British night Bomber Losses-AA or night fighters?

[tomo pauk]

I knew that 1 and a half or 2 and a half % was way off.
The key to seeing the horrible sacrifice was missions over Germany.
Those figures are over 20 %. About the same as USAAF without escorts over Germany, until Merlin engined Mustangs were available in force.
As an American & a retired military type I resent the he'll out of our people being used and sacrificed as political pawns, to prove we could strike deep into Germany with no escorts, using tight formations, no escorts.
Well, we could, as long as 20% + losses were OK.
They weren't. The damage done in those strikes prior to fighter escorts there and back didn't shorten the war a day.
God bless them all, RAF and USAAF loses were both terrible, and damn sure weren't anyone's 2-3%.
Doug

The percentages were well into the single digits if one looks at the missions.
RAF and USAF bombing missions shortened the war in a major way, erstwile by forcing Germany to invest huge resources (both in material and manpower) to design and produce weapons and other equipment for the air defence, as well as man those assets. Plus what was spent to build false sites (factories etc), and re-shuffling the production lines away to the East. That meant less resources went into war material to actually fight the Allies on ground and sea. More ground-based radars, and Flak needed them in many hundreds, put great strains on German copper supply, as well as their ellectronics industry. Unlike UK, USSR and other Allies, Germany did not have USA to chime in with war material. Also meant than Germany was ill capable to support their numerous Allies in a more elaborate way.
The 20% losses per mission were not sustainable by any air force in ww2. Indeed, god bless the crews.

 

[Doug Benton]

Good info, and no doubt the bombing had a ruthless effect on German industry ...as the war went on. I was referring to the US raids prior to fighter escorts, and the RAF raids on civilian housing, neither shortened anything.
My focus is on the loss of life for the crews, and it was nobodies 2-3 %, that is misleading, and my reference is to raids over GERMANY.
Wright Patterson Air Force Museum archives, what Wiki used, shows crew losses.
Bomber Command aircrew showed 27 out of every 100 survived the Bomber Command requirement of 30 missions. That's not single digits folks.
8th Air Force ? We deployed 350,000 air crew, the 8th had 50,000 losses.
Again, no single digits there.
There's a lot of fascinating writing here with some savvy people. I really enjoy it and thanks to all.

Doug Benton

 

[Greyman]

Bomber Command aircrew showed 27 out of every 100 survived the Bomber Command requirement of 30 missions. That's not single digits folks.

I think you should run the numbers again. 30 missions at 5% loss rate is a pretty grim prospect.

 

[wuzak]

I think you should run the numbers again. 30 missions at 5% loss rate is a pretty grim prospect.

I am not sure if my stats calculations are up to scratch, but I get about a 21% chance of surviving 30 missions.

In any case, the number of missions was increased late in the war as the loss rates plummeted. Initially the number was 25, which would give you about 28% chance of surviving with a 5% loss rate.

 

[stona]

, and the RAF raids on civilian housing, neither shortened anything.

Nonsense. By the Germans' own admission, due to the rather ponderous way the victims of bombing were dealt with at various different local authority offices, a bombed out worker and his family would lose at least two days production simply registering for the relevant aid and usually several more actually acquiring it. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands (actually several millions late in the war) and tens of millions of man days of production are lost.
How many skilled men do you imagine were retained in Germany to patch up housing to make it habitable, restore services (gas, water, electricity) ? This is quite apart from the military requirements mentioned already.
There were many results of the bombing which are extremely hard to quantify, particularly a rather ethereal quantity such as morale.
This is quite apart from the effects on that morale which, again by the Germans' own admission, were severe. Miserable workers are less productive and much more prone to absenteeism. It's why nuisance raids were made, it was enough simply to force the civil defence system to activate air raid precautions, to disrupt everyone's sleep, and make the workforce less productive without making a serious raid. Late in the war the RAF carried out a lot of this sort of raid, usually with Mosquitoes, sometimes just dropping Target Indicators, spoofing the defences, with window and other electronic trickery, into expecting a major attack.
I will repeat what I have said elsewhere. The wrong question is usually asked when assessing the effects of the bombing. We should not be asking what the German economy achieved under the bombing, but what it MIGHT have achieved had there been no bombing? This is the question that Harris attempted to ask in his report on his Command's efforts. He was largely discounted by the report of the BBSU, but we must understand that its authors were inherently hostile to him.
The British are capable of manipulating the truth with the best. The original Air Ministry report on the Battle of Britain managed not to mention either Dowding or Park by name. Churchill compared this to writing a report on the Battle of Trafalgar and omitting to mention Nelson.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Shortround6]

The LW orbat shows, on June 24th 1941, that there are 148 servicable machines (neither has radar installed). In all of 1941, the NFs were responsible forr 421 kills*, some where achieved as far as England. Allowing for lower number of machines earlier in the year, and greater as year draw to the end, we can see that for each deployed night fighter, almost 3 kills are made.
In the same time, the 3500 of heavy Flak guns and thousands of lighter guns that were deployed in the West shot down less than 500 British A/C during the night. Makes 0.14 aircraft killed per heavy Flak deployed, and perhaps 0.05 per AA gun of any size.
Or, NF vs. heavy Flak ratio of 2.84:0.14, ie. 20 times greater efficiency to make a kill during 1941.

*we can debate that 421 is the number of claims not kills. So my math takes a slight kick, but still the heavy & expensive investment in the Flak looks like an extravagant way to spend limited German assets, including material, money, factories producing guns, shells, propellant, explosives, fine mechanics, electronics, and manpower that bloated from 1/2 of million in 1940 on.

Trouble is that measuring air defense by number of kills is not a good way of assessing value. By that measure such things as barrage balloons, smoke generators, camouflage, and spoof target markers were all pretty much useless as they scored few, if any, kills.
The short term goal of air defense is to keep the attacker from hitting his intended target. While there is a considerable element of attrition in a long bombing campaign the loss of bombers due to interceptors on any given air raid usually affects bomber accuracy to a very limited extent.
AA guns force bombers to fly higher, they often forced bombers to make one run at a target instead of two (or more) if the first run was not quite what was wanted due to cloud cover or other weather conditions. They degraded the bombers accuracy in a number of ways.
They also could cause the bombers to fly dog leg routes to avoid known flak concentrations which shortened the effective range.

Light AA (40mm and under) had a purpose and it was NOT shooting at airplanes at 15,000ft.
One should also consider that AA was more of an "all weather" system than aircraft, at least in 1941 and before terms. It could at least fire in conditions that might prevent the take-off/landing of aircraft. The big guns were tied into a network of warning systems and search lights. Detection was mainly sound before radar;

Early Nightfighter (bad weather) defensive systems could be overwhelmed with numbers of attackers as they depended on ground detectors and ground control to direct the the fighters to the target bomber/s.

 

[pbehn]

The refineries in Teesside had a very effective smoke generation system, throughout the war there wasnt one successful raid on them although the towns themselves were hit.

 

[tomo pauk]

Trouble is that measuring air defense by number of kills is not a good way of assessing value. By that measure such things as barrage balloons, smoke generators, camouflage, and spoof target markers were all pretty much useless as they scored few, if any, kills.

The point I'm trying to make is that Germany spent massive resources in heavy Flak.
Compared to that, smoke generators, spoof target makers etc were at bargain price, and we will recall that both British and Soviets used the means of masking and deception. However, those two countries made a far better decision to rely more on fighters than on heavy AAA for aor defense.

The short term goal of air defense is to keep the attacker from hitting his intended target. While there is a considerable element of attrition in a long bombing campaign the loss of bombers due to interceptors on any given air raid usually affects bomber accuracy to a very limited extent.
AA guns force bombers to fly higher, they often forced bombers to make one run at a target instead of two (or more) if the first run was not quite what was wanted due to cloud cover or other weather conditions. They degraded the bombers accuracy in a number of ways.
They also could cause the bombers to fly dog leg routes to avoid known flak concentrations which shortened the effective range.

The inability of RAF to hit a desired factory got them to hit whole cities (not in line with post-war thinking, but here Germany draw the short straw), where AAA could do very little. Not killing the bombers outright meant that British strength was ever improving, with exception of the Berlin campaing.

Light AA (40mm and under) had a purpose and it was NOT shooting at airplanes at 15,000ft.
One should also consider that AA was more of an "all weather" system than aircraft, at least in 1941 and before terms. It could at least fire in conditions that might prevent the take-off/landing of aircraft. The big guns were tied into a network of warning systems and search lights. Detection was mainly sound before radar;
Early Nightfighter (bad weather) defensive systems could be overwhelmed with numbers of attackers as they depended on ground detectors and ground control to direct the the fighters to the target bomber/s.

I'm afraid that you're wrong here. It is Flak that will be overwhelmed, the NFs not so much.
This is where the heavy AAA hits another wall or two (and NFs don't) - it cannot concentrate against the intruders. Flak located in France or Netherlands can't help against bomber stream heading over Belgium; Flak in Berlin can't defend Ruhr. In any given bomb raid, only a fraction of them will actually fire a shell on the attacker, at least when deployed in a belt like the Germans did it. Say - 300 guns out of 3000 will fire. While we can have perhaps 150 of night fighters to participate out of 250 available?

BTW - serchlights don't help in bad weather

 

[pbehn]

The problem for Germany was with the range of allied bombers an air raid could come from anywhere in the north sea, through France or across the Alps while actually the biggest problem for Adolf was in the east on the ground.

 

[GrauGeist]

Tomo's point regarding AAA is a good one: flak batteries are much like a fortress in the sense that they rely on the enemy to come to them. If the enemy chooses a different approach, the flak batteries are bypassed and sit idle. The only exception to this, are "flak alleys" where the enemy is forced into a killing zone by virtue of topography or other circumstances.

 

[stona]

Night fighters can be overwhelmed by concentrations of bombers. It depends on their command and control system. The 'Himmelbett' system was easily overwhelmed by British concentrations which could easily see in excess of 120 bombers an hour passing through one fighter's area, even in 1942.
Of course the night fighter force changed tactics to enable it more successfully to get into the bomber stream and inflict losses, but concentration was a statistically proven way of reducing losses. Whilst each night fighter established a position to attack one bomber another forty might fly on unmolested. It is noticeable in Bomber Command aircrew debriefings that even on raids when losses were heavy the vast majority of crews never saw, nor were engaged by fighters.
Cheers
Steve

 

[tomo pauk]

Problem with available night fighters is that there was just a small number available before 1943. Just ~150 in mid 1941, and 200 in mid 1942. Then - LW night fighters did not have the sufficient speed advantage vs. RAF bombers, as it was the case in Beaufighter vs. LW bombers (not to say anything about Mossie vs. bombers). Thus a bombing raid with multiple thousands of bombers will offer perhaps one chance of interception, plus another during the homeward course. Still, LW nightfighters racked scores, even when without radar (help came from searchlights many times), and by late 1943 were equalling the number of shot down night bombers vs. Flak, despite having worse than 1:10 disadvantage in numbers vs. just heavy Flak pieces.

 

[Greyman]

I'm afraid that you're wrong here. It is Flak that will be overwhelmed, the NFs not so much. This is where the heavy AAA hits another wall or two (and NFs don't) - it cannot concentrate against the intruders. Flak located in France or Netherlands can't help against bomber stream heading over Belgium; Flak in Berlin can't defend Ruhr.

On the flip side to this - Luftwaffe night fighter efforts could be 'spoofed' and were on occasion sent to the complete wrong area.

 

[Freebird]

Night bombing averaged 2.71% loss rate. Day was 1.24%.
BC - Statistics

Is that for all Allied aircraft or just British? (&Commonwealth)

Does this take into account all years?
As the losses would be skewed as there were higher losses at night over Germany in 1941-42, when there weren't daylight operations

 

[stona]

On the flip side to this - Luftwaffe night fighter efforts could be 'spoofed' and were on occasion sent to the complete wrong area.

They were spoofed on the night of the Peenemunde raid. They were directed to Berlin. Some experienced crews saw something going on towards Denmark and flew in that direction unilaterally. It's why most losses were inflicted on the later wave of attackers and as they withdrew. Without the spoof serious losses might have been disastrous. Only about a dozen night fighters engaged the raid!

 

[Milosh]

Well freebird the title for the link says Bomber Command Operational Statistics so would say it is only for RAF BC.

 

[stona]

Many of Bomber Commands A/C flew from North England, the North Yorkshire Moors are littered with crash sites caused mainly by navigation errors, wing Icing low fuel and fog bound airfields. There were three emergency airfields Carnaby, Manson and Woodbridge whith huge runways and "FIDO" fog dispersal, in addition another 9 airfields used FIDO.
.

Total aircrew losses for Bomber Command, 3rd September 1939 to 8th May 1945, for RAF, Dominion and Allied personnel at RAF posting disposal breaks down as follows.

1. Operational.
Killed. 5,582
Presumed dead. 41,458
Died PoW. 138

2. Non Operational.
Killed. 8,090

Almost all those 8,000+ non operational deaths would have been caused in training accidents, many of the crash sites that litter the UK represent these accidents. Some of these deaths are attributed to 'ground battle', 'air raid casualties' and accidents 'not attributable to enemy action', like falling off a ladder whilst servicing an engine, or being killed by an unintended explosion of ordnance.

Figures from Appendix 41, 'The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-1945', Webster and Frankland. I have not listed the data in full, but culled those pertinent to the discussion.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Denniss]

Flak losses were probably higher until early/mid 44 with the Stirling in active bombing service. It's reported with the lowest ceiling of all three major bombers and, if fully loaded, was even in range of the 37mm light flak.

 

[Frankenerd]

Nonsense. By the Germans' own admission, due to the rather ponderous way the victims of bombing were dealt with at various different local authority offices, a bombed out worker and his family would lose at least two days production simply registering for the relevant aid and usually several more actually acquiring it. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands (actually several millions late in the war) and tens of millions of man days of production are lost.
How many skilled men do you imagine were retained in Germany to patch up housing to make it habitable, restore services (gas, water, electricity) ? This is quite apart from the military requirements mentioned already.
There were many results of the bombing which are extremely hard to quantify, particularly a rather ethereal quantity such as morale.
This is quite apart from the effects on that morale which, again by the Germans' own admission, were severe. Miserable workers are less productive and much more prone to absenteeism. It's why nuisance raids were made, it was enough simply to force the civil defence system to activate air raid precautions, to disrupt everyone's sleep, and make the workforce less productive without making a serious raid. Late in the war the RAF carried out a lot of this sort of raid, usually with Mosquitoes, sometimes just dropping Target Indicators, spoofing the defences, with window and other electronic trickery, into expecting a major attack.
I will repeat what I have said elsewhere. The wrong question is usually asked when assessing the effects of the bombing. We should not be asking what the German economy achieved under the bombing, but what it MIGHT have achieved had there been no bombing? This is the question that Harris attempted to ask in his report on his Command's efforts. He was largely discounted by the report of the BBSU, but we must understand that its authors were inherently hostile to him.
The British are capable of manipulating the truth with the best. The original Air Ministry report on the Battle of Britain managed not to mention either Dowding or Park by name. Churchill compared this to writing a report on the Battle of Trafalgar and omitting to mention Nelson.
Cheers
Steve

I like your idea that most ask the wrong question above! The loss between could have been and was done is what strategic bombing is all about.
Both forces made huge contributions to Germany's defeat. We make small arguments about who did more with less, but that is not how it works because it does nor account for synergy between the two forces. It also does not take into account the various force ratios effects on K/L Ratios. More targets make for a higher K/L Ratio on both sides. They are just different subjects. Flak Vs Targets in tight formation Vs a loose bomber stream, bomber guns Vs fighters and fighters Vs bombers, and escorts Vs interceptors. It is very hard, if not impossible to quantify any kind of relationship between all of these factors and each other.
The is only one type of argument that we, at this late date, can have and that is on the relative technical merits of any type of equipment as it relates to other types of equipment, or on the types of tactics and strategies used.

 

[stona]

The is only one type of argument that we, at this late date, can have and that is on the relative technical merits of any type of equipment as it relates to other types of equipment, or on the types of tactics and strategies used.

There is a far more important debate, which has been ongoing for the last 20-25 years, and which is still as divisive as ever. I don't want to completely subvert this thread, but I will quote Robin Niellands, who, I think, has summed up the nature of this argument quite well.

"The focus of the debate over the Combined Bomber Offensive today is not simply that it was ineffective, but that it was immoral. It is increasingly and popularly alleged that Arthur Harris and bomber Command should not have bombed German cities at all, and that the attempt to end the war by strategic bombing - which involved massive destruction of the German homeland and the loss of civilian lives - was a war crime, and an inexcusable one. Both allegations are debatable, but, given what has happened to the reputation of the Great War generals when the bulk of them were safely dead, one can only wonder what will be done to the reputation of Sir Arthur Harris and Bomber Command in the decades ahead.
As the facts drift from public memory or are distorted by time - and historians - so the moral factor comes to the fore. It is the moral factor in the bomber war that exercises the modern generation... When the great bomber fleets set out from their UK bases two generations ago, it was a very different world. People had different values; the issues of right and wrong were more clear cut. There was a war on then, and that war had to be won. If Nazi Germany had won the Second World War there would now be no place for moral arguments in modern Europe - what happened in the countries occupied by Nazi Germany is ample proof of that.
But the debate cannot concentrate solely on the moral issue, however convenient it is to do so, for that takes the matter out of context. The bomber war was part of a world war - a struggle waged by a number of democratic nations against a racist, expansionist, militaristic power that had as its purpose the domination of the Western world and the eradication of millions of people it regarded as ethnically undesirable. A moral argument that concentrates on only one aspect of the struggle is fundamentally flawed, not least because it overlooks the fact that war itself, however it is waged, is fundamentally immoral. If man was ruled by reason, and settled disputes by discussion and compromise, there would be no wars."

I only post this as food for thought, and because it broadly agrees with my own view, that the most immoral thing the Allies could have done would have been to lose the war.

Cheers

Steve