Aerial Bombing Question

[stona]

There is a lot of nonsense written about Harris.

Harris followed orders and shortly before he took over Bomber Command the so called area bombing directive (itself not really a very good description) was in place.
Harris was an old school Trenchardian and believed with every fibre of his being that the best application of Bomber Command should reflect that doctrine. This doctrine had never gone away, what the RAF said publicly and believed privately, throughout the 1930s, were two different things.
It was Harris' adherence to his Trenchardian strategy that has left him open to criticism, not just in the official history, but even more with the increased availability of much original material since the 1970s. The core argument against Harris is that he refused to forego his area bombing campaign when the circumstance leading to its adoption, the inability to hit anything more precise than a city no longer applied. The implication is that a substantial portion of the hundreds of thousands killed by the bombing might have been spared had the general area campaign been stopped at the point when alternatives existed which offered the same or better chances of breaking the German war effort. This is a facile argument that divorces the development of British bombing from anything that happened before 1939. Harris was not alone in believing his campaign offered the best chance of breaking the German war effort, and he, unlike us, did not have the benefit of hindsight. It is a fact that when his command's effort was diverted to the pre-invasion effort the German war economy recovered substantially, whether due to the release of pressure previously applied by Bomber Command or other causes is something that few can agree on.
There was no clear and obvious alternative, as is often argued. Various plans were developed, some times concurrently, and in the end Harris did attack oil targets (beloved of the Americans) and more heavily that the 8th Air Force itself. He also attacked the transportation targets (so beloved of Tedder) despite advice from his own Operational Research Section that showed just how difficult such targets were to destroy. Eventually Harris did what he was told. He had to be cajoled, kicking and screaming, to the 'panacea' targets but when he did go after them he did so with the maximum effort his command could make, and did a very good job on them.

A final thought. We can not hope to understand the mindset of these men. We have all grown up in an era of aviation and air power. Harris was 11 years old when the Wright brothers made their first flight. Trenchard was 30 years old.

Cheers

Steve

 

[wuzak]

So the stations are attached to the racks, and a shackle is where bomb meets station?

The shackle is the part that supports the load of the bomb and connects it to the rack.

This is a shackle:

A station is a point on the rack where the shackle can be attached. I am not sure if stations had different load ratings or if the space dictated the size of the bomb which could be carried (also dependent on what bombs were being carried in nearby stations).

They also redesigned the bomb-bay correct?

They had to for Thin Man (long and skinny, some consideration was given to using the Lancaster to carry this bomb, because of its size and shape), but I believe the Fat Man and Little Boy could fit in the B-29's forward bomb bay once the rack had been changed.

 

[wuzak]

There was no clear and obvious alternative, as is often argued. Various plans were developed, some times concurrently, and in the end Harris did attack oil targets (beloved of the Americans) and more heavily that the 8th Air Force itself.

And more effectively, owing to the larger bomb sizes used by the RAF?

 

[stona]

In August/September 1944 the Air Staff (and Portal) seem to have had a St Paul on the road to Damascus moment and suddenly seized on the Oil Plan with the fanaticism only recent converts can show. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but you get the idea
Portal would regain control of Harris' force from Eisenhower in mid September.

In October Harris despatched just 817 sorties (just over 4,000 tons of bombs) against the Allies supposed number one priority target, synthetic oil plants. This seems a poor effort until we look at the tonnage dropped by the 8th Air Force in the same period on such targets, just 3,256 tons. A double standard often operates against Harris.

From 1st June 1944 to 8th May 1945 Bomber Command despatched 15% of total sorties (22,000 of 155,000) in raids against oil targets, dropping 99,500 tons of bombs on them. The 8th Air Force sent 13% of its sorties (28,000 of 220,000) against similar targets, dropping 73,000 tons of bombs on them.
It is Harris who faces the charge that he could and should have done more, but I have never seen or heard such a charge levelled at the 8th Air Force. One has to ask why? The usual response is that Harris carried on his area offensive during this period too, and that that effort could have been devoted against the oil system, but this is to have a far to simplistic view of the criteria governing Bomber Command's targeting methods.

A final thought on this too. When Churchill wrote his infamous note to Portal on March 28th 1945, following the Dresden raid, which started

"the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed..."

Portal thought the note was an attempt to divert responsibility for the bombing campaign away from Britain's political leadership and onto the military leadership. Given Churchill's support for Harris throughout the war and his bullying of the Air Staff into the bombing of East German cities in support of the Russians, one of which he was told would be Dresden, it must have seemed churlish at least. Portal asked him to withdraw the note, but also asked Bottomley to write to Harris for his views. Bottomley was quite diplomatic in his letter.

"I am sure you will agree that [it] misrepresents the purpose of our attacks on industrial areas in the past, and appears to ignore the aim given by the Combined Chiefs of Staff in their directives which have been blessed by the heads of government."

Portal and Bottomley were not going to be fall guys for a government policy which now, as Germany was defeated, seemed unpalatable to some.

Harris' reaction was understandably incandescent. He wrote that it was "abusive" and "an insult both to the bombing policy of the Air Ministry and to the manner in which that policy has been executed by Bomber Command." He never was much of a diplomat, and had anyway been arguing for years for more honesty in the portrayal of what his command was doing. It was the politicians, now trying to shift responsibility, who had balked at the suggestion.

With specific reference to Dresden, which always get dragged out in efforts to convict Harris, we should remember that this was not his idea either. In a letter of 27th January, sent by Bottomley and attaching the JIC report of 25th January in which attacks on East German cities were proposed he was effectively ordered to make the attacks. The last paragraph reads

"3. I am therefore to request that subject to the qualifications stated above, and as soon as moon and weather conditions allow, you will undertake such attacks with the particular object of exploiting the confused conditions which are likely to exist in the above mentioned cities [Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz] during the successful Russian advance."

The important fact is that the general area bombing campaign was not Harris' policy, it wasn't the Air Staff's policy, it was the policy of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the UK government. To somehow blame Harris, or, worse, the men who served under him for this is ridiculous and revisionist.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Robert Porter]

For as long as the Military has been subject to civilian i.e. political control, there have been efforts to shift responsibility and blame for actions undertaken by the military at the direction of the politicians, to the military when those actions may not be easily understood by the voting public, or worse when those actions might be viewed as "wrong".

It is the nature of the political beast. The military has offered up many, far to many, sacrificial lambs to salve the uneasy conscience of those that sent them on their missions in the first place. I believe in the system, but it only works well when each party trusts the other, and that is unfortunately rare.

Perhaps the best example I can give is the Vietnam war, where Johnson would personally select targets often with a huge time delay from receiving intelligence and then ordering the strike. Our politicians also made rather arbitrary decisions on what and where we could strike while our enemies had no such restrictions.

Right wrong or indifferent it is often a confusing and difficult mission for the military to carry out political objectives. But it has always been easy for the politicians to shift the blame to the men in uniform or even their direct civilian leaders if necessary.

 

[swampyankee]

Even though the politicians do (or at least should) control the military, there should also be some level of discussion between the military leadership and their political bosses; in Vietnam there was. Alas, McNamara was looking for a simple, easy to understand metric for progress to "victory." Since it didn't exist, he picked corpses. Pentagon briefers, frequently in uniform, would announce the daily body count: we killed 300 of the enemy this week. McNamara could have just as easily picked a different metric, like captured weapons (we got 400 AK-47s and 20 mortars this week!) or number of amputated right hands. I think weapons and ammunition would probably have been the best choice, though. So would having a South VIetnamese ally who wasn't pretty horrible to begin with.


There may have been a better way to fight the war in Vietnam. I've not been sold on the military knowing what it is, because much of McNamara's strategy was from the generals.

 

[Robert Porter]

I would agree, having grown up watching the body count on TV. The pullout occurred when I was 15. I do believe in civilian control, the alternative is scary, but that requires that the civilians in charge know where to draw the line. Johnson was a micro manager. Others not so much.

I don't claim that was why the war ended the way it did, but I can remember dinner table conversations from my parents and those of his generation and before all saying it would end the way it did years before. The most common refrain was that you could not fight a war if you could not take the war to the enemy, and allowing the enemy to have areas that he knew were safe from attack was tantamount to surrendering. We just took a lot longer to do so, and spent a lot more lives for a cause that was lost from the start.

 

[swampyankee]

I have very little respect for McNamara, although he was neither stupid mor malicious. He was, however, I believe both arrogant and incapable of looking beyond a very narrow management perspective. He was, ultimately, a technocrat who could not recognize the moral aspects of war. He needed a simple way to keep score, not only for himself but for the people towhom he was responsible because, I think, he thought they were all unimaginably stupid.

 

[Zipper730]

The shackle is the part that supports the load of the bomb and connects it to the rack. . . A station is a point on the rack where the shackle can be attached.

So the rack has stations on it; the stations on it can be fitted with shackles to carry bombs... did I get it right?

They had to for Thin Man (long and skinny, some consideration was given to using the Lancaster to carry this bomb, because of its size and shape), but I believe the Fat Man and Little Boy could fit in the B-29's forward bomb bay once the rack had been changed.

I still think the RAF made a good point about bomb-bays: Sometimes you are better off with one huge bay than two smaller ones

And more effectively, owing to the larger bomb sizes used by the RAF?

And payload capacity to distance

In August/September 1944 the Air Staff (and Portal) seem to have had a St Paul on the road to Damascus moment and suddenly seized on the Oil Plan with the fanaticism only recent converts can show. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but you get the idea
Portal would regain control of Harris' force from Eisenhower in mid September.

Didn't the USAAF partially operate under Portal's control? If I recall correctly the bombing of Sofia was the RAF's idea but our planes were under their charge...

In October Harris despatched just 817 sorties (just over 4,000 tons of bombs) against the Allies supposed number one priority target, synthetic oil plants. This seems a poor effort until we look at the tonnage dropped by the 8th Air Force in the same period on such targets, just 3,256 tons. A double standard often operates against Harris.

Correct

From 1st June 1944 to 8th May 1945 Bomber Command despatched 15% of total sorties (22,000 of 155,000) in raids against oil targets, dropping 99,500 tons of bombs on them. The 8th Air Force sent 13% of its sorties (28,000 of 220,000) against similar targets, dropping 73,000 tons of bombs on them.

Where did the rest of the 8th AF's go?

It is Harris who faces the charge that he could and should have done more, but I have never seen or heard such a charge levelled at the 8th Air Force. One has to ask why?

We had better PR...

The usual response is that Harris carried on his area offensive during this period too, and that that effort could have been devoted against the oil system, but this is to have a far to simplistic view of the criteria governing Bomber Command's targeting methods.

No, he was operating under directive from Churchill...

A final thought on this too. When Churchill wrote his infamous note to Portal on March 28th 1945, following the Dresden raid, which started

"the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed..."

Portal thought the note was an attempt to divert responsibility for the bombing campaign away from Britain's political leadership and onto the military leadership.

Which was of course true

Harris' reaction was understandably incandescent. He wrote that it was "abusive" and "an insult both to the bombing policy of the Air Ministry and to the manner in which that policy has been executed by Bomber Command." He never was much of a diplomat, and had anyway been arguing for years for more honesty in the portrayal of what his command was doing.

Yeah, he generally was the most direct and made the best effort to tell the truth.

For as long as the Military has been subject to civilian i.e. political control, there have been efforts to shift responsibility and blame for actions undertaken by the military at the direction of the politicians, to the military when those actions may not be easily understood by the voting public, or worse when those actions might be viewed as "wrong".

Of course

Perhaps the best example I can give is the Vietnam war, where Johnson would personally select targets often with a huge time delay from receiving intelligence and then ordering the strike.

Johnson was an idiot. I'm wondering why he did this, was he afraid of the military?

I do believe in civilian control, the alternative is scary

Agreed

 

[GregP]

I have no respect at all for McNamara and believe Lyndon Johnson to be nothing short of a criminal. He killed more US troops than anything else did with his meddling. Most of the guys I knew felt the same. The list of his (and his family's) deeds that were or should have been against the law is long.

 

[stona]

RAF bomb bays were designed the way they were to carry anti-shipping weapons, it was in most requirements. This meant mines, but principally torpedoes and armour piercing bombs. Both tend to be long and thin. When the bomb bays were divided, and several were, they were divided longitudinally.
When torpedoes got longer with the addition of an air tail it caused some difficulties. The Hampden was used as a torpedo bomber by Coastal Command and needed some surgery to make the weapon fit.
Many designs also featured wing cells for smaller bombs, the Air Ministry was very keen on what proved to be the almost useless 250lb GP bomb for attacking almost everything but ships.
Cheers
Steve

 

[wuzak]

So the rack has stations on it; the stations on it can be fitted with shackles to carry bombs... did I get it right?

Did you not watch the video from before?


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHz3DBwYVyo&feature=youtu.be


Starting at about 3:30

At 4:00 the shackle is fitted to the bomb

At about 4:38 they talk about lifting the bomb above its loading station and positioning the shackle.

at 4:50 the bomb is lowered and the shackle engaged, the bomb now being secure in its position.

 

[fubar57]

Did you not watch the video from before?

Probably trying to figure out how the quote the video

 

[Robert Porter]

Probably trying to figure out how the quote the video

Oh, no, you did not... oh yes you did!

 

[stona]

A final thought on this too. When Churchill wrote his infamous note to Portal on March 28th 1945, following the Dresden raid, which started

"the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed..."

Portal thought the note was an attempt to divert responsibility for the bombing campaign away from Britain's political leadership and onto the military leadership. Given Churchill's support for Harris throughout the war and his bullying of the Air Staff into the bombing of East German cities in support of the Russians, one of which he was told would be Dresden, it must have seemed churlish at least.

Sorry to quote myself, but I found this written about the bombing campaign to come, whilst looking at an entirely different subject (Sealion). It was written on 8th July 1940.

"When I look around to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path. We have no continental army which can defeat the German military power. The blockade is broken and Hitler has Asia and probably Africa to draw from. Should he be repulsed here or not try invasion, he will recoil eastward, and we have nothing to stop him. But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers upon the Nazi homeland."

This was not written by Harris of course, but by Churchill. Fortunately the historian responsible for some of the best work on Churchill, Martin Gilbert, asked Harris to comment on this minute, which he did in 1982. Harris, as you would expect, did not disavow the principles behind Churchill's writing.

"It was the origin of the idea of bombing the enemy out of the war, I should have been proud of it. But it originated with Winston."

It is not quite true that the idea of a general bombing offensive originated with Churchill, but the idea of an 'absolutely devastating, exterminating attack', as British government policy, certainly did.

Cheers

Steve

 

[swampyankee]

There were a lot of military officers who were completely sold on strategic bombing as the war winner, all by itself (Mitchell, Douhet) Churchill may have been sold on strategic bombing, but it was not an idea he devised. He was looking for some way to strike at an enemy which was the most dangerous threat to the existence of British people -- not just Britain -- since the Plague. Give credit where it's due, and not all of the blame for the use of strategic bombing goes to civilians, which some seem to be saying. Churchill could be blind to his strategic incompetences, but so could Trenchard and Harris.


faber

 

[stona]

Go back and read what Churchill wrote about bombing Germany in July 1940. He is not describing strategic bombing in the terms that RAF officers of the 1930s would have understood in a general bombing campaign (though Trenchard had argued for something like the 'Churchillian' offensive in the conferences of 1922/3 which laid the foundations of British offensive doctrine). They argued for a general campaign on Germany because even bombs that missed the intended targets, which were military or industrial, would still hit something German, including the civil population, and would not be wasted. The civilian population itself was not the primary target, and would not be until 1942, though few had any qualms about the inevitable loss of civilian lives..
Churchill was suggesting that the Germans themselves should be the primary target. This is an important distinction, as it was the latter that became government policy some two years later. Harris did not have any problem implementing the policy, he explicitly said that he would have liked to take the credit for it, but it was the Prime Minister's policy.

In an interview with AVM Tony Mason in 1977 Harris once again did not shrink from admitting the campaign from 1942, when he took over at Bomber Command, for what it was. But neither was he prepared to carry the can for others.

'I lived in a shower of directives from the day I took over to the last day of war. The directive when I took over was that I wasn't to specifically aim at anything unless ordered to do so and to blast the German cities as a whole.'

Which was exactly the case.


Cheers

Steve

 

[stona]

The spat between Steel (DCAS) and Higgins (Director of Training and Staff Duties) in 1923 in response to a document circulated by Steel entitled 'War Aim' which sought to establish which enemy targets (meaning French targets) should be bombed, is illustrative of the hairs to be split.

Higgins was unequivocal.

"I think we should openly state, as, in future wars, air warfare will devolve into a struggle between the combatants to obtain moral superiority over the opposing civil populace, it is almost inevitable that a direct attack will be made by each side on the civil populace of the other. No doubt, with our usual skill at putting our enemies in the wrong in the eyes of the world we shall see to it that the enemy is the first to transgress international laws. But it is certain that in any national war in which we become involved we shall find ourselves within a few hours of the declaration of war carrying out bombing attacks with the object of causing panic and alarm among the civilpopulace of the enemy. Let us therefore face facts."

Nothing wrong with that you might think, it follows Trenchard's doctrine almost to the letter. Steel did not think so. His response.

"I cannot possibly agree [to Higgins' version]. In fact there is little difference between Higgins and myself as to the value of moral effect, but he wants to lay it down that we are to attack the civil population to produce the moral effect; I insist on laying it down that we adhere to the rules, and attack military objectives in the vicinity of populated areas, which would produce the moral effect we require...Higgins' version is almost diametrically opposed [to mine] from every point of view."

This confusion had not been properly resolved by 1939, though it was Steel's not Higgin's version that became the official public doctrine of the RAF.

This led to some odd plans, for example, to attack French aerodromes in the vicinity of Paris, where civilians might be found nearby, rather than those in Northern France which the bombers attacking Britain would presumably be taking off from.


Remember this debate took place in 1923, a certain Charles Portal, a mere Squadron Leader, attended many of the conferences as Trenchard's protege....a lot of nonsense is written about Harris

Cheers

Steve

 

[Zipper730]

wuzak

Did you not watch the video from before?

Yes I did, as I understand it

• The shackle is attached to the bomb by prior to raising it up onto the correct station of the rack
• The shackle attaches to a specified station on the rack by way of hooks

If I grasp this right: The rack has stations on it, on these stations a bomb with shackle can be fitted. I'm not sure where I got anything wrong.


stona (Steve)

Sorry to quote myself, but I found this written about the bombing campaign to come, whilst looking at an entirely different subject (Sealion). It was written on 8th July 1940.

"When I look around to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path. We have no continental army which can defeat the German military power. The blockade is broken and Hitler has Asia and probably Africa to draw from. Should he be repulsed here or not try invasion, he will recoil eastward, and we have nothing to stop him. But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers upon the Nazi homeland."

This was not written by Harris of course, but by Churchill. Fortunately the historian responsible for some of the best work on Churchill, Martin Gilbert, asked Harris to comment on this minute, which he did in 1982. Harris, as you would expect, did not disavow the principles behind Churchill's writing.

"It was the origin of the idea of bombing the enemy out of the war, I should have been proud of it. But it originated with Winston."

That makes enough sense: The politicians give the orders; then toss those who carried them out under the bus when they look sufficiently unpleasant. Not that Harris was very willing to carry them out, but he did what Churchill told him to do.

It is not quite true that the idea of a general bombing offensive originated with Churchill

No, that originated a long time earlier. I'm not sure when the idea of bombarding population centers came into being, and by bombardment, I mean by bow & arrow, catapult, artillery shell, or by bomb carried aboard an airplane.

The idea of sacking and slaughtering a population (and for that matter *ALL* occupants) seem to have been around as long as we had populations to slaughter.

The first bombardment by air on a population center with the intent of terrorizing the population appear to be in 1914 by Zeppelin. The idea had been thought up a couple of years earlier by the Germans, and possibly a few years before that by a Science Fiction writer. Attacks were eventually carried out by fixed-wing aircraft, and the RFC & RNAS followed up with acts of reciprocal retribution (as well as attacks on zeppelin sheds).

There were also attacks aimed at specified targets, specified targets with hope that the bombs would also hammer the crap out of the population nearby. Trenchard seemed to be a proponent of this sort of thing.

Giulio Douhet advocated starting such an aerial war with a sneak-attack on air-fields, then hammering the population & targets that had an immediate and massive affect on the war effort (docks & harbors, ammo storage) by explosive, incendiary, poison gas, even proposals of bacteriological agents.

This is the reason...

• Unescorted bomber formations were expected to get through with minimal losses
  
• They felt the army and navy would never be able to mobilize (which is fundamentally flawed: Nations have various mechanisms to determine if things are going south and would start mobilizing ahead of the event)

In an interview with AVM Tony Mason in 1977 Harris once again did not shrink from admitting the campaign from 1942, when he took over at Bomber Command, for what it was. But neither was he prepared to carry the can for others.

'I lived in a shower of directives from the day I took over to the last day of war. The directive when I took over was that I wasn't to specifically aim at anything unless ordered to do so and to blast the German cities as a whole.'

Though there were many things about Bomber Harris not to like, I'd have to say that I liked the fact that he was generally the most honest.

Steel did not think so. His response.

"I cannot possibly agree [to Higgins' version]. In fact there is little difference between Higgins and myself as to the value of moral effect, but he wants to lay it down that we are to attack the civil population to produce the moral effect; I insist on laying it down that we adhere to the rules, and attack military objectives in the vicinity of populated areas, which would produce the moral effect we require...Higgins' version is almost diametrically opposed [to mine] from every point of view."

Technically even if nobody was killed (outside the air-bases, factories, etc) it would be foolish to admit that it would have no affect on morale.

In December 1972 our raids on Hanoi had the same effect: The casualty rates were fairly low considering how much tonnage we dropped (we probably could have turned every city in North Vietnam into a flaming torch -- it would have been counterproductive to our goals as that would have killed our POW's).


swampyankee (faber)

There were a lot of military officers who were completely sold on strategic bombing as the war winner, all by itself

Some did by itself, others felt that interdiction and even a little bit of CAS would be useful.

Churchill may have been sold on strategic bombing, but it was not an idea he devised.[/quote]It wasn't even his only plan to fight the war

• Defeating the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic was at one point, the #1 priority
• The use of creating resistance movements was also something that he was a big proponent of
• He supported the cross-channel invasion

He was looking for some way to strike at an enemy which was the most dangerous threat to the existence of British people -- not just Britain -- since the Plague.

It was a plague...

 

[Zipper730]

The British relied largely on individual bombing photographs, and anyway every aircraft carried a bomb aimer (bombardier) who used a bomb sight (no toggling on the leader at night) and every aircraft bombed individually.

Unless I misunderstood, or missed a detail: Is this the mean point of impact or is this something else? I'm just curious why they US didn't compute the bomb-accuracy for every plane as the RAF did? We could often see better than they did...

With bomber formations 500yd across and even wider, a lot of bombs are going to be spread out.

Why the hell did we use formations this wide in 1944? Previously we were using 12 ship combat boxes one behind the other? At least that's a more narrow series of bomb-trains...

Two documents that should answer a lot of the questions regarding bombing:

Bombardiers Information File
Bombardiers' Information File : United States. Army Air Forces. Office of Flying Safety : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

Terminal Ballistics Data, Vol I
Terminal ballistic data, volume I, bombing. :: World War II Operational Documents

Thanks man, this rocks