August 19 1943: You are in charge of RAF Bomber Command

[vinnye]

If I were in charge of BC, I would try to get the "boffins" to come up with an accurate, reliable navigation aid to make sure that whaever target I send my bombers to hit IS actually hit!
I know that this may take more than the month I have in charge, but it is going to make a difference at some point if the bombs are dropped with a good degree of accuracy.
I would also want lots more Mosquitos, to act as a means to deliver bombs with greater accuracy than the heavies, but with low losses. Again the accuracy is key, you can do enough damage with a few bombs that are well placed rather than just "plastering" an area and hoping for some good hits!
I would also have Mosquitos carry out intruder type missions to engage LW bombers at their bases taking off and landing on their night time raids. This should reduce the effectiveness of the LW raids on Britain.

 

[parsifal]

such a gadget already existed, but its range was limited. OBOE allowed British bombers to bomb as accurately as the US Day bombers, but it was restricted to a range of about 200-250 miles.


H2S was okay, but it had severe problems around large targets like Berlin or near water where ground returns could be distorted. it also needed a good crew to operate it

 

[stona]

Even if you drop your bomb from exactly the correct point in space,taking into account all the factors that the bomb sights were supposed to calculate,and assuming the input to the sight was correct and the sight worked perfectly there was still a good chance of missing a small target like a factory building.This is due primarily to the aerodynamic vagaries of the bombs themselves,but atmospheric phenomena also have an effect.

Those are big assumptions,Bennett accused half of Bomber Command's Mainforce crews of not troubling to use their bombsights.

That's why we invented smart weapons,bombs that could actually fly (sort of) to their target.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Timppa]

Arthur "Bomber" Harris is taking leave after the bombing of Peenemünde, and will be gone for a month. You are left in charge and have full discretion in the use of Bomber Command.

What targets will you pick?

You will have, possibly, about a dozen raids in the month.

Two raids to each of the six major fuel plants:
Pölitz, Gelsenkirchen, Leuna,Scholven, Brux, Böhlen.
They produced some 80% of aviation fuels. Perhaps the impact would be adequate to change Harris' vacation permanent.

 

[iron man]

If I'm reading this right, mr. Tooze believes that RAF's bombing campaign was making, already in early 1943, crippling blows upon the German steel industry?

No...you are not reading this right.

Tooze's assessment of the effect of the 1943 RAF campaign against the Ruhr makes no statement directly concerning the production of crude/finished steel; nor does he refer to production of finished armaments for that matter. Tooze is in fact referring to the dislocation/disruption of the distribution of hard coal...the heartbeat of the ENTIRE German economy.

I've promoted this book before on the forum and it would appear that Mr. Tooze concurs/supports the author's conclusions (the interview posted by Mr. Jennish makes this rather clear): Alfred C. Mierzejewski; "The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-45". It explains exactly what Mr. Tooze is speaking of in this interview. The author makes a solid case that this was a strategy that should have been prosecuted right from the issuance of the CBO/Pointblank directive.

The road not taken.

There were many vulnerable "choke points" in the distribution network that could have been destroyed with the means at hand in the summer of 1943. The railway viaducts, the locks/aqueducts on the Dortmund-Ems and Mittleland canal systems, drop a railway bridge into the Rhine to strangle the vital barge traffic, continually suppress operations at the major marshaling yard at Hamm...all "do-able" using a combination of precision low-level daylight attacks by Mosquitoes and saturation attacks by "heavies" using HE. Given the fact that the Luftwaffe was far from suppressed during this period, there are going to be high casualty rates among the attacking forces...but there already were anyhow.

No coal distribution=no German war production...period.

Everything ran on it.

 

[tomo pauk]

Re-reading the excerpt Jenisch posted, Ive come to a conclusion that you've explained it in far less words what Mr. Tooze.
What got me puzzled was this:

ADAM TOOZE: Yes. There's no question that it had an absolutely devastating impact on the functioning of the German war economy from as early as the spring of 1943.

Since the RAF switched to city bombing in 1943, would that mean they did not know their attacks prior that were delivering crippling blows to the German war effort?

Hopefully you wont direct me to Mr. Tooze...

 

[michaelmaltby]

".... Since the RAF switched to city bombing in 1943, would that mean they did not know their attacks prior that were delivering crippling blows to the German war effort?"

I think to some measure that is a fair assumption ... but no doubt Target Berlin would seem more appetizing to the public than night after night bombing the smog enshrouded Ruhr complex. So that too, political "spin"

But in some measure - the British having survived the Blitz with very minor industrial destruction [in comparison to what was coming Germany's way] - there would I imagine be a tendency to give German resilience the benefit of the doubt - to assume we - the RAF - weren't hurting them enough, whereas, Britain and Germany's industrial situations were entirely different. Just being an island with a good supply of rivers, harbors and canals gives GB options that almost [blue water] land-locked Germany doesn't have. And while German rail performed magnificently throughout the war, British Rail was no slouch either.

Switching to Berlin as the main target was dumb. The Mosquito raids - like the one than knocked the Nazis off the radio just before a big speech - raids like those are another story. Those kind of raids can afford to be p*ss-in-your-face political.

Speaking to talking to Mr. Tooze - does anyone know how effective - electrically speaking - industrially speaking - the Dambuster Ruhr raid was? Can we measure the results in tons of coal or tons of steel or litres of synfuel ...? How about all the folks downstream who woke up in the night to a cold, wet reality ....? How do you measure the effect of that ...? Simple answer, you can't. Not Tooze, not nobody

MM

 

[tomo pauk]

In the end of the day, it all boils down to one group of target: energetics. Coal electricity are needed for economy to work, fuel runs the military. With 'energy targets' suppressed in 1943, all of the German war effort comes to a still stand in 1944.

 

[wuzak]

I think coal was a real key.

Directly bombing coal mining was difficult, if not impossible. But by preventing the transportation of coal it creates difficulties for electricty production (mostly coal powered in Germany), oil production (synthetic oil) and explosives (which depended, at least partly on the byproduct of synthetic oil production).

 

[mhuxt]

The Oboe repeater, which was to have extended the range of Oboe well into the Reich, had been tested successfully but was not developed as Their Airships believed H2S would be sufficient.

You needn't wish for Mosquito intruders - they were active over occupied territory from July 1942 with 23 Squadron, then from May '43 with 605 and 418 Squadrons.


I am blessed with 20/20 Hindsight. Now, for clairvoyancy...

 

[michaelmaltby]

"... I am blessed with 20/20 Hindsight. Now, for clairvoyancy..."

If that's true, mhuxt ... why aren't we hearing from you more often .. practice makes perfect, you know

MM

 

[mhuxt]

Hey man, generally I charge for my pearls of wisdom, but I do it for free in here, can't give too much away...

 

[iron man]

I think coal was a real key.

Directly bombing coal mining was difficult, if not impossible. But by preventing the transportation of coal it creates difficulties for electricty production (mostly coal powered in Germany), oil production (synthetic oil) and explosives (which depended, at least partly on the byproduct of synthetic oil production).

No sh!t Sherlock...

My question remains.

HOW ON EARTH, with so many (ostensibly) "learned" men in control of the reins, was this obvious lynchpin overlooked?

The mind boggles

They knew that the feedstocks for the cracking plants had to come from the Ruhr (hard) coal fields. They knew that the majority of the electricity generated was fed from Ruhr coal supplies, they knew that the German economy RAN ON COAL.

So why didn't they attack it?

I don't do conspiracy theories...but I smell "Russian blood" all over this one. We'll never know because if any proof exists...it will NEVER see the light of day.

 

[tyrodtom]

Coal may be important, and all so obvious now, but how do you stop coal supplies?
Bombing coal mines wouldn't be too effective, in that era they're almost all underground.
Attack the tracks ? They're easily repaired.
Attack marshalling yards ? Easy to repair again.
Bomb tunnels entries and exits, or large viaducts. Good targets, very hard to repair, but very hard to hit.

 

[wuzak]

Coal may be important, and all so obvious now, but how do you stop coal supplies?
Bombing coal mines wouldn't be too effective, in that era they're almost all underground.
Attack the tracks ? They're easily repaired.
Attack marshalling yards ? Easy to repair again.
Bomb tunnels entries and exits, or large viaducts. Good targets, very hard to repair, but very hard to hit.

Definitely attack any part of the transportation system - rail, inland waterways, roads, bridges, tunnels, etc.

The targets can be repaired, some quite quickly, others not, so the key is to keep bombing them.

Also, things like loading facilities need to be damaged/destroyed.

 

[iron man]

Coal may be important, and all so obvious now, but how do you stop coal supplies?
Bombing coal mines wouldn't be too effective, in that era they're almost all underground.
Attack the tracks ? They're easily repaired.
Attack marshalling yards ? Easy to repair again.
Bomb tunnels entries and exits, or large viaducts. Good targets, very hard to repair, but very hard to hit.

I'd need to see some evidence that restoring a heavily bombed marshaling yard to it's full capacity is "Easy". It really depends on what is hit. What the DRB did historically was to disburse mainline/divisional classification activities to adjacent facilities, repair the ability to process "through" traffic, and then restore as much of the classification trackage/infrastructure as was deemed practicable. Initial repair efforts to classification focused on restoring the ability to accept/sort/assemble trains for "local" service, and only then to restore intercity/divisional capacity...if it was deemed necessary. Initially, the DRB had a large "overcapacity"/redundancy of marshaling facilities and this allowed for the workaround solution described above. As the bombing hit additional facilities, this "buffer" of classification capacity was continually eroded and eventually the entire system collapsed. The huge classification yard at Hamm (that I mentioned upthread) is the key to all DRB operations serving points to the North/West of the Ruhr and in it's case, there were no "adjacent facilities" with sufficient capacity to allow for a "workaround" as described above. It's historic destruction caused a major crisis in the DRB's ability to tranship coal from the Ruhr to industries in the Central area of Germany. This is all supported by the DRB operational records from the period.

Infrastructure related to the inland waterways was also far from "easy" to repair; this is clearly shown in historical documents.

If you find the subject interesting, get Mierzejewski's book. He describes what actually happened...in detail.

I'm only promoting the point that the bombing capacity existed to bring about these same results starting from mid-1943 forward, and that it could have changed matters significantly.

 

[tyrodtom]

We're talking about Bomber Command here, and you were talking about targeting coal.
How do you target coal ?
You can't target the source and have much hope of success, so you do pretty much what they did at some point, you target the transportation system.

 

[gjs238]

I was alluding to all this in another thread I started:
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/av...paign-europe-no-long-range-escorts-35892.html

I was expecting people to post replies such as, "Why, bomb the Ruhr to smithereens and target coal, of course" but there weren't many takers.

 

[tomo pauk]

Maybe we should 1st determine 'long range', ie. how many miles of radius must a fighter plane sport, so we can call it a long range fighter/escort?

 

[gjs238]

The Schweinfurt-Regensburg missions on August 17, 1943 and October 14, 1943 (Black Thursday) seem a good baseline.
If I understand correctly, daylight missions into Germany were called off in order to rebuild the forces.

Use the escort range available at that time.
With hindsight, knowing the results of those missions (immediate and long term), what worthwhile targets were available within the contemporary escort range?