cheddar cheese
Major General
FLYBOYJ said:
I dont like ugly faces
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FLYBOYJ said:cheddar cheese said:I dont...B-17 or B-24....
I thought you liked Twin tails? What up with that?
mosquitoman said:to get bombs to a target
the lancaster kicks ass said:yes but what's the point in getting there, if you're gonna do barely any damage??
evangilder said:I think both were used effectively and with good reason. Having the RAF bomb at night and the AAF by day made the raids round the clock, thereby denying any respite to bombings. Daylight bombing with the technology of the day was better for specific accuracy, but it was far from perfect. For specific, pinpoint targets, the Mosquito was the plane for that time. HIgh altitude heavies, day or night, were more area bombings.
wmaxt said:The planes have to return after the raid to. I heard on 1 documentary so I take it with some skepticizum, that the worst loss of the Lanc was 103 planes one mission and the B-17 was 60 on 1 mission.
www.rafbombercommand.co.uk said:Assessment of the Campaign
Bomber Command airmen flew operations on almost every day or night of the war. Their task demanded sustained and repeated acts of courage from individual aircrews in lonely and dangerous situations.
The bombing campaign was the only way by which Britain could hit back at an aggressive enemy who had invaded most of Europe, had bombed British cities from Glasgow to Plymouth, had taken the first steps to invade the UK by an aerial assault in the Battle of Britain and who represented the greatest danger Britain had faced for centuries.
The RAF's bombing campaign also had important political value. It helped Churchill convince the Americans that Britain could strike effectively at Germany and therefore it was worth investing a substantial amount of the USA's own airforce effort in the European war. Having been bombed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour, there were many Americans who wanted all the USA's military strength targeted at the Pacific War. Had this happened, it would have been disastrous for Britain.
Bomber Command's efforts also played a crucial role in Britain's alliance with Russia. After Russia was attacked by the Germans, Stalin repeatedly demanded that Churchill open a second front to divert German forces. He wanted an invasion launched across the Channel as early as 1942 and accused Churchill of cowardice. Churchill knew it would up to two years before this was possible, but he argued that the RAF's bombing of Germany already was a second front and this helped to convince Stalin that the British were committed to attacking Germany. Had he not believed this, Russia might have felt forced to agree a truce with Germany. This would have been extremely dangerous for Britain, for Hitler could then have turned all his military force towards a second attempt at invading Britain itself.
Statistics show that German industrial production was not affected as badly as might have been expected by sustained bombing. However, for much of the early part of WW2 German war industry was not operating at full capacity and many German factories continued to produce domestic goods.
Without the bombing campaign, German industry would have been able to increase war production capacity many times over if required. Bombing disrupted production and held the full potential of the German industrial machine in check. Equally importantly, bombing attacks on the German homeland forced the Nazis to divert over one million men and 55,000 artillery guns to anti-aircraft defence within Germany itself. German aircraft production had to focus on fighter production for defence against bomber attack, rather than, as Hitler desperately wanted, be able to produce more bombers for offensive use. These resources were urgently needed elsewhere, particularly on the eastern front fighting the Russians, who were finally able to overcome the Germans and force them into a retreat.
Historian Professor Richard Overy had studied the bombing campaign at length. He writes: 'The critical question is not so much "What did bombing do to Germany?" but "What could Germany have achieved if there had been no bombing?"…... Bombing was a blunt instrument. It was a strategy that had a long and painful learning curve. But for all its deficiencies the 125,000 men and women of Bomber Command made a larger contribution to victory in Europe than any other element of Britain's armed services.'
Albert Speer, Hitler's Armaments Minister, knew more than anyone else in Europe about the true effect of the bombing campaign. He summed it up thus: 'It made every square metre of Germany a front. For us, it was the greatest lost battle of the war.'