Bomb loads

Welcome Bill,

stona said:

Thanks. I'm intrigued. When I get home (hopefully next Monday) I'll look up the raid. The SAP bombs made me think of an attack on dock yards or shipping, but Essen is a long way from the sea!
Cheers
Steve

Click to expand...

Just a thought but could the SAP bombs be for attacking a heavy industrial unit like an Iron works. A MC bomb might blow the roof or walls off a building but not terminally damage the furnaces. An SAP bomb might have been dropped with a delay fuse to penetrate the concrete floor and undermine it.

Very possibly the reason for loading them in this instance, as the main target at Essen was the vast Krupps complex.

The reason for the use of such a high explosive load, including the SAP bombs, was that most of the 'burnable buildings' in Essen were already considered to be destroyed by earlier raids.
The raid in question involved 1,055 aircraft, dropping 4,538 tons of bombs, 90% high explosive.

The local authorities in Essen reported 607 buildings destroyed, 812 seriously damaged, 662 people killed and 569 injured.

Bomber Command lost 5 Lancasters and 3 Halifaxes.

It is a sign of the state of the air war that Bomber Command could put more than 1,000 aircraft over Essen, without the participation of 5 Group!

Cheers

Steve

Edit: To put that 90% HE in perspective, typical area raids on cities would deliver an overall load which was between 40% and 50% incendiary by weight.