a more concentrated bombing pattern.

Steve


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## tyrodtom (Nov 19, 2012)

It doesn't have the spacing on those formations, but it looks like it would be more hazardous to approach from the rear, and harder to get inside the formation.
Coming from the rear, you'd have a lot of tailgunners concentrating on you , from a lot of different angles.


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## davebender (Nov 19, 2012)

Now for the bigger question.

Were all those B-17 and B-24 gunners effective enough to justify the large weight and aerodynamic drag penalty?


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## Njaco (Nov 19, 2012)

I think it might be obvious that those penalties are null when compared to what the Allies were trying to achieve. Its more like quantity of bombers and amount of ordinance placed on target. Whats more effective: a bomber going 350mph on a target with a light load or one that goes 150mph with a larger load? If the latter is the answer then you need many of them for mutual protection and firepower along with destruction of target.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 19, 2012)

Once you have designed and built the bombers (or set up production lines) it is too late to change your mind. Leaving the turrets and guns off, covering the holes and leaving the gunners behind _WILL_ do wonders for the ability to carry more bombs and/or fuel but will do very little for speed, either top speed or cruise. 15-25mph might be all you can expect on top speed. 

You have to decide from day #1 to go the unarmed route and you can't hedge you bets and just put in a few guns. Even a few guns will slow you down and will be nearly useless for an _effective_ defense if if a few fighters were shot down by single 7.7-8mm machine guns.


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## davebender (Nov 19, 2012)

You can cover only the vulnerable tail as the USAF did for the B-47 and Germany did for the Me-410A. I don't think these weapons caused much aerodynamic drag.


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## bobbysocks (Nov 19, 2012)

davebender said:


> Now for the bigger question.
> 
> Were all those B-17 and B-24 gunners effective enough to justify the large weight and aerodynamic drag penalty?



how many guns would you strip? off the top of my head i would say, yes, they were worth the drag penalty to give the crew somewhat of a fighting chance. with out any arms it would have been a turkey shoot. the lw could have leasurely moved through the boxes getting close and taking their time to get a good shot. and obviously the usaac thought it was worth it as well because when the LW started doing frontal attacks...what did the 17 get...more guns up front. i would say it was a necessary evil....all those guns are even more important to the crew when that 17 or 24 is limping home by itself with an engine out.


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## tyrodtom (Nov 19, 2012)

davebender said:


> You can cover only the vulnerable tail as the USAF did for the B-47 and Germany did for the Me-410A. I don't think these weapons caused much aerodynamic drag.


 But a B-47 was designed from the onset with just a tail gunner in mind. B-17, B-24 were from the beginning designed with several gun positions, ( greatly added to later), with added room and structure for those positions in the design. Just removing those turrets, and fairing over the positions would gain some speed and lift, but you can't remove all the structure, and space designed in to for those turrets.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 19, 2012)

B-47 also had an abundance of power compared to _ANY_ piston powered plane. 

I also wonder how much the defensive guns on the Me 410 weighed and what was the cost in wing area, fuselage volume, etc. Would they have kept the rear seater for a radio operator if the rear guns were not there?


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## davebender (Nov 19, 2012)

455 of the 1,189 Me-410s were light bombers. Do we have loss statistics for these aircraft as a percentage of sorties?


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## bobbysocks (Nov 19, 2012)

you would have to have more than just a tail gun...or give it more of an arc of fire to cover the sides. with the existing range of motion that it had without the side gunners there would be no deterent from someone parking off to one side or the other and picking the bomber apart.


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## drgondog (Nov 19, 2012)

I would have strongly considered keeping only the chin, top, ball and tail guns on the B-17G. The combined crew, 4x 50 (radio hatch, waist, waist and nose) plus ammo means another 1000 pound bomb or 150 gallons of fuel plus less drag. It would have improved stability also as the late 17G's were a little butt heavy aft of the CG.


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## Juha (Nov 19, 2012)

drgondog said:


> I would have strongly considered keeping only the chin, top, ball and tail guns on the B-17G. The combined crew, 4x 50 (radio hatch, waist, waist and nose) plus ammo means another 1000 pound bomb or 150 gallons of fuel plus less drag. It would have improved stability also as the late 17G's were a little butt heavy aft of the CG.



+1

Juha


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## davebender (Nov 19, 2012)

Colectia lui WURGER - Forum Machete,Modelism,Hobby - Pagina 11






Fw-191 defensive weapon arrangement is interesting. Good coverage with turrets / barbettes nicely blended into the airframe. I believe it had only two gunners.

Chin turret
Top fuselage turret
Bottom fuselage turret
Small (twin 7.92mm) barbette at rear of engine nacelles.


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## bobbysocks (Nov 19, 2012)

the turrets would give you better fields of fire..above and below in addition to the sides. my question is how much more accruate were they in comparison to the side gunners...or visa versa?


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## CobberKane (Nov 19, 2012)

Njaco said:


> I think it might be obvious that those penalties are null when compared to what the Allies were trying to achieve. Its more like quantity of bombers and amount of ordinance placed on target. Whats more effective: a bomber going 350mph on a target with a light load or one that goes 150mph with a larger load? If the latter is the answer then you need many of them for mutual protection and firepower along with destruction of target.


 
Hey, I know! What about a 370mph bomber with the same load and no guns? You could make it out of balsa and ply to keep the weight down...


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## Shortround6 (Nov 19, 2012)

They may be a lot more accurate than the "side" gunners. Would they be as accurate as "normal" (manned) turrets? AND you are back to the weight and drag of the turrets/sighting positions. 

All gunners had other duties. Chin guns aimed by bombardier-navigator. Dorsal turret and engine nacelle barbettes aimed by radio operator. Ventral turret/barbette aimed by flight engineer.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 19, 2012)

CobberKane said:


> Hey, I know! What about a 370mph bomber with the same load and no guns? You could make it out of balsa and ply to keep the weight down...



Please, Please, Please, can we not go back to the _MYTH_ that the Mosquito could carry the _SAME_ bomb load as a B-17?


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## CobberKane (Nov 19, 2012)

Shortround6 said:


> Please, Please, Please, can we not go back to the _MYTH_ that the Mosquito could carry the _SAME_ bomb load as a B-17?



Or the myth that USAAF 'precision' bombing 'crippled' German industry?


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 19, 2012)

CobberKane said:


> Or the myth that USAAF 'precision' bombing 'crippled' German industry?



It did........along with the RAF Area Bombing at night!


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## CobberKane (Nov 20, 2012)

FLYBOYJ said:


> It did........along with the RAF Area Bombing at night!


 
Well, kinda... From what I can gather the attacks on infrstructure and energy production did a lot more harm than direct attacks on factories. And the whole precision v area bombing thing was really just a matter of semantics. Obviously what daylight bombing did do was to put the LW in a place where it could be knocked out of the fight, which night bombing was never going to achieve.
Re the actual damage on the ground, how did the night bombing and day bombing compare?


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## Shortround6 (Nov 20, 2012)

Lot a lot of things in WW II, it varied with time. Both Day and Night bombing got better with time so comparing "effects" or results from 1942/43 to 1944/45 shows a difference with in each type of bombing. 
Americans (day bombing) spent a lot of missions in the beginning dropping bombs that were both too small (HE) and too big (incendiary), later mission used bigger HE bombs and small (but more of them) incendiaries. British went though a similar change in weapons, let alone both forces improving navigation, using radar, changing bomb patterns and so on. 

There may have been differences in effect, but lets please compare at similar times at least rather than "A" was better at the end of 1944 than "B" was in the beginning of 1943"


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## Milosh (Nov 20, 2012)

How can there be 'precision' bombing when the bomber formation was anywhere from 3000' to 1500' wide?

NUMBER OF BOMBS DROPPED IN THEATERS VS GERMANY. BY TYPE OF BOMB; 1943 TO 1945

pg 237 Table 138
http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-110331-045.pdf

4500lb - 158
2000lb - 48,575 
1000lb - 564,969 
500lb - 3,089,916


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## Shortround6 (Nov 20, 2012)

Depends on the size of the target. 1500-2000ft wide factory? How big is a railroad marshaling yard? 

Yes, the US made a lot of over claims about 'precision'. Few, if any, other air forces were doing any better on a _air force_ wide basis. Certain units (or missions) are always an exception.


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## bobbysocks (Nov 20, 2012)

CobberKane said:


> Or the myth that USAAF 'precision' bombing 'crippled' German industry?



and what would the state of german industry have been with out any bombing at all? are you suggesting there was not change and that it was a complete waste of time, energy, and tens of thousands of airmen? or are you suggesting this was primarily only for the purpose as a pinning action to keep LW units over germany and way from the front?


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## fastmongrel (Nov 20, 2012)

The RAF precision bombed area targets. The USAAF area bombed precision targets.

If they were bombing a range in sunny Arizona the USAAF could probably have backed up its precision claims. In smoggy cloudy and in winter gloomy Europe bombing on the order of a master bomber who could be anything up to half a mile away from you I doubt they hit there targets with much precision.


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## davebender (Nov 20, 2012)

Hardly a surprise. European weather has been that way for 2,000 years.

Did RAF and U.S. Army Air Corps bomber barons give weather any thought before claiming pickle barrel precision for their expensive new toys?


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## Shortround6 (Nov 20, 2012)

I think we are drifting off subject. 

The effectiveness of the defensive guns of the American bombers was high enough to get the Luftwaffe to investigate (and use) things like 21cm bombardment rockets and 50mm cannon let alone lesser guns or multiples of them. 

It was not effective enough to enable the bombers to under take long range missions without escorts without prohibitive losses.


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## davebender (Nov 20, 2012)

A-26 had remote control turrets on top and bottom. Somewhat similiar to defensive weapons on Do-217 and Fw-191 bombers. 

How did the A-26 fare in combat vs enemy fighter aircraft?


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## Shortround6 (Nov 20, 2012)

It may not have got into combat early enough to get a valid result. 416th bomb group was the first Bomb group to convert to the A-26 and they had little or contact with German fighters in 1944 despite flying 21 Missions.


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## bobbysocks (Nov 20, 2012)

i always liked that plane... must have been pretty good because they used them up to and during some of Nam. i know a guy who was a crew chief on one.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 20, 2012)

The turrets and aiming systems may also be share technology with the B-29 turrets and aiming systems, which means they actually work. doesn't answer the question as to wither the plane would have been better off without them ( smaller fuselage, smaller wing and higher performance)?


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## bobbysocks (Nov 21, 2012)

how much faster are you going to make it so that it does not need defensive guns? the ar-234 started out not having any armament and it was only 25-30 mph faster than a 51D...and could carry 3300 lbs of bombs. where as the bomber version of the 262 couild carry ~1100lbs of bombs...go ~100mph faster than a D and still carried 2 cannons.


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## kettbo (Nov 21, 2012)

I guestimate that most every fighter attacking from the rear took a few hits from return fire, 90%???? 
But of these 50% no real effect immediate effect, maybe 25% did damage that would put the plane in the shop for hours/days/weeks with 15% crippling, and 10% fatal/destructive? Figure 25% took some hits attacking from the front? Real hard to figure this AND to make simple fast-reading tables for miniatures gaming


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## stona (Nov 21, 2012)

kettbo said:


> I guestimate that most every fighter attacking from the rear took a few hits from return fire, 90%????



Not if they killed or disabled the gunner(s) first. There are several well known Luftwaffe gun camera clips in which the attacking fighter closes to less than 100m receiving no return fire from the obvously disabled guns or gunners.

Likewise,head on attacks seem often to have resulted in no damage to many fighters as they fired on the bombers. Pilots attacking in this way seem generally to consider their evasion after the attack to have been the most vulnerable phase for them. Some elected to roll and dive down through the bomber formation deeming the risk of collision less than the risk of the bombers' guns if they zoomed away.



Steve


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## CobberKane (Nov 21, 2012)

bobbysocks said:


> and what would the state of german industry have been with out any bombing at all? are you suggesting there was not change and that it was a complete waste of time, energy, and tens of thousands of airmen? or are you suggesting this was primarily only for the purpose as a pinning action to keep LW units over germany and way from the front?


 
No way am I suggesting that the daylight bombing campaign had zero effect on the war, but it’s also true that there is still a lot of debate about how effective it was and in what ways. Some historians point out that German industrial output peaked post-D-day in spite of the daylight bombing campaign, then fell off after production sites were overrun by ground forces. Others point out that Germany only went on to a war-time production footing during the bombing campaign and therefore would have been producing much more had the bombing not occurred. Studies after the war also suggested that attacks on infrastructure and oil facilities had much greater effects on production than attacks on factories. All open to debate, of course, but I’d posit a few conclusions:
1.	The concept of unescorted formations of bombers protecting themselves through mutual firepower was disproven – to keep losses at a realistic level the bombers needed escort to and from the target.
2.	The idea of precision daylight bombing taking out industrial targets with minimal collateral damage was way beyond the technical capabilities of the time – by the end of the war the USAAF was bombing civilians with the same enthusiasm displayed by all other combatants.
3. Damage to German production notwithstanding, one of the major accomplishments of the USAAF bombing campaign was to severely degrade the fighting capabilities of the Luftwaffe in the period before D-Day, ensuring air-superiority for the Allies.


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## bobbysocks (Nov 21, 2012)

i can pretty much agree with 1,2, 3. my thoughts on the effects of bombing are pretty much exeplified by our recent hurricane. government agencies, local law enforcement volunteers, utility companies, corporate business, and other various enitities had to rush people into the area by the thousands to try to keep things going while those who lost everything could get their lives back on track. a guy shovelling rubble in the streets isnt making rifles, airplanes..or driving a truck delivering food. if the streets of his town are impassable he isnt going anywhere...and not really wanting to. he will try his best to look after his family. you now have a wealth of hungry homeless people. take that scenario nationwide and you can have a serious problem! in a war time people are pressed to still keep up the war effort and family matters are pushed back. but bombing is still tying up manpower resources and reserves that could better be used for that war effort. if you can impede any part of the countries industry that is just another area of friction in their war machine. the fact that they were able to maneuver and keep production going and in some cases beat previous years output is amazing. but i still have to think had there been no bombing that output would have been extremely more. enough to turn the tide....i doubt it. but enough to prolong the agony...probably.


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## davebender (Nov 21, 2012)

A bombers purpose is to put bombs on target. Not shoot down fighter aircraft. If defensive weapons, ECM, chaff etc. keep the bomber alive they are successful even if enemy fighter aircraft are only scared off.


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## kettbo (Nov 22, 2012)

Oh, not making the defensive fire as simple as I commented on, no sir! Just rambled out loud!!!
Attack angle, direction, formation concentration, is the tail gunner dead/guns inop, etc
yes, distract the attacker, cause him to not concentrate, evade etc all play a part

simple solution will be tough


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## stona (Nov 22, 2012)

The USSBS would tend to contradict has led many historians to ask,retrospectively,the wrong question.

We can quantify the effects on German production and the ways in which the bombing eventually forced the Germans to take up the considerable slack in their production sector. We can count the millions of men and tens of thousands of guns commited to protect against the bombers. One motorised "Gemischte Flak Abteilung"with its eighteen 88mm guns and thirty three 20mm guns,280 trucks,searchlights etc was manned by 1,300 officers and men. A lot of men and resources.
We can estimate the cost of dispersing various industries or forcing them underground. All this,and more,the USSBS did. It's objective after all was to ascertain the effects of bombing Germany in order to sharpen the tool for the ongoing bombing of Japan. 

The real question we should be asking is _"what could German industry have achieved if there had been no bombing?"_

The answer may well be salutary.

Steve


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## drgondog (Nov 22, 2012)

Cobber - I do have a problem with the semantics of "USAAF joining in the bombing of civilians with enthusiasm". Dresden comes as a theoretical poster child for the comment but falls short when the debate about the attack Before the 8th joined the RAF is an example in point. Both Spaatz and Doolittle objected strenuously but when ordered to comply they did so. What examples come to mind for you that support 'enthusiasm' for bombing civilians?


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## Njaco (Nov 22, 2012)

stona said:


> Not if they killed or disabled the gunner(s) first. There are several well known Luftwaffe gun camera clips in which the attacking fighter closes to less than 100m receiving no return fire from the obvously disabled guns or gunners.



Don't trust all those films. Some were propaganda clips of LW fighters approaching captured 17s/24s - with no gunners.


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## stona (Nov 22, 2012)

Njaco said:


> Don't trust all those films. Some were propaganda clips of LW fighters approaching captured 17s/24s - with no gunners.



The films I am referring to are Luftwaffe training films with impeccable provenance. Some must surely have escaped to the internet by now.

I am not aware of the sort of propaganda film you refer to. Was someone flying the captured bomber as it was literally shredded by cannon fire? He'd be someone with a death wish. Who was flying the other bombers in the formation visible in the films?

Steve


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## CobberKane (Nov 22, 2012)

drgondog said:


> Cobber - I do have a problem with the semantics of "USAAF joining in the bombing of civilians with enthusiasm". Dresden comes as a theoretical poster child for the comment but falls short when the debate about the attack Before the 8th joined the RAF is an example in point. Both Spaatz and Doolittle objected strenuously but when ordered to comply they did so. What examples come to mind for you that support 'enthusiasm' for bombing civilians?


 
I didn't mean to create an image of senior USAAF staff gleefully dancing around the table at the prospect of killing tens of thousands of civilians but, objections of some officers notwithstanding,the fact is that American doctrine moved from a pre-war ideal of presision bombing that would take out industrial targets while minimising civilian casualties, to the deliberate and systematic tageting of civilian centres whith the aim of killing and unhousing as many of the population as possible. Remember - I didn't confine myself to the ETO here! 
History is recorded by the victors. Naizi-ism was an evil that had to be confronted, but at the end of the day all sides deliberately bombed cities and all sides had individuals who strafed civilians, machine-gunned parachuting air-men and the like. Whether that made you a hero or a villian depends largely on which side you were on; George Beurling being a case in point. Without meaning to pontificate, perhaps we should all be wary that our shared interest in the dry, historical aspect of WWII never blinds us to the fact that war is the great human tradgedy. Like Clausewitz said: "War is a game which, were men wise, kings would not play at."


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## drgondog (Nov 23, 2012)

Cobber - there is no question that Lemay took the concept of precision bombing, a doctrine he implemented as well as any could given the tools in the ETO, from high level attacks on Japanese Industry - to low level attacks on the entire city surrounding the strategic targets. Then he extended the footpring to obliterate entire cities like Toyama (Sp?). There is zero controversy that there was no consideration for civilians during the March 1945 through August 9, 1945.

The ETO for US doctrine was a different story. Dresden was the exception.


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## CobberKane (Nov 25, 2012)

drgondog said:


> Cobber - there is no question that Lemay took the concept of precision bombing, a doctrine he implemented as well as any could given the tools in the ETO, from high level attacks on Japanese Industry - to low level attacks on the entire city surrounding the strategic targets. Then he extended the footpring to obliterate entire cities like Toyama (Sp?). There is zero controversy that there was no consideration for civilians during the March 1945 through August 9, 1945.
> 
> The ETO for US doctrine was a different story. Dresden was the exception.


 
I’m sorry - the US doctrine of precision bombing in Europe might have served to soothe consciences back home but it didn’t make much difference to German civilians. I believe the USAAF routinely bombed through cloud using radar in the last two years of the war – how could that be anything but bombing of a civilian centre? According to Wiki (yes, I know) only 7% of bobs dropped by the USAAF fell within 1000 feet of the target. That is what I meant by the difference between area and precision bombing being a matter of semantics.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting the US was any worse than any other European combatant, just that they weren’t any better. Who could expect they would be? It was total war. I certainly don’t presume to judge and I am wary of those who do. But I’m also wary of the human impulse to believe the other side played dirty while we played clean (not accusing you there). There is, after all, a much stated consequence to forgetting the past.


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## stona (Nov 26, 2012)

CobberKane said:


> That is what I meant by the difference between area and precision bombing being a matter of semantics..



I sort of agree with you here. It was the difference between intent and what was actually possible with the technology of the day.

It was the British who discovered that to hit anything useful they would have to employ a lot of bombers,dropping a lot of bombs,and hit a lot of other stuff too. We were prepared to do that,quite rightly in my opinion.

Some will beat their chests and wring the hands over the morals of the bombings. Some will debate the effect and efficiency of the effort. This they will do from their nice safe houses and comfy armchairs and in complete freedom. They are perfectly entitled to do that,it's what our forbears were fighting for.
They should however never lose sight of the fact that this freedom was partly paid for by the 55,000 men who paid the ultimate price carrying out the RAF's bombing campaign and the tens of thousands of their American allies who made the same sacrifice thousands of miles from home in the cold,cloudy and unfamiliar skies of Europe.

It is them that I choose to remember.

Steve


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## VBF-13 (Nov 27, 2012)

CobberKane said:


> I’m sorry - the US doctrine of precision bombing in Europe might have served to soothe consciences back home but it didn’t make much difference to German civilians.


I'm comforted we have really smart bombs, now.


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## tyrodtom (Nov 27, 2012)

Even with smart bombs, there's still going to be some innocents killed.
The military or the industries that support and supply them have never been separated well from civilian areas, particularly in Europe.
And as the world gets ever more populated that situation isn't going to improve.


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## VBF-13 (Nov 27, 2012)

Tyrod, I hear you. "Smart" is for our comfort, not theirs.


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## stona (Nov 28, 2012)

Yes,"Smart" is only as precise as the intelligence behind it. I wouldn't want to have been in the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade,bombed because NATO intelligence got an address wrong!

Cheers

Steve


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## Tante Ju (Nov 28, 2012)

stona said:


> Some will beat their chests and wring the hands over the morals of the bombings. Some will debate the effect and efficiency of the effort. This they will do from their nice safe houses and comfy armchairs and in complete freedom. They are perfectly entitled to do that,it's what our forbears were fighting for.
> 
> Steve



IMHO 'fighting for freedom' is something invented well after the war, when the morality of these bombings were started to be questioned. Back in the war, Churchill was talking about 'maintaining the British Empire for a thousand years' and with the freedom and privileges the British (and esp. the English) were enjoying under that at the expense of others.

Bomber Command never gave a thing about the freedom of other people than it's own. It's a valid mindset IMHO, but portraying it as a some generous campaign for the freedom of the World/Europe is IMHO flawed.


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## Tante Ju (Nov 28, 2012)

tyrodtom said:


> The military or the industries that support and supply them have never been separated well from civilian areas, particularly in Europe.



That is interesting. Have you been to Europe? 

Military or the industries are seldom found in city centres you know.. quite typically they are concentrated on the edge of town, in well identifiable areas. This has a reason of it's own, you see, most European cities are very old. Originally none of them had industries, but a small medieval core or center. Industrial areas were built up at the edge of this core as there was plenty of space at the beginning of the century. 

Concentrating firepower on the city center will just makes sure these areas are left untouched.


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## stona (Nov 28, 2012)

I live in Birmingham,one of the first and great cities of the industrial revolution. 
There were (and still are to some extent) plenty of industrial units within a mile or so of the city centre. In WW2 I would suggest that BSA (British Small Arms) in Small Heath would be a good target. All sorts of "metal bashing" and component making was done in areas like Digbeth which literally butt up to the city centre.
These are not always massive industrial plants but relatively small workshops which at the time would have supplied vital components to Britain's war industries. 
Try putting a gear box together without circlips 

Slightly further afield in the "Black Country" it would be impossible to seperate the smelters,chain makers and other industries from towns like Dudley,Tipton etc.

Birmingham,Manchester and similar industrial cities grew around their industries,not a medieval town.Look at a port like Hull,Liverpool or even London,the docks and their infrastructure were in the city. In the case of London,due to 18th and 19th century development south of the river (Thames) the docks were literally in the centre of the city,lying alongside the old City of London.

The aircraft plant at Castle Bromwich,now a suburb of Birmingham, would be an exception but then that was constructed after the war had started. 

I have travelled extensively in Europe and would agree that nations and cities that were not exactly first onto the Industrial Revolution's band wagon do usually have industries concentrated around the town but this is certainly not always the case.

The out of town industrial estate is a relatively modern phenomena in Britain and a result of building being allowed by local authority planning comittees on the so called "green belts" which surround most towns and cities.

Cheers

Steve


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## tyrodtom (Nov 28, 2012)

Tante Ju said:


> That is interesting. Have you been to Europe?
> 
> Military or the industries are seldom found in city centres you know.. quite typically they are concentrated on the edge of town, in well identifiable areas. This has a reason of it's own, you see, most European cities are very old. Originally none of them had industries, but a small medieval core or center. Industrial areas were built up at the edge of this core as there was plenty of space at the beginning of the century.
> 
> Concentrating firepower on the city center will just makes sure these areas are left untouched.



Well, yes I have been in Europe. One and a half years in Germany, in 71-73. Plus while there travel to Holland and Italy. 

I always noticed how close industry and population were intergrated in comparisioin with my own country.


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## Balljoint (Nov 28, 2012)

In metrology, precision and accurate are distinct terms, though not mutually exclusive. A loose grouping of holes in and around a target bull’s eye is considered accurate, i.e. in the desired place. A tight grouping in the outer ring would be precise, i.e. repeatable.

This would seem to be the unintended use of precision in “precision bombing”.


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## stona (Nov 29, 2012)

Balljoint said:


> This would seem to be the unintended use of precision in “precision bombing”.



I think in 1940s terms precision bombing simply meant being able to hit what you were aiming at. This proved to be virtually impossible without dropping a lot of bombs. There was much analysis of bombing patterns by both the USAAF and RAF.
Cheers
Steve


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## windswords (Dec 1, 2012)

Tante Ju said:


> IMHO 'fighting for freedom' is something invented well after the war, when the morality of these bombings were started to be questioned. Back in the war, Churchill was talking about 'maintaining the British Empire for a thousand years' and with the freedom and privileges the British (and esp. the English) were enjoying under that at the expense of others.
> 
> Bomber Command never gave a thing about the freedom of other people than it's own. It's a valid mindset IMHO, but portraying it as a some generous campaign for the freedom of the World/Europe is IMHO flawed.



I guess there must have been British subjects in Poland. When Hitler invaded Poland Great Britain and France declared war. Hitler never wanted war with GB. He did want war with the Soviet Union. It would have been very much to his liking if France and GB had stayed out of it. Churchill unlike Chamberlain knew who he was dealing with. Of course he was thinking of his own country, but he was also thinking on a much wider scope, as was Roosevelt in the the US.


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## stona (Dec 1, 2012)

I'm not aware of Churchill saying anything about "maintaining" the Empire for a thousand years. He did say "....... if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

That's a big IF 

Cheers

Steve


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## Hop (Dec 2, 2012)

> The ETO for US doctrine was a different story. Dresden was the exception.



As soon as the 8th AF got their first bombing radars in 1943 they began area bombing German cities. They did so because on cloudy days they had difficulty hitting other targets and because cloud cover helped reduce their losses.

Sometimes they took off with a German city centre as their assigned target. Other times they followed standing orders which let them bomb any German town as a target of opportunity. From the standing orders, acceptable secondary targets at various times:



> "Any German city which may be bombed without disrupting the Fighter Support", "Any industrial city positively identified in Germany", "Any city positively identified as being in Germany which can be attacked without disrupting fighter support"



Standing orders were later changed to:



> No towns or cities in Germany will be attacked
> as secondary or last resort targets, targets of
> opportunity, or otherwise, unless such towns contain
> or have immediately adjacent to them, one (1)
> ...





> It has been determined that towns and cities
> large enough to produce an identifiable return on
> the H2X scope generally contain a large proportion
> of the military objectives listed above. These centers,
> ...



In other words, if you can see it on radar, bomb it.

The 8th AF certainly wasn't "enthusiastic" about bombing civilians, though. At the time they admitted to area bombing cities, and the orders and post raid reports show that, but by the end of the war they were using the euphemism "marshaling yards" to hide their area bombing raids, and their post war reports made no mention of the area bombing attacks they had ordered.



> I’m sorry - the US doctrine of precision bombing in Europe might have served to soothe consciences back home but it didn’t make much difference to German civilians. I believe the USAAF routinely bombed through cloud using radar in the last two years of the war – how could that be anything but bombing of a civilian centre?



I believe the majority of bombs dropped by the 8th AF used radar aiming. Accuracy was very poor. When dropped blind through complete cloud cover, only 0.2% of bombs fell within 1,000 ft of the aiming point, even through 4/10 cloud only 4.4% were within 1,000 ft.



> Military or the industries are seldom found in city centres you know.. quite typically they are concentrated on the edge of town, in well identifiable areas. This has a reason of it's own, you see, most European cities are very old. Originally none of them had industries, but a small medieval core or center. Industrial areas were built up at the edge of this core as there was plenty of space at the beginning of the century.



The medieval core of a European city is typically very small. If you look at Hamburg as an example, in 1600 it had a population of 40,000. In 1800, as industrialisation was getting under way, it was 130,000, by 1870 that had risen to 240,000. In 1939 the population was more than 1,700,000. 

Cologne had 40,000 people in 1600, 145,000 in 1880, 767,000 in 1939.

The medieval core was very small. As the industrial revolution got underway, factories were built on the outskirts of the town, people moved in to houses around the factory and the town enlarged. But that didn't happen in one go. Factories and housing were added bit by bit, largely unplanned. Large European cities consisted mostly of mixed industrial, commercial and residential areas.


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## drgondog (Dec 2, 2012)

Hop - what I said, and what I stand behind, is that USAAF-ETO did not Target citiy population centers, absent some perceived strategic site, as Doctrine. 

First - the commanders weren't sending 1000 bombers, crews, bombs and fuel at low value targets. Second - USAAF *was* lousy at radar bombing on small targets selected as high value within a populated area But the target briefed was the target they were trying to hit via radar - and given a briefed radar location signature - would attempt to bomb on that target. Third - there Were published guidelines regarding targets of opportunity when Primary and Secondary targets were completely obscured with no radar signature and the mission commander had the authority to direct the force to bomb them. Population centers were not the primary target of opportunity but obseved marshalling yards, bridges, docks, airfields were desirable opportunity targets in liue of bringing the bombs home.

Last - the air crew commander had the authority to salvo a load when and where he deemed it necessary. If he dumped in 10/10 coverage he could hit hospital, beet field, whorehouse or a school. The contrast between the 8th and RAF wasn't as much radar bombing accuracy - with points to RAF, but rather to the target Selection - namely ball bearing factory, etc. versus 'any and all other as long as there was a concentration of German people to be had'.

The Japan campaign under Lemay's targeting was the entire city to nail several or many subcontract manufacturing facilities - in other words similar to Harris. And the US trumped Harris big time on the "Kill 'em all and let god sort it out" doctrine at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.


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## stona (Dec 2, 2012)

"No towns or cities in Germany will be attacked
as secondary or last resort targets, targets of
opportunity, or otherwise, unless such towns contain
or have immediately adjacent to them, one (1)
or more military objectives. Military objectives
include railway lines; junctions; marshalling yards;
railway or road bridges, or other communications
networks; any industrial plant; and such obvious
military objectives as oil storage tanks, military
camps and barracks, troop concentrations, motor
transport or AFV parks, ordnance or supply
depots, ammunition depots; airfields; etc."

That's a good one! Does this mean they could attack just about any conurbation? Anyone who has visited any city or town in Europe (or anywhere else) might suppose so.

"It has been determined that towns and cities
large enough to produce an identifiable return on
the H2X scope generally contain a large proportion
of the military objectives listed above"

Well yes, it seems that it does.

Seperating this from RAF practice is simply splitting hairs. I would argue that the RAF was simply being a bit more honest about its capabilities. It had a couple of extra years to assess what could and couldn't be done.

There was a wide divergence between intent and the technical ability to realise it.

Cheers
Steve


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## Readie (Dec 2, 2012)

stona said:


> I sort of agree with you here. It was the difference between intent and what was actually possible with the technology of the day.
> 
> It was the British who discovered that to hit anything useful they would have to employ a lot of bombers,dropping a lot of bombs,and hit a lot of other stuff too. We were prepared to do that,quite rightly in my opinion.
> 
> ...



Well said Steve, I completely agree with you.
On the recent 'Bomber Boys' TV programme I thought it was poignant when the crew members of BC came on and stated their mission numbers, who they were, when they served and so on.
Out of the men filmed it was obvious that some regretted what they had to do, some did what they had to and were glad just to have survived, some were philosophical, and one in particular, Mr Wiseman, saw it as his personal mission to avenge his fellow Jews.
No apologies.
Much is made of the area bombing of Germany but, I had yet to see German aircrew being held accountable for the death and destruction they rained on Britain during the Blitz....
Maybe a confessional is good for the soul.
Cheers
John


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## Kryten (Dec 2, 2012)

before anyone tries to play the moral card against bomber command maybe they aught to start at guernica, where the luftwaffe terror bombed the population during the Spanish civil war?

reality is bombing civilian targets made perfect sense, remove the workers from thier houses, from thier jobs, take away thier skills either by driving them away, killing or maiming, and you remove the ability of your enemy to produce weapons that kill your people!
why should the people who make the weapons that kill your people be immune from attack?

it's a pointless game second guessing a doctrine, or applying modern moral standards to WW2, unless you have suffered the hardships brought upon your country, suffered the losses, in both family friends and property you will never comprehend the mindset that saw flattening german cities as sticking it back to the people who caused the mess!

I doubt many Russian troops had much pity for german civillians after what happened in thier own country!
impossible for us to empathise, but neither do we have any right to judge as we never suffered what they did!


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## VBF-13 (Dec 2, 2012)

Readie said:


> Much is made of the area bombing of Germany but, I had yet to see German aircrew being held accountable for the death and destruction they rained on Britain during the Blitz....


But London was a military target. If they got Big Ben the British wouldn't know what time it was.


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## stona (Dec 2, 2012)

VBF-13 said:


> But London was a military target.



The Luftwaffe aimed primarily at the docks which are a legitamate target. They are also easy to find as anyone can fly up the river Thames. Nonetheless they discovered,like the RAF and USAAF, that to hit a relatively precise target like London's docks docks you had to hit a lot of other stuff too. The docks extended over several miles of waterfront,compare that with a typical factory or POL depot.

I don't think some here grasp just how inaccurate bombing under operational conditions was.

Cheers

Steve


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## cimmex (Dec 2, 2012)

hmm, and this all had a lot to do with “ Effectiveness of Heavy Bomber defensive fires vs LW Fighters"....


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## VBF-13 (Dec 2, 2012)

cimmex said:


> hmm, and this all had a lot to do with “ Effectiveness of Heavy Bomber defensive fires vs LW Fighters"....


These heavy bombers were like a flock of geese flying in formation. Would improving their firepower have made an _appreciable_ difference versus these fighters? I doubt it. That wasn't their problem. You send any non-fighter aircraft into a zone like that on a mission and they have to be fighter-escorted. That was their problem.


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## Readie (Dec 2, 2012)

VBF-13 said:


> These heavy bombers were like a flock of geese flying in formation. Would improving their firepower have made an _appreciable_ difference versus these fighters? I doubt it. That wasn't their problem. You send any non-fighter aircraft into a zone like that on a mission and they have to be fighter-escorted. That was their problem.



I have often wondered if having 'gunships' ie a heavy bomber armed to the teeth with cannon / .50 mg but, no bomb load could have acted as a better bomber stream defence rather than arming individual bombers...
What do you think?
Cheers
John


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## CobberKane (Dec 2, 2012)

Readie said:


> I have often wondered if having 'gunships' ie a heavy bomber armed to the teeth with cannon / .50 mg but, no bomb load could have acted as a better bomber stream defence rather than arming individual bombers...
> What do you think?
> Cheers
> John


I believe exactly this was tried with the YB40. It didn't work - one of the problems was that after the standard B-17s had dropped their bombs the gun and armour -laden YB40 was unable to keep up.


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## VBF-13 (Dec 2, 2012)

Readie said:


> I have often wondered if having 'gunships' ie a heavy bomber armed to the teeth with cannon / .50 mg but, no bomb load could have acted as a better bomber stream defence rather than arming individual bombers...
> What do you think?
> Cheers
> John


I liked the idea, John, until I read CobberKane's reply. Now I'm in doubt.


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## Milosh (Dec 2, 2012)

CobberKane said:


> I believe exactly this was tried with the YB40. It didn't work - one of the problems was that after the standard B-17s had dropped their bombs the gun and armour -laden YB40 was unable to keep up.



The YB-40 did result in the the chin turret, offset waist gun positions and improved tail gunner station, usually nicknamed the "Cheyenne", after the Cheyenne modification center for the B-17G.


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## stona (Dec 3, 2012)

As Cobberkane has already noted the YB 40 simply didn't work as planned. 
The few that did enter service only flew as far a Germany a couple of times,the rest of the time joining missions already well within the range of fighter escort. The timing mitigated against any attempt at developing the concept as by the time the first examples were entering service long range fighter escorts were becoming available.

It is slightly reminiscent of the _early_ German Zerstorer concept in which heavily armed twin engined turret fighters would blast a path for the bombers. The Luftwaffe soon realised that some of the proposed zerstorer were going to be slower and less manoueverable than the bombers they were supposed to protect!

Cheers
Steve


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## Tante Ju (Dec 3, 2012)

Kryten said:


> reality is bombing civilian targets made perfect sense, remove the workers from thier houses, from thier jobs, take away thier skills either by driving them away, killing or maiming, and you remove the ability of your enemy to produce weapons that kill your people!
> why should the people who make the weapons that kill your people be immune from attack?



Firstly because nations have agreed to the principle in several international treaties that the people who make the weapons that kill your people (aka civillians) should be immune from attack. There are several moral and practical considerations to that, but it largely works because when you start to do that, the other side will start to do that to you as well. Since wars rarely last forever, its actually more advantageous to everyone to trade with the guys you did not kill in the previous war.

Secondly because it just not works, its not a viable military strategy, and never was since the stone age. From the cold and calculating POV randomly killing people, the workers includes is a lot harder to do than destroying the industry itself. The Allies have killed about half a million German civilians, more than half of them women and children who did not contribute much, if anything to the war. How many German workers were killed - 10.000, 50.000, maybe even 100.000 at worst? How many of them were working in the armament industry, and just how irreplaceable they were? That is the cold hearted approach but IMHO it shows the impracticality of such strategy. Randomly killing a couple of Krupp workers in every raid on Essen for years seem to be very very ineffective compared to just ground the Krupp factory itself. Of course if you can't hope to hit the factory at all (which was Bomber Commands situation until about 1942), random terror bombings were still better than nothing.


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## Tante Ju (Dec 3, 2012)

Hop said:


> The 8th AF certainly wasn't "enthusiastic" about bombing civilians, though. At the time they admitted to area bombing cities, and the orders and post raid reports show that, but by the end of the war they were using the euphemism "marshaling yards" to hide their area bombing raids, and their post war reports made no mention of the area bombing attacks they had ordered.



That is because a marshaling yard is an easily identifiable target, and does not equal to what Bomber Command referred to as 'area (=terror) bombing' of city centres. Marshalling yards are not in the most densely populated city centers to start with, but further out, well before the large 'head' RR stations typical of the era. They are also perfectly valid targets (and in fact the most vulnerable part of any RR system).


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## stona (Dec 3, 2012)

See below....dunno what happened!


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## stona (Dec 3, 2012)

Terror was not the intention of any British or US raid,that was left to weapons like the V-1 and V-2. The allied raids were attempting to hit valid targets and obtain valid objectives. De-housing German workers might seem a dubious objective to someone sitting on the moral high ground with seventy years of hindsight but at the time it was not the case. 

The raids resulted in the diversion of huge amounts of men and materiel from the other active front in the East and caused considerable dislocation and cost to the German economy.We can argue about the figures until the cows come home but it was significant.
I return to my original question,the one we should be asking....."What would the German economy have achieved if there had been no bombing?"

If I was running the bombing campaigns with the tools available at the time I hope I would have the courage to do what was done back then.

BTW the major marshalling yards here in Birmingham are most certainly surrounded by extensive housing and other facilities. The Luftwaffe bombed them causing considerable casualties. The main marshalling yards were built over the river Rea just to the East of the city centre and the Goods yards were next to the old Curzon Street station which,by any measure,is in the city centre.

More than 2,000 tons of bombs fell on my city destroying 12,391 houses, 302 factories, 34 churches, halls and cinemas, and 205 other buildings. Thousands of other properties were damaged. I'd happily repay that with 20,000 tons on a similar industrial city in the Ruhr.

Steve


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## Tante Ju (Dec 3, 2012)

stona said:


> Terror was not the intention of any British or US raid,that was left to weapons like the V-1 and V-2. The allied raids were attempting to hit valid targets and obtain valid objectives.



_"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. ... I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive." _

- Prime Minister Winston Churchill Memo to the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Chief of Air Staff, March 28, 1945, Max Hastings, Bomber Command (NY: Dial Press, 1979), p. 344.

_"The destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany [is the goal]. ... It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories." _

- Air Marshal Arthur Harris to Sir Arthur Street, Under Secretary of State, Air Ministry, October 25, 1943. quoted in Tami Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 220.

Weapons like the V-1 and V-2 were weapons of retaliation in kind, as the name implies.


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## stona (Dec 3, 2012)

You are missing the point.The objectives listed by Harris were therefore considered valid targets.They had been since Rotterdam,unless you can give a plausible explanation or other purpose to that raid. 

We were attempting to bomb the Germans into surrender. Noone knew that this wouldn't work because,as Harris said,it had never been tried before. Harris' generation were haunted by memories of the land warfare of WWI,something they sought,ultimately unsuccessfully,to avoid at any cost....._any cost_.

To apply a modern morality to the mindset of early 20th century commanders is nonsense.

Do you have relatives slaughtered on the Western Front? Have you picked your way through the ruins of the City of London,Coventry,Belfast,Liverpool etc? Their moral compass was calibrated quite differently from ours.

Churchill's comment was ill considered and an attempt,late in the day, to cover his own arse. He was never forgiven for that by either Harris or many other senior Bomber Command officers,not to mention the men who did the work. It's not atypical of the man,loyalty,personal or party was not exactly his strong point. At least we had the sense not to re-elect him when the fighting was done!

Steve


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## CobberKane (Dec 3, 2012)

As has been mentioned earlier this discussion is all a bit off-subject in respect to the original thread, but I'm glad its been allowed to continue because there have been some thoughtful and considered views expressed. I think Stona made a good point - Bomber Command was perhaps a bit more honest with themselves about what they were trying to do than the USAF. I suspect that might have been a function of the fact that they had been in the war a couple of years before the US got involved and were past the initial hand-wringing.
Some previous contributors maintain that the US bombing was, for all its technical shortcomings, genuinely directed towards industry and infrastructure rather than civilians. I would respond that if it could be demonstrated that a given tonnage of American bombs killed fewer civilians than the same weight of British bombs, possibly. But the fact is that in the prosecution of the war all sides in the ETO did the same things to one another, irrespective of the language they used to describe what the where doing. Allied bombing killed far more German civilians than did German bombing Allied civilians. Did this represent greater malignancy on the part of the Allies? Of course not - it represented greater technical and industrial capacity in pursuit of the same objectives. The United States became the first nation ever to utilise a weapon of mass destruction - the effect was no worse than what was possible 
given the conventional weapons of the time, just much more efficient. This did not reflect US moral inferiority but US technical superiority. Everybody was looking to crush the opposition by whatever means necessary. Today, should we really be telling ourselves that the thousands upon thousand of German civilians killed by the USAF were unavoidable accidents, or that the thousands upon thousands of Bomber Command aircrew who died in a campagin that required such enormous resources from their country are less deserving of memory than the heroic Spitfire pilot who went down in the Battle of Britain?
War makes monsters of us all.


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## Readie (Dec 3, 2012)

stona said:


> We were attempting to bomb the Germans into surrender. Noone knew that this wouldn't work because,as Harris said,it had never been tried before. Harris' generation were haunted by memories of the land warfare of WWI,something they sought,ultimately unsuccessfully,to avoid at any cost....._any cost_.
> 
> To apply a modern morality to the mindset of early 20th century commanders is nonsense.
> 
> ...



Well written and again I completely agree with you Steve.

You should add Plymouth to your list of heavily blitzed British cities. My in laws were youngsters in the blitz and they don't have a lot of good things to say about our previous foes.
Within my lifetime I have seen the gradual rebuilding of Plymouth which was only fully completed a few years ago when the last 'bomb-site' car parks gave way to student accommodation buildings.

The one thing that occurs to me is why we British feel we have to defend our actions in WW2. 
Have the Japanese acknowledged their treatment of POW's ?
Do the American's feel guilty for the A bombs? or, are they pragmatic enough to say 'war is war' ?

Surely we have not reached the situation where the victors feel guilty? 

I do wonder why BC is so easily held accountable, both on this site and on others too while the reasons for the bombing campaign are conveniently over looked.
Churchill was a man of war, not peace and his treatment of Harris and BC is a disgrace.
John


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## Hop (Dec 3, 2012)

> ]Hop - what I said, and what I stand behind, is that USAAF-ETO did not Target citiy population centers, absent some perceived strategic site, as Doctrine.



As doctrine? Don't quite know what you mean, but the 8th AF did target German cities, both as the assigned objective and as secondary targets.

The first ordered 8th AF area attack on a German city was against Emden on 27 September 1943. According to Richard G Davis, they carried out an average of 1 assigned city area attack a week for the rest of the war.



> First - the commanders weren't sending 1000 bombers, crews, bombs and fuel at low value targets.



1,000 bomber raids were rare for either the RAF or USAAF. The 8th AF tended to carry out multiple attacks by hundreds of bombers at a time. What's a "low value target"?



> Second - USAAF was lousy at radar bombing on small targets selected as high value within a populated area But the target briefed was the target they were trying to hit via radar - and given a briefed radar location signature - would attempt to bomb on that target.



That target was frequently a city. The radar simply didn't give a good enough return to target a specific building.

Even if it had, knowing that bombs will fall almost randomly over an area of many square miles means designating an individual factory as the target, rather than the area of the city you are actually bombing, is semantics. The Germans theoretically aimed every V-1 they fired at London at Tower Bridge. Was the bridge the real target? Of course not, London was the target.



> Third - there Were published guidelines regarding targets of opportunity when Primary and Secondary targets were completely obscured with no radar signature and the mission commander had the authority to direct the force to bomb them.



The standing orders I posted were for secondary targets, not targets of opportunity. The orders basically amounted to: bomb any city in Germany.



> but rather to the target Selection - namely ball bearing factory, etc. versus 'any and all other as long as there was a concentration of German people to be had'.



That's exactly a description of 8th AF bombing instructions. 



> No towns or cities in Germany will be attacked
> as secondary or last resort targets, targets of
> opportunity, or otherwise, unless such towns contain
> or have immediately adjacent to them, one (1)
> ...





> It has been determined that towns and cities
> large enough to produce an identifiable return on
> the H2X scope generally contain a large proportion
> of the military objectives listed above. These centers,
> ...



Look at what that says: any town large enough to show up on radar can be assumed to be a military target. What else does that mean but bomb anywhere there is a concentration of German people? What else is a town but a concentration of people (and buildings)?

Put it another way, can you find a deliberate RAF attack on a German town that does not fit that USAAF description of a "military" target? I certainly don't know of any.


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## Hop (Dec 3, 2012)

> Seperating this from RAF practice is simply splitting hairs. I would argue that the RAF was simply being a bit more honest about its capabilities. It had a couple of extra years to assess what could and couldn't be done.



I agree. Bombing a town is bombing a town. You could possibly make a distinction if those in charge didn't realise how inaccurate their attacks were, but claiming to be bombing a factory when a: you can't see the factory, only the town, and b: you know the vast majority of the bombs you drop are going to hit the town, is just trying to hide the truth. It's like saying the RAF didn't set out to bomb Dresden because the aiming point was a sports stadium in Dresden (chosen because it would be easy to identify)


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## riacrato (Dec 3, 2012)

stona said:


> You are missing the point.The objectives listed by Harris were therefore considered valid targets.They had been since Rotterdam,unless you can give a plausible explanation or other purpose to that raid.
> 
> We were attempting to bomb the Germans into surrender. Noone knew that this wouldn't work because,as Harris said,it had never been tried before. Harris' generation were haunted by memories of the land warfare of WWI,something they sought,ultimately unsuccessfully,to avoid at any cost....._any cost_.
> 
> ...


You are essentially contradicting your previous post, no? Yes, TERROR was one of the goals of many of the bombings. Even if not for the sake of terror itself but to shorten the war by making the enemy give up. If you consider that acceptable, that is your choice. Are acts of German bombing of British civil population acceptable because they essentially had the goal of making Britain leave and stay out of the war?


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## Readie (Dec 3, 2012)

riacrato said:


> You are essentially contradicting your previous post, no? Yes, TERROR was one of the goals of many of the bombings. Even if not for the sake of terror itself but to shorten the war by making the enemy give up. If you consider that acceptable, that is your choice. Are acts of German bombing of British civil population acceptable because they essentially had the goal of making Britain leave and stay out of the war?




Aerial bombardment goes back to WW1 where civilians where targetted for 'terror' purposes.

We cannot judge actions in WW2 by modern PC standards. 

What we can truthfully say is that in desperate times anything goes... no quarter given or expected.

John


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## Hop (Dec 3, 2012)

> Much is made of the area bombing of Germany but, I had yet to see German aircrew being held accountable for the death and destruction they rained on Britain during the Blitz....



Since the 1950s most German historians have sought to portray the Luftwaffe as fighting a "clean" war, the RAF in contrast is claimed to have carried out war crimes against Germany. It seems to me to simply be an attempt to mitigate German war guilt.

Most modern German historians still practice this. If you look at Horst Boog, for example, he simply glosses over earlier Luftwaffe attacks in an effort to portray Britain as having started area bombing. 

For example, one of Boog's claims:



> The Luftwaffe made its first raids on military and economic objects in England only about seven weeks after the conclusion of the French campaign.



That's contrasted with British bombing of Germany in May, June and July 1940.

The Battle of France ended on 25 June 1940, so Boog is claiming the first Luftwaffe attacks on Britain were in mid August 1940. Granted the first attacks on the Orkneys etc in early 1940 are not well known, and the first larger scale attacks on the 5/6 June are usually overshadowed by the BoB, but no historian could possibly miss the much larger scale of attacks that were underway in early July.

The truth is that the Luftwaffe bombed Poland, then Norway, then France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and got around to Britain when it had finished with its closer enemies. In each of those countries it carried out large scale bombing of towns and killed hundreds or thousands of civilians.


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## Tante Ju (Dec 3, 2012)

stona said:


> More than 2,000 tons of bombs fell on my city destroying 12,391 houses, 302 factories, 34 churches, halls and cinemas, and 205 other buildings. Thousands of other properties were damaged. I'd happily repay that with 20,000 tons on a similar industrial city in the Ruhr.



Hitler had exactly the same reasoning on 4 September 1940 in the Sportpalast, stona, as you do.

_Ich habe drei Monate lang das nicht beantworten lassen, in der Meinung, sie würden diesen Unfug einstellen. Herr Churchill sah darin ein Zeichen unserer Schwäche. Sie werden e3 verstehen, daß wir jegt nun Nacht für Nacht die Antwort geben, und zwar steigend Nacht für Nacht. Und wenn die britische Luftwaffe 2000 oder 3000 oder 4000 Kilogramm Bomben wirft, dann werfen wir jetzt in einer Nacht 150 000, 180 000, 230 000, 300 000 und 400 000. Und wenn sie erklären, sie werden bei uns Städte in großem Ausmaß angreifen - wir werden ihre Städte ausradieren!_


I see Boog is mentioned. One of the interesting thing Boog mentions about the 'bombing war' was how the War Cabinet was using the bombing of the besieged Rotterdam as an excuse to launch bomber attacks on German cities in order to draw the German bombers away from the collapsing front lines. It was expected that the Luftwaffe would make reprisal attacks on British cities. The idea of city bombing was already considered in automn 1939 by the War Cabinet, but was shelved for fear of German reprisal attacks.

When Churchill became PM, such considerations were put aside. The plan didn't work though (but it explains the 'Ich habe drei Monate lang das nicht beantworten lassen...' part, which was a reference to April-May 1940 RAF bombings on German cities).

Out of curiousity, I just found this Luftwaffe recon picture of the Orkney Isles.


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## Readie (Dec 3, 2012)

Hop said:


> Since the 1950s most German historians have sought to portray the Luftwaffe as fighting a "clean" war, the RAF in contrast is claimed to have carried out war crimes against Germany. It seems to me to simply be an attempt to mitigate German war guilt.
> 
> Most modern German historians still practice this. If you look at Horst Boog, for example, he simply glosses over earlier Luftwaffe attacks in an effort to portray Britain as having started area bombing.
> 
> ...



Exactly Hop. Well said. The revisionist rewriting of modern history is a corrupt attempt to hide the truth.
John


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## Readie (Dec 3, 2012)

Tante Ju said:


> Hitler had exactly the same reasoning on 4 September 1940 in the Sportpalast, stona, as you do.
> 
> _Ich habe drei Monate lang das nicht beantworten lassen, in der Meinung, sie würden diesen Unfug einstellen. Herr Churchill sah darin ein Zeichen unserer Schwäche. Sie werden e3 verstehen, daß wir jegt nun Nacht für Nacht die Antwort geben, und zwar steigend Nacht für Nacht. Und wenn die britische Luftwaffe 2000 oder 3000 oder 4000 Kilogramm Bomben wirft, dann werfen wir jetzt in einer Nacht 150 000, 180 000, 230 000, 300 000 und 400 000. Und wenn sie erklären, sie werden bei uns Städte in großem Ausmaß angreifen - wir werden ihre Städte ausradieren!_



Er, yes.... sow the seeds Mr Hitler and you will reap the whirlwind....


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## Hop (Dec 3, 2012)

> Firstly because nations have agreed to the principle in several international treaties that the people who make the weapons that kill your people (aka civillians) should be immune from attack. There are several moral and practical considerations to that, but it largely works because when you start to do that, the other side will start to do that to you as well.



It's something that many seem to forget. If there had been treaties banning bombing of enemy towns, would they still have been in effect by the time BC launched its first area attack in December 1940? After the Blitz had already killed more than 20,000 in Britain, wouldn't Britain have been able to argue convincingly that the Germans had already abrogated the treaty?



> Secondly because it just not works, its not a viable military strategy, and never was since the stone age. From the cold and calculating POV randomly killing people, the workers includes is a lot harder to do than destroying the industry itself. The Allies have killed about half a million German civilians, more than half of them women and children who did not contribute much, if anything to the war. How many German workers were killed - 10.000, 50.000, maybe even 100.000 at worst?



I'd say they killed a lot more than that. Don't forget bombing was aimed at industrial cities, which have a much higher percentage of industrial workers. Many women and children had evacuated the large cities by 1943. So the percentage of industrial workers killed was probably quite high.

But civilian deaths was never the aim. Destruction of cities was. If you look at Hamburg, whilst around 50,000 were killed, hundreds of thousands of industrial workers fled the city, driven not just by fear but by the destruction of houses, water supplies, shops, trains, electricity supplies etc.



> Randomly killing a couple of Krupp workers in every raid on Essen for years seem to be very very ineffective compared to just ground the Krupp factory itself.



But on the other hand, cutting the power to not just Krupp but every factory in the area, and blocking the roads, destroying bridges, cutting off the gas supply, destroying the telephone exchanges, destroying the worker's house so that he doesn't turn up to work, cutting the water supply, destroying the back street garage that made small brackets, destroying the bank that held the funds to pay for parts and workers wages, and all the other disruptions that an area attack brought, was very effective. 

From The Battle of Hamburg by Middlebrook:



> But the R.A.F. bombing was meant to achieve indirect rather than direct results. There were other ways of preventing the building of U-boats, for example, than of bombing the slipway on which a U-boat was being built. Preceding chapters have illustrated the general breakdown of life in Hamburg — the destruction of services and communications, the destruction of workers' housing and the killing or putting to flight of the workers themselves. This was the industrial side of the R.A.F.'s offensive. The exact extent of such indirect loss was the subject of much investigation immediately after the war. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey and the smaller British Bombing Survey Unit both did much research in Hamburg. The general conclusion was that the Battle of Hamburg caused a loss of war production equivalent to the normal output of the entire city for 1.8 months of full production. Output returned to 80 per cent of normal within five months but full recovery was never achieved. Taking the production of U-boats, again, as a specific case, it was estimated that between twenty (the American estimate) and twenty-six or twenty-seven U-boats (the British estimate) were never produced because of the July and August 1943 bombing.
> 
> The important part about the production losses, whether of U-boats or whatever other type of war material or even of the everyday type of commercial production that a nation needs to sustain itself, was that the Hamburg losses were mainly caused by the indirect methods of the great R.A.F. raids. There are interesting figures available for the number of units of electricity consumed in the city's war industries and for the number of workers reporting at their factories. Electrical consumption in Hamburg's war industry fell by 56.9 per cent in August 1943 ! The following tables show the numbers of people reporting for work before and after the battle, both in the entire armaments industry of the city and in the Blohm Voss shipyard.



From the tables he references:

Workers in Hamburg war industries:

30 June 1943 - 634,000
1 October 1943 - 331,300

Workers in Blohm Voss:
Before the raids - 9,400
After the firestorm - 300
1 August - 1,500
1 September - 5,000
1 October - 7,000
1 November - 7,500

And from Irvine (who is certainly no friend of BC):



> The raid on Kassel provided a classic illustration of the theories
> underlying the area offensive. There was a chain-reaction of dislocation, which first paralysed the city’s public utilities then stopped
> even the undamaged factories: The city relied for electricity on the city
> power station and on the Losse power station; the former was
> ...



Area bombing wasn't about killing people, it was about taking an area of a city and doing as much damage to it as possible. 



> That is because a marshaling yard is an easily identifiable target, and does not equal to what Bomber Command referred to as 'area (=terror) bombing' of city centres. Marshalling yards are not in the most densely populated city centers to start with, but further out, well before the large 'head' RR stations typical of the era. They are also perfectly valid targets (and in fact the most vulnerable part of any RR system).



Marshalling yards are typically in cities, but the point is the 8th AF disguised most of their area bombing with the euphemism "marshaling yards".

Incendiaries aren't much use against marshaling yards. You need to blow up the tracks and crater the ground, and incendiaries don't do that. As a result the RAF only used about 2% incendiaries when they attacked marshaling yards. The 15th AF used a similar percentage. Even the 8th AF used about 2% incendiaries when they attacked French marshaling yards, and on special operations where they were ordered to attack enemy transport.

But the 8th disguised their area attacks by claiming they were attacking marshaling yards. They loaded up an average 20% incendiaries and used radar bombing to hit German towns, and _claimed_ they were after the marshaling yards.


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## FLYBOYJ (Dec 3, 2012)

Folks, this is moving way off subject and is starting to get political. Let's get this thread back on track!


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## stona (Dec 3, 2012)

"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them. 
At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. 
They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. 
Cologne, Lubeck, Rostock—Those are only just the beginning. 
We cannot send a thousand bombers a time over Germany every time, as yet. 
But the time will come when we can do so. 
Let the Nazis take good note of the western horizon. 
There they will see a cloud as yet no bigger than a man’s hand. 
But behind that cloud lies the whole massive power of the United States of America. 
When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lubeck and Rostock and Cologne as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer. 
It may take a year. It may take two. 
But for the Nazis, the writing is on the wall. 
Let them look out for themselves. The cure is in their own hands. 
There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war.
Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see. 
Germany, clinging more and more desperately to her widespread conquests and even seeking foolishly for more, will make a most interesting initial experiment. 
Japan will provide the confirmation."

You can't say that we didn't warn them. Sir Arthur Travers Harris,much maligned but one of the greatest commanders this island has produced.

Steve


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## FLYBOYJ (Dec 3, 2012)

*Folks, my last warning. If this thread doesn't get back on track I'm going to lock it!*


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## davparlr (Dec 3, 2012)

I agree. I don't think I ever found out how effective bomber defenses were in numbers. What is a reasonable number, of course estimated, of LW fighters downed by bomber defensive guns? How many bombers were shot down per loss of a an attacking fighter? Numbers impossible to know but maybe not to estimate.


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## Tante Ju (Dec 3, 2012)

Hop said:


> It's something that many seem to forget. If there had been treaties banning bombing of enemy towns, would they still have been in effect by the time BC launched its first area attack in December 1940? After the Blitz had already killed more than 20,000 in Britain, wouldn't Britain have been able to argue convincingly that the Germans had already abrogated the treaty?



I don't think so. It makes a very poor argument that you are bombing a cities in December 1940 after the other guy retaliated in September for your attacks in May. It's like when little children argue in the kindergarten that it all started when he hit me back!



> But civilian deaths was never the aim. Destruction of cities was. If you look at Hamburg, whilst around 50,000 were killed, hundreds of thousands of industrial workers fled the city, driven not just by fear but by the destruction of houses, water supplies, shops, trains, electricity supplies etc.



Yes but Hamburg raid was a one-off because its novelty. It shocked both the population, civil defense, the Nazi leadership, and probably even Bomber Command. But it couldn't be repeated, even with many times the bombers. Certainly randomly wiping out half the city on a grand scale will have its side effects, but BC just could not do that. Certainly not cost-effectively.



> But on the other hand, cutting the power to not just Krupp but every factory in the area, and blocking the roads, destroying bridges, cutting off the gas supply, destroying the telephone exchanges, destroying the worker's house so that he doesn't turn up to work, cutting the water supply, destroying the back street garage that made small brackets, destroying the bank that held the funds to pay for parts and workers wages, and all the other disruptions that an area attack brought, was very effective.



Yes that was the theory, but it simply did not work... hitting fuel plants and marshalling yards did work.



> Area bombing wasn't about killing people, it was about taking an area of a city and doing as much damage to it as possible.



At least this is how people in modern days want to explain it. But back in the day, on record, the people who were responsible were quite frank about it was been all about killing people. Delicate calculations were made on what was the most effective mixture to maximize casulties etc. 



> Marshalling yards are typically in cities, but the point is the 8th AF disguised most of their area bombing with the euphemism "marshaling yards".



I respectfully disagree with this theory and agree with drgondog instead. IMHO it's baseless con-theo about marshalling yard really meaning "a city". The USAAF did sanction from 1944 the random bombing of cities if the primary or secondary target - which was in 99% the cases a valid military target - wasn't found (how often did this happen, really?) but this is a far cry from habitually designating cities as primary targets. It's just an arguement to spread an inconvinient legacy around. The USAAF did resort to such in the PTO quite willingly, but not in ETO, there's absolutely no evidence to that!



> Incendiaries aren't much use against marshaling yards. You need to blow up the tracks and crater the ground, and incendiaries don't do that. As a result the RAF only used about 2% incendiaries when they attacked marshaling yards. The 15th AF used a similar percentage. Even the 8th AF used about 2% incendiaries when they attacked French marshaling yards, and on special operations where they were ordered to attack enemy transport.
> 
> But the 8th disguised their area attacks by claiming they were attacking marshaling yards. They loaded up an average 20% incendiaries and used radar bombing to hit German towns, and _claimed_ they were after the marshaling yards.


 
As I said. I don't buy into the 'marshalling yard is really a city' theory. The only place I saw that theory was a con-theo book from serial con-theo author.. 

Incendinaries can be pretty effective against wooden railroad waggon and rolling stocks, actually. Actually rails are a very difficult target, most trains can cross as much as 1 meter of a gap in the rail w/o much problem.. and it's a relatively easy fix.

P.S. Sorry FB didn't see the note before i typed it.. now noted.


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## Readie (Dec 3, 2012)

The aerial assault on nazi Germany was a simply matter of mass. 
The combined resources of America, Britain and the commonwealth would over come the germans. No matter what the loss rate was America could build bombers fast enough to replace all losses.
A crude tool? maybe...certainly the aircrew loss rate beggars belief. No wonder it was 'volunteers only' in BC.

Any thread on this still contentious subject is almost bound to get a tad political Joe. Its not personal.
We are trying to look at facts not trying to rewrite history to suit new sanitised versions of WW2.

Cheers
John


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## kettbo (Dec 4, 2012)

davparlr said:


> I agree. I don't think I ever found out how effective bomber defenses were in numbers. What is a reasonable number, of course estimated, of LW fighters downed by bomber defensive guns? How many bombers were shot down per loss of a an attacking fighter? Numbers impossible to know but maybe not to estimate.




I'm looking, tough go. Could be a lifetime project just for numbers. USAAC mission record to see where the fighters attacked from, ie, 12 o'clock high. Maybe comments on the formation. Then the German records for losses,* if* you can get a clear read on which units were engaged


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## davparlr (Dec 4, 2012)

kettbo said:


> I'm looking, tough go. Could be a lifetime project just for numbers. USAAC mission record to see where the fighters attacked from, ie, 12 o'clock high. Maybe comments on the formation. Then the German records for losses,* if* you can get a clear read on which units were engaged


 
I certainly agree that it would be tough. But this seems an important statistic that is missing from WW2 history. Something well worth the effort since the air battle against Germany is probably one of the most important and costly battles in history and this would make a piece of the puzzle that is missing.


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## Jabberwocky (Dec 4, 2012)

RAF SOP in 1942 and early 1943 was to divide USAAF bomber gunner claims by six for the processing of intelligence estimates. I'd suggest that this figure only got higher as the ETO air war intensified through 1943 and 1944. 

USAAF heavy bombers were officially awarded claims for 6098 enemy aircraft destroyedto gunfire in the ETO. Another 3178 claims were credited as kills in the MTO, although there would be a fair number of Italian and other nations' (Romanian, Bulgarian ect) aircraft in the MTO claims.


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## wuzak (Dec 4, 2012)

Tante Ju said:


> As I said. I don't buy into the 'marshalling yard is really a city' theory. The only place I saw that theory was a con-theo book from serial con-theo author.



Donald Miller notes that area attacks on civilian areas were often described as precision attacks on rail yards. 




Tante Ju said:


> Incendinaries can be pretty effective against wooden railroad waggon and rolling stocks, actually.



Sure, the superstructure of the wagons was wooden, but the chassis was steel. Using the 8th AF formation bombing technique most incendiaries were bound to fall on things other than rail stock. Like houses, in fact.




Tante Ju said:


> Actually rails are a very difficult target, most trains can cross as much as 1 meter of a gap in the rail w/o much problem.. and it's a relatively easy fix.



I suppose it depends on the size of the loco and wagons. And whether or not the rails remain neatly lined up before and after the gap.

The fix may have been relatively easy, but it was a case of can it be fixed fast enough before it is damaged again?


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## wuzak (Dec 4, 2012)

As to the original question, I would think you could describe the effectiveness of heavy bomber defensive fire as being sufficient to require the LW to alter its tactics, but not sufficient to prevent horrendous losses.


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## CobberKane (Dec 4, 2012)

wuzak said:


> As to the original question, I would think you could describe the effectiveness of heavy bomber defensive fire as being sufficient to require the LW to alter its tactics, but not sufficient to prevent horrendous losses.



And as the aim of the defensive fire waas to prevent unaccepatable losses it was therefore ineffective, I guess. Regarding the number of LW fighters shot down, I don't doubt that there was some major league overclaiming going on here, as inevitably multiple gunners would be targeting any given fighter when it was hit. Bear in mind too that confirmation protocols would have been pretty lax; the USAAF was taking a hammering from the LW in 1943 and doubtless head office would have been alert to anything that might help maintain morale with the aircrew - such as painting lots of little crosses on their bombers.
Of course, the Germans were in a much better position to how many Allied aircraft were destroyed - they could count the wrecks.


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## kettbo (Dec 5, 2012)

ok, so we have had a few weeks here to think about the defensive fire. surely dangerous, sometimes lethal, ALWAYS FRIGHTENING to see tracers whizzing by your head.
Again, the original question was designed to get info for my small scale gaming. Something realistic but quick
THINKING 
4 in ten take hits if attacking from the rear, various damage
Frontal, very likely less, 2 in ten
Side, 3 in ten

then various damage on a d6 with a 2nd die showing variety
1-3 light (progressively longer repairs)
4 medium damage (hmmmm, think that hurt
5 crippled bird (several reasons incl pilot wounds, probably a good time to bail out as a chance things could get worse)
6 shootdown (streaming coolant or oil, or control cables parted flopping about, trailing fire, explosion, pilot killed, wing blown off)

so rolling a 66 would be a spectacular shootdown, probably claimed by everyone in the bomber box! (old Lee Burkhalter down the street where I grew up told some rather graphic stories about his missions on Liberators, so want this to be as realistic as I can in his memory)

now against a single bomber, lower the chance of a hit by the bomber's gunners considerably 2 in 20, 3 in 20, 4 in twenty

will run with this and get back to you


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## wuzak (Dec 5, 2012)

I would think that side attacks would have lower issues with defensive fire than either frontal or rear, particularly the latter. Frontal attacks were started because that is one area where the B-17s did not have very good protection, but that changed with the -G.

The reason I suspect the side gunners were less effective than front and rear guns is that the attacking aircraft would be moving at an angle to the gunner and therefore require more lead than a tail or frontal attack.


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## drgondog (Dec 5, 2012)

Wayne - with both a B-17 and B-24, attacks from 9 and 3 o'clock would be exposed to one waist gunner and either a Ball turret or top turret gunner for a single ship encounter. True, the combination is slightly reduced from nose or tail with minimum of 4 guns available (tail) unless just above the horizon where the rudder interferes with the top turret.

Attacking from the side IMO leads to the more difficult deflection shot for the attacker But also the more difficult 'pursuit curve' tracking for the bomber gunners who have to shoot as a seemingly skidding target rather than zero.near zero deflection shot.


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## Milosh (Dec 5, 2012)

from: "Gunner" ISBN 1-55046-332-2 

Testing done by the USAAF found that the bullet pattern from a B-17 during ground testing had the following results for 12 rounds to 600yds:

ball turret > dia. 15' - 8.3mils
upper turret > dia. 21' - 11.7mils
chin turret > dia. 23' - 12.6 mils
waist(closed) dia. 26' - 14.3mils
side nose > dia. 34' - 18.7mils
tail turret > dia 45' - 25mils

For the B-24 it was:

ball turret > dia. 15' - 8.3mils
upper turret > dia. 20' - 11.2mils
nose turret > dia. 23' - 12.9mils (Emerson)
nose turret > dia. 35' - 19.3mils (Motor Prod.)
waist(closed) dia. 23' - 12.9mils
waist(open) dia. 63' - 35.6mils
tail turret > dia 35' - 19.3mils

**************************

Attacks and hits on B-17s and B-24s, Jan - May 1944

Distribution according to direction of origin in azimuth

B-17 % distribution of 3585 attacks and 441 hits whose direction could be determined

12 - 20.2/15.6
1 - 12.5/9.3
2 - 5.9/6.7
3 - 4.5/3.9
4 - 5.7/4.0
5 - 9.1-9.2
6 - 20.7/15.6
7 - 5.9/6.6
8 - 3.8/2.7
9 - 3.9/2.9
10 - 3.7/3.9
11 - 10.4/10.3

B-24 % distribution of 1042 attacks and 102 hits whose direction could be determined

12 - 21.6/17.6
1 - 12.7/8.4
2 - 3.9/5.2
3 - 2.9/5.4
4 - 3.0/3.6
5 - 7.7/7.8
6 - 20.7/15.6
7 - 19.6/20.6
8 - 11.0/6.9
9 - 3.1/2.0
10 - 6.9/3.4
11 - 11.9/7.8


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## tyrodtom (Dec 5, 2012)

It's surprizing to see how much difference there was in the stability of the gun mounts or sights of the different gun positions.

It's also surprizing that the B-17 got hit in about 11% of it's attacks, but the B-24 only about 1%. But there's that qualifier "hits whose direction could be determined" which I guess the B-24 got hit more, but they couldn't determine which direction it came from. Some statistics just don't tell you much.

From those figures it appears they attacked from straight ahead about as much as from straight behind, and got almost the same % of hits from each.


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## kettbo (Dec 5, 2012)

keep the comments coming!

here is what I was thinking. naturally I could be waaaay off here:
low hit chance frontal due to quick closing time of the fighter to the target
high chance to hit the fighter due to the fighter being exposed as it closes from astern
medium chance from the sides as moderate closing rate but all the angles to throw in

yes, less frontal return fire early on AND less exposure time...that to me is critical

I have fired a lot of .50 cal in 20 years in the Army....really cannot see how effective Bomber side gunners could be; strange compound angle firing solutions, high speeds, 'free' gun, Friendly Bombers you're trying not to shoot at...no Bullets are *Friendly* by the way, pitfall of all your guys in formation near you. Add to this, the gunners are probably freezing cold or sweating their arse off in the heated suits (or both), scared, etc. Obviously the USAAC thought there was a need for waist guns and gunners, thinking this was a waste.
Believe late war, the waist guns were sometimes not manned? Sure I saw this somewhere.

Wonder how many bombers were lost to accidental Blue on Blue fire?


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## drgondog (Dec 5, 2012)

tyrodtom said:


> It's surprizing to see how much difference there was in the stability of the gun mounts or sights of the different gun positions.
> 
> It's also surprizing that the B-17 got hit in about 11% of it's attacks, but the B-24 only about 1%. But there's that qualifier "hits whose direction could be determined" which I guess the B-24 got hit more, but they couldn't determine which direction it came from. Some statistics just don't tell you much.
> 
> From those figures it appears they attacked from straight ahead about as much as from straight behind, and got almost the same % of hits from each.



I suspect that the number of attacks measured on the B-24s were "1042" or "1045" or "1025" as it is highly unlikely that B-24s were attacked 3x more than B-17s when they only had about 35% of the heavy bomber force in that timeframe.


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## tyrodtom (Dec 5, 2012)

With the distance between bombers. probably if you aimed directly at another bomber in the formation and fired, airspeed and bullet drop would result in a miss, while a bullet aimed well ahead and above just might result in a hit. 

But the way the formations were staggered and stepped most of the gunners had pretty clear fields of fire, that of course depends on everybody keeping a accurate formation.
With fighters and flak all around, keepng a good formation had to be difficult.


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## bobbysocks (Dec 5, 2012)

to attack from the top ( diving ) or bottom ( porpoising) has its advantages in that you would only be in contending mostly with the 2 50 cals from ball turret or top turret from each plane...plus your target has more surface exposure. you could essentually take longer shots with the likelihood of hitting something. the smaller the profile ( side, front or rear ) the closer you are going to have to get to be accurate....and the more guns can be aimed at you.

it should be easier to measure the effectiveness of defensive bomber fire before nov 43. i would think a majority of the LW losses would have come from bombers and/or accidents. you should be able to draw a ratio from there. this would be for those sectors where only the bombers roamed...beyond the fighter escorts and away from the fronts. there is should be purely bomber vs interceptor. after long range escorts comes in those numbers would tend to be more garbled.


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## stona (Dec 6, 2012)

I'm not surprised that most attacks measured were from the bombers' 12 or 6. Most successful attacks,which could not be assessed,would most likely be from this direction which would further weight those figures were they included.
Cheers
Steve


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## FLYBOYJ (Dec 6, 2012)

Folks, thanks for getting this thread back on track, there's some real good information here...

I would have expected the B-24 to fare better, especially later models with the powered nose and tail turret. Any thoughts?


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## tyrodtom (Dec 6, 2012)

I know you can't always go by statistics, but look how successful a 7 o'clock attack was on a B-24.
Compared with the B-17 over 3 times more attacks from 7 o'clock, and a good % of hits.
I wonder why ?


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## drgondog (Dec 6, 2012)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Folks, thanks for getting this thread back on track, there's some real good information here...
> 
> I would have expected the B-24 to fare better, especially later models with the powered nose and tail turret. Any thoughts?



First - by the time the 8th, and 15th AF were in full stride the B-17G was dominant B-17, and Cheyenne powered tail 'turret' was about the same effectiveness as the B-24 tail turret - ditto G chin turret with computing gunsight - so hard to make a distinction from late 1943/early 1944 onward.

Joe - It is hard to draw conclusions but some of the worst Squadron/Group losses in 1944, particularly to StrumJager attacks, were on B-24 Groups.

For 8th AF - May 12 was a B-17 Bad Day, but June 20/July 7/Sept 27/Nov 26 were all VERY Bad days in attacks which lasted less than a minute or two before escorts broke them up. 

I haven't seen the loss/sortie data broken out in context of 'air-flak-ops' for any bomber type in any theatre but if B-24 losses are rolled up to 'all B-24s' then their losses because of heavy weighting to PTO should be less than B-17s which had high losses in ETO. 

WRT ETO, there weren't many 8th AF B-24s in ETO between May and October 1943 and then the only losses for B-24s in that period were TDY at Ploesti as everything else was training for the strike. 12th and 15th combined never came close to 8th AF sorties which was 2/3 B-17s so there are a Lot of factors to scratch heads over.

Long winded explanation for why "I don't know"


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## Balljoint (Dec 6, 2012)

kettbo said:


> Obviously the USAAC thought there was a need for waist guns and gunners, thinking this was a waste.
> Believe late war, the waist guns were sometimes not manned? Sure I saw this somewhere.



In addition to being a single mount with significant windage, the open waist position created probable the greatest aerodynamic drag of all the gun positions.


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## kettbo (Dec 6, 2012)

That is what I was thinking Balljoint!
Air deflector or not, big pneumonia holes in the side of bird seems a poor idea

More hits from the 12 and 6 as the Mark One Eyeball firing solutions are easier
Vertical attacks better with post war jets but I can see this getting interesting if the bomber box is tight

.50 cal carries a Loooooooong way, pretty sure a lot of Blue on Blue was attributed to LW or Flak


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## bobbysocks (Dec 7, 2012)

found this on another forum. looks like the US gunners training manual....

HyperWar: Machine Gun Sighting and Sights


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## kettbo (Dec 7, 2012)

GREAT LINK bobbysocks!


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## kettbo (Dec 13, 2012)

Not but basically familiar with Me-110 and Me-410 in ZG usage.
Could someone specify submodel and armament please.
My old Wm Green small books list EVERY type but do not tell you what the bread and butter stuff was.
Noted the twin 21cm rockets under each wing on the Me-110s
Know there were freaks with 37mm and 5cm weapons, few successes with these I understand. Am I mistaken?
And I read in Caldwell, the US crews thought the rockets were very effective


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## stug3 (Jan 9, 2013)

The damaged fuselage and mid-upper turret of Avro Lancaster B Mark I, R5700 ‘ZN-G’, of No. 106 Squadron RAF based at Elsham Wolds, Lincolnshire, after crash-landing at Hardwick, Norfolk, following an attack by a German fighter over Essen. R5700, was among 60 aircraft taking part in one of the first “Oboe” raids on Essen, on the night of 13/14 January 1943, when it was twice attacked by a Focke Wulf Fw 190 “Wilde Sau” night-fighter shortly after bombing the target. The aircraft was severely damaged, the rear gunner was badly wounded and the mid-upper gunner, Sergeant J B Hood, was killed, but the pilot, Sergeant P N Reed, managed to fly the crippled bomber as far as the USAAF base at Hardwick before executing a successful crash-landing. Three weeks later, Sergeant Reed and his crew failed to return from a raid on Hamburg.







Another view of Lancaster R5700 ‘ZN-G’, of No. 106 Squadron RAF.


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## Erich (Jan 9, 2013)

Actually only Bf 110G-4's of I./NJG 1 were involved on this raid to Essen. NO Fw 190's and Wilde Sau was not even thought of yet as a tactic till July of 1943 over Hamburg.

yes to the ZG's of ZG 1, ZG 26 and 76 with the useage of heavy cannons also on their Me 410 A's and B's. Wr 21 rocket launchers were used in twins and singles under each wing. A book on ZG 76 is in the works by the way.


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## stona (Jan 9, 2013)

Erich said:


> Actually only Bf 110G-4's of I./NJG 1 were involved on this raid to Essen.



Correct.

Three night fighter claims,all Lancasters.Two for Maj. Werner Streib and one for Oblt.Horst Pause both of NJG 1.

4 of the 66 Lancasters involved were lost. On the ground 63 people were killed including 11 French PoWs and 6 other foreigners.

"Wild Boar" were first proposed by Herrmann in February 1943,but Kammhuber was opposed to their use.It wasn't until June 1943 that Milch recommended their use to Goering,effectively going over Kammhuber's head. The first successful use was on the night of 3/4 July 1943 over Cologne. A mixed "Kommando" of Fw 190s and Bf 109s claimed 12 RAF bombers. The next morning Goering ordered Herrmann to establish a Geschwader of these Wild Boar night fighters and that was JG 300. Ordered by the Reichsmarschall Kammhuber didn't have much choice,whatever his personal reservations. 

Cheers

Steve


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## Erich (Jan 9, 2013)

yes it's all noted in Dr. Boitens volume 1 of NJG war diaries.

let me add that when we had Sturmgruppen missions 1944 web-site up some years ago we were often asked which was the tougher US bomber to bring down by the Lw SturmFw's................. after asking a half dozen former pilots of JG 3, 4 and 300 the conclusion was : Neither, because of the closeness of the rear attacks and the effectiveness of the heavier 3cm M ammo especially. what was taken on was the tail gunners position and once this was silenced the bomber was good as dead.


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## drgondog (Jan 15, 2013)

Erich said:


> yes it's all noted in Dr. Boitens volume 1 of NJG war diaries.
> 
> let me add that when we had Sturmgruppen missions 1944 web-site up some years ago we were often asked which was the tougher US bomber to bring down by the Lw SturmFw's................. after asking a half dozen former pilots of JG 3, 4 and 300 the conclusion was : Neither, because of the closeness of the rear attacks and the effectiveness of the heavier 3cm M ammo especially. what was taken on was the tail gunners position and once this was silenced the bomber was good as dead.



I sometimes wonder about this observation. To me the question and answer is valid with no questions for 'one on one' attack. What I wonder about is the relative quality of the answer considering that not only is the target tail gunner a threat but also the ball turret, top turret and tail guns of the other ships in the formation?

Erich you have better data but it seems that very few devastating attacks were made by Sturms on B-17 formations when june 20, July 7, Sept 27, November 26 pop out with major disasters to B-24 Groups. Do you have a post July example where say a squadron or group of B-17s took equivalent losses?


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## Erich (Jan 15, 2013)

the LW pilots did take it from other bombers when flying through the pulk with no other means of evading US escorts. Because of the early SturmFw attack angle really only the tail p0osition was affected so one could say the LW flew at a straight and narrow focused path till late in 44 when they would almost sit on the tail and fire upward at the tail and belly turret and then also flying a little above the bombers firing on the tail position and into the top of the engines, I do have cine film of one Sturm pilot hitting a B-17 in this manner as well as his 2cm mine rounds hitting an evading B-17 in front of the first one attacked. Due to flying through US heavies was alomost inevitabloe the elding wing edges and engine cowlings were beefed up with more armor thus a real slow sluggard and doomed to fly in fighter vs fighter combats.

yes Bill actually most Sturm attacks were against US Forts. July 18, 44 by JG 3 Sturms., July 20 with 8 B-17 claimed by JG 3 alone. July 29 JG 3 attacked and shot down 8 100bg B-17's, 16 August JG 3 claims 7 B-17's. 22 August 44 ugly day for B-24's....September 11, 44 JG 4 and JG 300 hit B-17 units hard but also suffer terrible losses. September 12, 44 3 B-17 units hit by the three Sturmgruppen, some 22 bombers claimed with 15 shot out of formation. September 28, 44 3 B-17 groups maybe more attacked by the 3 Sturm units again. At least 21 claimed downed with at least 6-8 shot out of formation. 7 of October the 3 Sturm units are at it again claiming 29 B-17's. November 2, 1944 really the last Sturmfw day with JG 3 and 4 attacking but nearly getting annihilated in return, JG 3 alone claims 21 B-17's. December 23rd, 44 a sad day for the B-26 groups nearly shot out of the skies by JG 3 Fw's. JG 3 makes some pretty high claims with 32 Marauders shot down.....December 24 Fw's of JG 3 attack 1 B-17 group while over Belgium 10 B-17's shot down confirmed. 0ne last major mission in mid-January 1945 by JG 300. the other 2 Sturm units sent to the Eastern front to defend Berlin.


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## drgondog (Jan 16, 2013)

Good stuff Erich. Actual losses above 15 for one group was kinda the threshold I was using to compare Sturm success against B-17 vs B-24. 

For example from your sample;
November 2 - 26 total B-17s lost, 13 from 91st and 9 from 457th;
September 11 - 29 total B-17s lost, 92nd (8), 100th (11) 
September 12 - 19 total B-17s lost, 306th 8, 351st 6.
July 18 - misprint - total 4 lost from 8th BC
July 19? - 11 B-17s lost with 351st losing 3
August 22 - misprint - no losses for B-17s or B-24s
August 24? 16 B-17s lost; 305th lost 5
September 28 - 23 B-17s lost; 303rd lost 11, 457th lost 6
October 7 - 36 B-17s lost from 1st and 3rd BD; 1BD 351st lost 7, 401st lost 5, 457th lost 5; 3rd BD lost 16 B-17s, 94th lost 8

From this sample the 303rd (11), 91st (13), 94th (8) and 457 (9), 306th (8) were the hardest hit B-17 groups on a single day to all GAF fighters, presumably all Sturm by the claims entered as you presented them.

This was cause of my confusion as the single group totals for the B-17s didn't attain the B-24 445th, 492nd and 491st disasters (off the top of my head). The other factor is that there were 50% more B-17s in the air than B-24s.

Interesting exercise - don't know how to draw a conclusion.


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## Erich (Jan 16, 2013)

Bill

many apologies the misprints and (?)'s you marked were for US 15th AF losses.................... some accounts from both sides still quite confusing.

again as I have pointed out in the past the LW Fw pilots did not care whether they attacked the B-17 or lower altitude B-24's, each had their own distinctive flying patterns and were attacked from the rear and slightly high or low or straight on the tail in Sturm fashion in 44 and early part of 45. none was ever thought of as harder to bring down. the ideal was to bring down at least one bomber per LW pilot and as close as they could attack and then hopefully avoid the US escorts as they made way back to their perspective airfields.

E ~


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