Aerial Bombing Question

[buffnut453]

Luckily the theory was never fully put to the test and everyone pulled their punches. Things might have taken a different turn if the Wellingtons and Heinkels added chemical weapons to the HE and incendiary combo.

Fair point...but I'm glad it wasn't put to the test.

 

[stona]

The people doing the bombing were the people 'Bill' was fighting. The people being bombed were the ones enabling Bill to keep fighting. The ones trying to stop, mitigate or deal with the results of the bombing were not available to reinforce Bill at the front. Every ton of concrete and steel used to protect vital targets from bombing could not be used elsewhere. Every plank of wood or pane of glass used to make a damaged property habitable could not be used elsewhere etc.etc.
It's what total war means.

I very much doubt that the citizens of any German city would agree that any punches were pulled.

 

[Greyman]

I very much doubt that the citizens of any German city would agree that any punches were pulled.

You think the German public would be indifferent to the idea of having thousands of tons of poison gas dropped on them in addition to what was already happening? I think they would dislike that notion very much and were glad that 'punch was pulled'.

 

[pbehn]

The theories were based on populations being free to express an opinion and demanding an end to hostilities. There was no account given to mad men not allowing any such sentiments or the civilian population being more terrified of occupation and certain death rather than bombing with its chances.

 

[wuzak]

The people doing the bombing were the people 'Bill' was fighting. The people being bombed were the ones enabling Bill to keep fighting. The ones trying to stop, mitigate or deal with the results of the bombing were not available to reinforce Bill at the front. Every ton of concrete and steel used to protect vital targets from bombing could not be used elsewhere. Every plank of wood or pane of glass used to make a damaged property habitable could not be used elsewhere etc.etc.
It's what total war means.

Well put Steve.

Just look at the anti-aircraft defences. Many thousands of men were manning those, while it also involved a significant number of light, medium and heavy guns. All of which would have been very welcome at the front for fighting against the armies of the allies.

An example of how bombing affects construction was the Dams raid.

Some say the Dams raid was not a great success, others a total failure and some say it was a success.

Its effects may have been short lived in some ways, such as the dam walls being repaired quickly, flood waters receded, etc. But in other ways they lasted until the end of the war.

Some 25,000 people were transferred from the construction of the Atlantic wall to make repairs on the dams. That must have delayed the completion of sections of the defences.

 

[Zipper730]

The thousand plane raid number must be including escorts too. There were 400 B-29's over Japan on Aug 14 during the day, and 300 that night.

I remember hearing a thousand, I guess they were wrong.

the real cause of it's failure was just inept planing.

How so?

No, but they didn't want to continue against the western powers, they were pushed into a corner on this one.

In either case, they didn't really have the means to rise up against their government, which had ample resources to keep them in line.

There will be endless debate about the achievements of the strategic bombing offensives, but, as I've said before, we must ask the correct questions.
The first question should not be to ask what the German economy achieved under the bombing, but what it might have achieved had there been no bombing campaigns.

The problem is, it's hard to prove a negative: It doesn't mean there's no answer, but it's difficult to tease it out.

While the Germans probably stepped up production prior to the start of the war, the intensified bombing succeeded in causing them to step it up further and further. It's likely that they would have stepped it up anyway had the war advanced, but it's possible that the war taken towards the population centers at first had a stimulus effect at first.

When you exercise, you actually produce microscopic tears in your muscles: The problem is generally short term, as those fibers repair themselves, and then thicken and strengthen to allow themselves to produce more power. As a result, you get stronger and stronger.

As the raids became increasingly more damaging, more and more effort was required to repair everything, kluge factories into place, and get going. Germany had enormous untapped potential which it didn't use at first, but eventually, the ultimate point of failure was air-defense and oil.

Giulio Douhet had pointed out the importance of swiftly taking out air-defenses immediately when initiating a strike, though his premise was that of a sneak-attack, which is usually frowned upon. Billy Mitchell had also talked about how bombers would either need escorts or would need to have air defenses suppressed first in order to perform bombing raids.

In practice, even in 1941, bombers were used as bait, so as to sucker German fighters into the air. The idea was that they could shoot them down without too many bombers getting shot full of holes in the process. By 1944 the idea was repeated but with substantially larger raids, and airfields were also subjected to both bombing and strafing attacks.

Oil was also recognized as a target by the USAAC's Air Corps Tactical School (The RAF probably did too): As early as 1940-1941, the RAF would focus on these targets. When the Area-Bombing directive took hold, these targets were struck far less, and often as diversionary strikes. Starting in 1944: Oil became a priority, and these targets took a massive hammering, and the effect was substantial.

Since nearly motorized vehicle runs on fuel: It basically had a catastrophic effect on all these vehicles. Aircraft consume large quantities of gas, and often weren't able to fly very often, which made it possible to carry out ever more devastating raids.

While Germany would have been greatly more dangerous, economic wise, had they not been struck; one could counter argue that had oil been attacked continuously from 1940-1941, instead of left alone from 1941-1944, and then attacked in earnest, the war would probably have ended in a similar or shorter time.

The second question should be to establish the resources devoted by Germany to defending the campaign (from manpower to artillery, ammunition, aircraft, etc.)

The fact is that air-defenses were allocated to protect the country regardless of USAAF day-strike, or RAF night-strike. I'd instinctively think that trying to flatten a city would invite more flak, but attacks on oil would presumably generate massive shifting of defense resources as well.

The third should be to establish the resources devoted to mitigating it's effects (from dealing with the bombed out population and destroyed housing stock, building massive underground factories and other bomb proof structures like U-boat pens or V-2 launch sites).

Underground factories, U-Boat Pens, and V-2 launch sites I would put separate as these targets were not usually aimed squarely at the populace, but at the specific target.

The British and Germans knew it. One of the great successes of the Light Night Striking Force was not in the physical damage a few 500lb bombs or 'cookies' could do but in causing widespread air raid alarms all over the Reich.

Sleep deprivation...

The problem was that the people doing the bombing were not the people Bill was fighting. Theories about bombing an enemy into submission never took into account an army bent on revenge as an ally.

Especially when the Army might have civilian relatives.

The theories were based on populations being free to express an opinion and demanding an end to hostilities. There was no account given to mad men not allowing any such sentiments or the civilian population being more terrified of occupation and certain death rather than bombing with its chances.

Of course.

In fact on that note, I'm curious what degree of rioting occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear weapons were deployed upon them.

Luckily the theory was never fully put to the test and everyone pulled their punches. Things might have taken a different turn if the Wellingtons and Heinkels added chemical weapons to the HE and incendiary combo.

I'm not sure how much poison gas the Germans had early on. Later on they'd have the G-series which were and are just awful substances. The British could lay down more poison, but the Germans had nastier stuff later on.

I'm not sure what kind of bioweapons the Germans had, but the British had planned to use Anthrax. If I recall it was expected to produce a 50% death toll to pneumonic effects and varying degrees from others. It would have been so devastating it would have made our nuclear bombs appear trivial by comparison.

 

[pbehn]

In fact on that note, I'm curious what degree of rioting occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear weapons were deployed upon them.

None,but the nuclear raids did not cause the largest loss of life more died in Toyko. Pre war theories also didnt consider a population dutifully doing as their emperor told them because he was a god. If Hirohito hadnt ordered surrender then Japan would have fought to the end, as they had in many island battles.

 

[tyrodtom]

Inept planing.
They didn't know who was with them.
They didn't know who or where their chief opponents were, to neutralize them.
When you're planing a coup, those are understood by most to be essential to it's success.

 

[stona]

I
While Germany would have been greatly more dangerous, economic wise, had they not been struck; one could counter argue that had oil been attacked continuously from 1940-1941, instead of left alone from 1941-1944, and then attacked in earnest, the war would probably have ended in a similar or shorter time..

Oil was attacked by the British from the beginning of the war. The problem was that Bomber Command could not find the targets, let alone hit them. This would not become possible for years. Harris' comment about 'oily boys' and the huge use of oil by the Germans for Barbarossa, at a time when there supply and reserves was supposed to be critical is entirely valid. The economists who advised the targeting committees knew that oil was a potential weak link in the German war economy, but had no concept of how difficult it was to damage.
If we look at oil targets, they were prioritised in the earliest Directives as early as 13th April 1940 (as part of W.A 6 and W.A.8). As of June 1940 oil was demoted in priority, the new top priority being the German aircraft industry, hardly surprising given that the BoB was about to begin. By 13th July oil was back up the list because though "the reduction of Germany's oil resources will not have an immediate effect on the activity of the GAF....the effect when felt will be permanent." Oil was one of two priority targets given to Peirse in October 1940 and he waged a 'precision' campaign against it until March 1941 with absolutely no results whatsoever. I could carry on like this over the next several years. It was not until Harris took charge at Bomber Command that the specific targeting of oil plants was subsumed by the area bombing campaign, but it never fell off the various lists of priorities.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Juha2]

Hello Stona
in fact bombing did some damage to German oil production. I had time to check only three first weeks of Oct 1940 but in the night 14./15. Oct 40 Hydriewerk in Pölitz was hit, production was stopped for about 4 weeks. and in the night 15./16. Oct 1940 Gelsenberg Benzin A.G. was hit, production stop for 4-5 weeks.

 

[stona]

Part of the problem is that all the British knew of the results of those two raids was that a 'large oil tank' was set on fire at Kiel.
Oil is another complicated target system and without resources to go after a substantial part of the system, and keep doing so, the chances of any meaningful success were negligible.

At this time (late 1940) Bomber Command could rarely muster 100 aircraft. A typical oil raid might be the one against the Leuna plant at Meresburg, flown on the night of 18/19 November, by 11 Whitley's.

Move forward to 9/10 January 1941 and a huge effort, 135 aircraft (60 Wellingtons, 36 Blenheims, 20 Hampdens and 19 Whitleys), the biggest raid of the month by a substantial margin, was made against oil targets in Gelsenkirchen. Only 56 aircraft reported bombing the designated targets, but in fact none were hit, bombs being distributed over the surrounding towns of Buer, Horst and Hessler as well as Gelsenkirchen itself. That's in an arc 2-4 miles radius to the North and West of the centre of Gelsenkirchen and was actually not bad by the standards of the time, but the Germans were not sure what the targets were. Compare that to the resources devoted to oil targets in the combined bombing offensive just a few years later!

Cheers

Steve

 

[Zipper730]

Oil was attacked by the British from the beginning of the war.

Didn't know that, I thought it started in 1940. Apologies.

The problem was that Bomber Command could not find the targets, let alone hit them. This would not become possible for years.

Navigation issues?

Harris' comment about 'oily boys' and the huge use of oil by the Germans for Barbarossa, at a time when there supply and reserves was supposed to be critical is entirely valid.

I never heard such a comment?

Part of the problem is that all the British knew of the results of those two raids was that a 'large oil tank' was set on fire at Kiel.

So they couldn't tell how much of the refinery was destroyed, and how much oil had been burned away?

Oil is another complicated target system and without resources to go after a substantial part of the system

I'm not sure I really understand

At this time (late 1940) Bomber Command could rarely muster 100 aircraft. A typical oil raid might be the one against the Leuna plant at Meresburg, flown on the night of 18/19 November, by 11 Whitley's.

Was that 100 that could be deployed at once, or in the inventory?

Move forward to 9/10 January 1941 and a huge effort, 135 aircraft (60 Wellingtons, 36 Blenheims, 20 Hampdens and 19 Whitleys), the biggest raid of the month by a substantial margin, was made against oil targets in Gelsenkirchen. Only 56 aircraft reported bombing the designated targets, but in fact none were hit, bombs being distributed over the surrounding towns of Buer, Horst and Hessler as well as Gelsenkirchen itself. That's in an arc 2-4 miles radius to the North and West of the centre of Gelsenkirchen and was actually not bad by the standards of the time, but the Germans were not sure what the targets were.

So nagivation was part of the problem, and the fundamental accuracy was the other?

Compare that to the resources devoted to oil targets in the combined bombing offensive just a few years later!

Noteworthy...

 

[stona]

Shortly after the outbreak of the war, ignoring the ten squadrons of Battles and two of Blenheims detached from the command and operating in France as the Advanced Air Striking Force, Bomber Command's front line strength was 23 squadrons comprising about 280 aircraft.

2 GROUP. Nos. 21, 82, 107, 110, 114, 139 Squadrons (101 Squadron non-operational) equipped with Blenheims.

3 GROUP. Nos. 9,37,38,99,115,149 Squadrons (214 and 215 Squadrons non operational) equipped with Wellingtons.

4 GROUP. Nos. 10, 51, 58, 77, 102 Squadrons (78 Squadron non operational) equipped with Whitleys.

5 GROUP. Nos. 44,49,50,61,83, 144 Squadrons (106 and 184 Squadrons non operational) equipped with Hampdens.

This represents a pale imitation of the strategic bombing force into which the command would evolve within four years. The maximum bomb loads of these four aircraft types varied from 1,000 lbs (Blenheim) to 8,000 lbs (Whitley, but not at any range). Only the Whitley squadrons of 4 Group had any training in night bombing. With the exception of the Blenheim they could all reach most of Germany, with the exception of the extreme east.

1940 was effectively the beginning of the war for Bomber Command. The first problem in September 1939, which made most pre-war plans instantly obsolete, was that the German armies moved East over the Polish border rather than West across the Low Countries and France as everyone had anticipated. The nearest point in Poland from Bomber Command's airfields is about 700 miles, so there wasn't much that could be done to aid the Poles from the air.
The severe restrictions placed on bombing at the outbreak of the war were only starting to be loosened in 1940. How severe were those restrictions? No targets of any kind were to be raided on German soil. Bombers could only fly over Germany for the purpose of dropping leaflets. The neutrality of Belgium and Holland was to be respected, meaning direct flights to Germany were impossible. Long approach flights were made over the small German coastline on the North Sea, or further south over France. Belgian and Dutch defences regularly, and legitimately, fired on wayward British aircraft which strayed over their territory. German naval vessels might be attacked, but not when alongside a dockyard wharf (for fear of causing civilian casualties) etc. etc.

Cheers

Steve

 

[buffnut453]

Zipper730,

A couple of answers about your oil-based questions. Battle Damage Assessment (BDA - today it's called Combat Assessment) of any target can be hard to do with certainty. Take a typical oil facility. If the facility has been entirely eradicated, then it's a pretty simple question to answer...but only for that facility (more on that later). However, it's really, REALLY hard to quantify damage if the place isn't obliterated. For example, major components may appear undamaged to aerial reconnaissance but, in reality, they're riddled with shrapnel and useless. Conversely, If the target is hit with a few bombs, was critical damage achieved or did we just destroy non-essential components? If the storage tanks are hit, how do we know how full they were or how much oil was in the pipes etc?

Oil is not a "target". It's a "target system" with many components - extraction, refining, storage, transportation/distribution etc. It's also highly distributed, with hundreds of individual facilities, each of which is relatively small given the precision and accuracy that could be achieved by night bombing in the period 1939-1943 (as noted by Steve above). Add to that complexity that oil doesn't operate on a "use when produced" model like electrical power generation and so it's hard to quantify the impact of hitting an individual target facility. There isn't a semi-developed country today, and there wasn't one in the late 30's, that didn't have a strategic stockpile of oil and associated byproducts. Thus it would take a concerted effort over a considerable length of time to even demonstrate any impact on the oil industry, and even then it's rather like whack-a-mole because the adversary will repair or replace destroyed or damage facilities.

If the Allies made it clear we were just going after oil in 1940, then the Germans would simply put more defences near the oil facilities which would increase the threat to our bombers and reduce the likely impact of any attacks. We should also bear in mind that the German Army, despite it's vaunted "Blitzkrieg" tactics was actually far less mechanized than the Allies. Much of the Wehrmacht logistic train was still horse-drawn. I'm not suggesting that oil wasn't vital...simply that the situation was far more complex than the "oily boys" made out. I think Harris fundamentally understood all these concepts. It was only when the Allies brought numerical superiority to the day and night air campaigns, and could achieve daylight localized air superiority, that the sheer weight of bombing force was able to degrade the German war machine to the extent that it did. Bombing oil was part of the solution but it could never be the "silver bullet" target that many believed it to be.

 

[stona]

Very well put above.

It was well understood by the British, as reflected in the bombing directives after the fall of France, that even a successful campaign against the German oil system would not produce immediate results for precisely the reasons explained in the post above. A successful campaign would lead to an ultimate collapse, somewhat like falling off a cliff edge, and this is precisely what happened in June/July 1944.
Other factors were particular to Germany. She had a large dependency on synthetic oil products, and production of these was concentrated in a relatively few plants, making them a viable target system given the state of the air war (quite unlike the often cited power grid). The territorial losses to the successful campaigns of the Red Army deprived the Germans of alternative sources of oil. Despite all this the USSBS, acknowledged that Germany's primary source of energy was coal and considered the Transport Plan as much a success as the Oil Plan.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Shortround6]

The Oil Plan could only affect part of the logistics picture as the primary fuel for transportation inside Germany or most of the occupied territory was coal. Coal fired locomotives, coal fired tugs/shipping in the rivers/canals/ coastal areas.
Oil/gas shortages would affect the combat arms much more as they were much more dependent on liquid fuel. Horses weren't quite the answer to that (despite using horses/cattle to move aircraft at times) as horse drawn wagons have a much lower payload than most trucks. They also consume more pounds/KG of feed per ton mile/km of cargo moved. Horses being used for draft purposes don't last long on grass. They may be able to live on grass but their ability to pull wagons of several tons for a number of hours a day on a grass diet is very limited.

As far as damage assessment goes. I was a firefighter for 33 years, trying to assess building damage (structural integrity ) is hard enough when you have access to the inside of a building. Trying to do it from pictures taken from several miles away (10,000ft or more) even with telephoto lenses would be darn near impossible.

 

[stona]

The Transport Plan did lead to serious problems moving coal about the Reich. Just about every index relevant shows a steep decline, starting about August/September 1944. The USSBS interviewed Dr. Ganzenmuller, Deputy Director General of the Reichsbahn, who stated that the capacity of Germany's rail yards had fallen to 40% of rated capacity in the last months of 1944 and to just 20% in the spring of 1945. The USSBS comments on Ganzenmuller's remarks note

"Attempts to shift business to unaffected or repaired yards resulted in overcrowding of these yards, with lowered capacity for the handling of mixed train loads...other yards, physically capable of classifying freight, were at a standstill because of the inability of neighbouring yards or R.B.D.to dispatch freight to them."

In other words, the railways were in the throes of a terminal collapse.

It wasn't just the railways. In 1943, 12.3% of movements of coal (and coke) from the Ruhr were by canal or the Rhine. This fell consistently through 1944 to a low in November of just 0.6%.
The damage to the waterways didn't just hinder the movement of coal products. Between April and September 1944 about 100 prefabricated sections of U-boats were transported from the Ruhr and the Weser valley to assembly yards at Bremen, Hamburg and Lubeck every month. After the Dortmund-Ems canal was breached, on 23rd September 1944 a total of just 65 sections were transported northwards during the rest of the war, less than 10 a month.

The Strategic bombing campaigns were a huge undertaking and wide ranging. It is fashionable today to focus on one part of the campaigns and attempt to draw conclusions relevant to the overall effort. This is just lazy and leads to the sort of trite and ignorant opinions about strategic bombing during WW2 one can find posted all over the internet, and elsewhere.

Cheers

Steve

 

[buffnut453]

Hi Shortround,

Great point about coal-fired locomotives. I agree that horses were not a truly viable alternative to the loss of oil production, and certainly not a good replacement for units that were already mechanized. However, the sheer number of horses used by the Wehrmacht is staggering (see this link about horses in WW2). I know this is Wikipedia but I think it's valid for illustrative purposes. Ignore the "national stock" and focus on the numbers used by the military.

Also, appreciate your thoughts on quantifying damage. I did BDA on a couple of occasions and, even with modern technology, it can be challenging. Having looked at some of the WW2 imagery, I'm astounded at the results the Photo Interpreters achieved.

Cheers,
B-N

 

[Shortround6]

I have seen Steel piping draped like cooked spaghetti over machinery in a few factories. Steel turns "plastic" at certain temperatures and looses strength. It didn't melt into puddles or even go from round pipe to flat (ok maybe a bit oval) but sure went from straight to some rather Daliesque curves. Fire can also ruin wiring even if large steel objects (lathe frames?) are relatively undamaged.
Trying to judge damage to steel at a distance could be very difficult. In a nest of pipes are one or two pierced by bomb fragments and can be replaced? Has the nest/ network been reduced to rubble? Have the pipes, even if still in place suffered enough heat damage to no longer hold working pressure?

 

[buffnut453]

And that's before we even consider structures that look intact and useable but, in reality, are deathtraps because heat has catastrophically diminished the physical strength of the structure.