Carpet bombing

pbehn said:

Me too, not knocking them just amazed at some quotes, another 5 months for Goering to get his jets in operation would just see his tunnels over run by T34s IMO.

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that among others was one thing that impressed me....they ( some ) did believe they were still in a position to win. i cant figure out if it was self delusion, utter stupidity, or just a complete lack of situational understanding....then again i am looking at things through hindsight colored glasses.

I must admit that IMHO the Honourable Member of Ipswich was more right than Harris.

redcoat said:

Credit where credit is due.
The Luftwaffe were the first air force to devise the tactic of area bombing, they introduced it during the 1940-1 Blitz on Britain.

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Those in Britain who had problems with the morality and effectiveness of area bombing, a small minority it should be said, would argue that we should not take the devil as an example.

At least in Britain they were free to express their reservations. I doubt that was the case in Germany.

Cheers

Steve

Juha said:

I must admit that IMHO the Honourable Member of Ipswich was more right than Harris.

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Richard Stokes MP was no pacifist. He served with distinction as a gunner Major in the first war, winning the Military Cross and Croix de Guerre. He just believed that Bomber Command should be concentrating on military targets. He had no issue with what we would now call 'collateral damage', he just thought area bombing was an inefficient use of Bomber Command's resources, and that the deliberate targeting of civilians (which he suspected, despite Sinclair's refusal to answer his questions in parliament) was immoral.

Harris had no trouble with wrecking the fabric of a great central European culture or killing its civilians. Once, at a meeting at SHAEF Doolittle admitted that one of his bombers had hit Strasbourg cathedral. "Why Jimmy, you've done better than me" came Harris' reply, "I've been trying to hit Cologne cathedral for years."

Cheers

Steve

IIRC it was Stokes who demanded in 1944 that the captured Tiger alongside the best British tank should be parked side by side front of the House of Parliament so that MPs themselves could se how well the Churchill's claim, backed by Monty, that the british tanks were at least equal to the best German tanks hold water.

Juha said:

IIRC it was Stokes who demanded in 1944 that the captured Tiger alongside the best British tank should be parked side by side front of the House of Parliament so that MPs themselves could se how well the Churchill's claim, backed by Monty, that the british tanks were at least equal to the best German tanks hold water.

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Politicians scoring points to further their careers and claim a place in history make me puke today, looking back on their forebears opportunism does nothing for my digestion either. Please describe the successes Germans had using the Tiger?

Whatever we may think of Stokes' views he was at least no party lap dog. He was elected as a member of the Labour Party, but was not prepared to toe the party line when doing so would have contradicted his principles. That sort of politician is an endangered species today.

He did occasionally get a bee in his bonnet. For example, he asked a series of questions about scientific research and who was running it, in parliament, in 1940 and seemed unable to let it lie when told that the names of the 'key' men would not be published.
He also got excited about the treatment of leather boots, air raid precautions, supply of metals and any number of other war related factors. He always seems to have had the welfare and equipment of the fighting men (and women) at heart.
He did not approve of detentions under the various special war time powers and raised individual cases on several occasions.

His questions about bombing started in 1941. Anyone interested can trawl through Hansard here:

Mr Richard Stokes (Hansard)

You'll see that the bombing was by no means one of his principle themes, though he was much exercised by the disappointing 'Churchill' tank

CHURCHILL TANK (Hansard, 15 December 1942)

PERSONAL EXPLANATION (CHURCHILL TANK) (Hansard, 16 December 1942)

British Tanks, Tunisia (Hansard, 16 February 1943)

and so on.....

He did remain concerned with bombing policy, here he made his 'strategic lunacy' comment:

BOMBING POLICY (Hansard, 27 May 1943)

Here Sinclair dodges the question:

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1943/dec/01/bombing-policy#S5CV0395P0_19431201_HOC_35

A healthy democracy needs contrary figures like Stokes.

Cheers

Steve

pbehn said:

Politicians scoring points to further their careers and claim a place in history make me puke today, looking back on their forebears opportunism does nothing for my digestion either. Please describe the successes Germans had using the Tiger?

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IMHO Stokes was on right track, the Allied tanks but Firefly during the Normandy Campaign were undergunned (and somewhat lightly armoured but lighter weight had its advances) and that had rather big effect on morale as fighting progressed, read e.g the unit histories of the 6th Guards Tank Brigade and the 11th Armoured Division, writen just after the war and you see that. And those were amongst the best units the British had. In reality Panthers were bigger problem at battlefields than Tigers because they were much more numerous but Tigers made bigger moral impact even if IMHO Germans made an error when they went to over 40ton tanks because of the logistical difficulties and technical in case of Panther. On concrete successes achieved by Tigers, e.g. Villers-Bocage (not meaning the Wittmann's charge but the combined actions of 1. and 2./s.SS-PzAbt 101 with elements of the Pz-Lehr and the 2. PzD against 22nd Armoured Brig) which had significant strategic effect and also marked effect on Allied tank crews. Several actions on the Eastern Front.

I agree with Stona, Stokes seems to be a man of princible and one who wanted to give to the British soldiers as good equipments as possible. He was sometimes carried away and I don't agree with all his arguments but he was independent minded and as a Great War veteran understood what war means.

BTW Juha, reading his questions in parliament it seems he wanted to be allowed to examine a captured Tiger tank in person but was fobbed off with the excuse that it was in the hands of experts. He wanted both the members of parliament and the public to be allowed to see the German tank, as you suggested above, but as far as I can tell this never actually happened.

Cheers

Steve

Just a thought.
Today and tomorrow are the anniversaries of the famous raids against Tokyo. With all the recent brow beating over Dresden I find it curious that these raids, which were at least four times as lethal to the Japanese civilian population as Dresden was for the Germans, receive such scant attention.
One possible explanation is rather unpalatable.
Cheers
Steve

stona said:

Just a thought.
Today and tomorrow are the anniversaries of the famous raids against Tokyo. With all the recent brow beating over Dresden I find it curious that these raids, which were at least four times as lethal to the Japanese civilian population as Dresden was for the Germans, receive such scant attention.
One possible explanation is rather unpalatable.
Cheers
Steve

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IMO the atomic bombings always overshadowed these raids, that why they receive little attention, at least on this side of the pond.

stona said:

Just a thought.
Today and tomorrow are the anniversaries of the famous raids against Tokyo. With all the recent brow beating over Dresden I find it curious that these raids, which were at least four times as lethal to the Japanese civilian population as Dresden was for the Germans, receive such scant attention.
One possible explanation is rather unpalatable.
Cheers
Steve

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The heavy raids on Tokyo were when Japan was in the war. most of the objections to the Dresden raid was that Dresden was not a military target, at the time Tokyos suburbs were an industrial centre.

Personally the focus on Dresden nauseates me, war is tragic, there were very, very few "good" raids where only military personnel were killed. Since almost all belligerents had conscription the difference between military and civilian amounts to clothes and bureaucracy.

stona said:

Just a thought.
Today and tomorrow are the anniversaries of the famous raids against Tokyo. With all the recent brow beating over Dresden I find it curious that these raids, which were at least four times as lethal to the Japanese civilian population as Dresden was for the Germans, receive such scant attention.
One possible explanation is rather unpalatable.
Cheers
Steve

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The fire bombing of Tokyo is one of the worst single bombing events in history, it's death toll being (even at conservative figures) exceeding Hiroshima AND Nagasaki combined. For the survivors of Tokyo, the displaced residents approached 2 million.

I have pointed this out in the past, during heated conversations with people who carry on about the "criminal acts" of the Atomic bombings. To them, they see the Atom bomb (nuclear weapons in general) as more intimidating, for some strange reason. That Tokyo (Dresden, Hamburg, London and others) were all conventionally bombed and created mass casualties and property destruction makes no difference.

pbehn said:

The heavy raids on Tokyo were when Japan was in the war. most of the objections to the Dresden raid was that Dresden was not a military target, at the time Tokyos suburbs were an industrial centre.

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Strange, because Dresden was as valid a military target as any other German city, in fact much more so than many. Zeiss-Ikon alone would have warranted a raid, never mind the 200 or so other manufacturers providing equipment to the Wermacht (all with their own code). The raids were also carried out at the behest of the Russians, though some have sought to dispute this, usually with a post war political agenda, since. It was the only way the Western Allies could directly aid the last massive Russian offensive of the war.
The the moral issues raised by the area bombing of German cities, and this is not the place to raise them, they apply to all of them, not just Dresden. I understand why it became such a 'cause celebre' but rationally there is no reason for it to be so at all. It was just another city devastated by a well executed area raid. The numbers game is crude and unhelpful, but many other raids were far more deadly. You could cite Hamburg for sheer numbers, or poor little Pforzheim, which many have never heard of, for percentage of population killed.
The problem with Dresden for many seems to be the timing, but many allied and far more Soviet soldiers and airmen would die between the raids and the end of the war, far more than the 25,000 Dresdeners, tragic as that may be.

I think Flyboyj makes a very good point about the Tokyo raids being over shadowed by the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Cheers

Steve

stona said:

Strange, because Dresden was as valid a military target as any other German city, in fact much more so than many. Zeiss-Ikon alone would have warranted a raid, never mind the 200 or so other manufacturers providing equipment to the Wermacht (all with their own code). The raids were also carried out at the behest of the Russians, though some have sought to dispute this, usually with a post war political agenda, since. It was the only way the Western Allies could directly aid the last massive Russian offensive of the war.

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I agree it is others that claim Dresden wasnt a legitimate target.

FLYBOYJ said:

IMO the atomic bombings always overshadowed these raids, that why they receive little attention, at least on this side of the pond.

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RE: B-29's... the atomic bombings overshadow the firebombings, and both overshadow the mining operations, which were very effective indeed and some say should have been carried out in greater quantities.

pbehn said:

I agree it is others that claim Dresden wasnt a legitimate target.

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Agreed. It was entirely legitimate given the terms of Bomber Command's targeting criteria. I'm sure that given a second chance Harris would have gone ahead and bombed it again, I know I would.

The attack on Dresden was entirely in line with RAF bombing policy, by which civilian morale and economic disruption were legitimate targets. It did however have a specific, if vague, military objective. In January 1945 the Air Ministry came up with a plan to attack targets that might aid the Russians by harrying the German retreat with emphasis on Berlin, Breslau and Munich. This was supported by the Joint Intelligence Committee. It was Harris who, with the committee's approval, added Chemnitz, Leipzig and Dresden to the list. On the 26th of January Bomber Command was directed to launch major raids on East German cities "with the object of exploiting the confused conditions which are likely to exist...during the successful Russian advance."
Harris might not always have obeyed his orders as well as his superiors might have liked, but when they suited him, and any order to flatten German cities certainly did, he was more than willing to follow them. It's important to note that Bomber Command and Harris were directed to launch the attacks on the eastern cities. It wasn't his original idea (though he added Dresden as one of several potential targets) and he had some justification in feeling that he was later made a scapegoat.

Those are the facts, but modern apologists, like journalists, never allow the facts to get in the way of a good story, particularly an atrocity story. Intelligent and well meaning men like the current Archbishop of Canterbury, who really should know better, or at least read the history, are often tempted to jump on the passing band wagon.

Cheers

Steve

redcoat said:

Credit where credit is due.
The Luftwaffe were the first air force to devise the tactic of area bombing, they introduced it during the 1940-1 Blitz on Britain. The attack of 14 November 1940 on Coventry was a textbook example of the tactic, unfortunately for the German population Bomber Command was paying attention.

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This is actually precisely what happened!

In September 1940 the Luftwaffe first showed Bomber Command what a serious bombing offensive looked like. Hundreds of aircraft concentrated on a single target whilst others made 'nuisance' or diversionary raids. A heavy use of incendiaries contrasted with the British preference for high explosive bombs and produced widespread damage. The British initially thought that the German campaign was flawed because they assumed the attacks were designed to terrorise the population. A survey 'Lessons to be Learned from German Mistakes', published just two weeks after the first heavy raids on London, concluded "the indiscriminate attack on cities is invariably uneconomical". The Germans would have agreed, it soon became obvious that the pattern was to attack ports, food supplies and the aircraft industry, though this caused the deaths of tens of thousands of British civilians (30,000 in four months).

The ability of the German bombers to attack at will by night and achieve a relatively high concentration of hits prompted Bomber Command to try to learn lessons from what the Germans had got right. In late September 1940 the Research and Experiments Department of the Ministry of Home Security (you couldn't make it up!) supplied a detailed study of the effects of German bombing on various categories of targets. It's conclusion would have far reaching consequences for the future of Bomber Command's strategic offensive.
"It is axiomatic that fire will always be the optimum agent for the complete destruction of buildings, factories etc" The department recommended using HE bombs to create "essential draught conditions" in damaged buildings, followed by heavy incendiary loads in turn followed by more HE to hamper fire fighting and disrupt water supplies.
Of all the lessons learned from what was thought to be German practice, the possibility of urban destruction was the most important. It was gradually assumed that the German intention was to undermine the morale and will to work of the British people by concentrated attacks on ports and city areas, destroying amenities, services, housing and reducing food supply. Planners at the Air Ministry described the German practice as the exact opposite of RAF practice (in 1940). Instead of trying to hit precise targets like Bomber Command, the Luftwaffe carried out attacks on particular industrial or commercial areas where multiple targets might be clustered.

Particular attention was paid to German bombing of London, Coventry and Liverpool, but studies were also commissioned of the bombings of Hull and Birmingham to understand how fire combined with HE affected areas of different housing and population density. Damage was heaviest in the congested working class districts suggesting these areas were the best targets.

A few months later (May 1941) the Ministry of Economic Warfare sent a memorandum to the RAF recommending that it abandon it's ineffective attacks on precise targets and instead focus on economic warfare against major industrial concentration or "whole cities"

In June 1941a directive from the bombing operations office in the Air Ministry drew heavily on this and all the other research into the effects of the Blitz.
"The output of German heavy industry depends almost exclusively on the workers. Continuous and relentless bombing of these workers and their utility services, over a period of time, will inevitably will inevitably lower their morale, kill a number of them, and thus appreciably reduce their industrial output."

Evidence that Bomber Command had taken on board these lessons from the Luftwaffe can be found in a speech in November 1941 by Sir Richard Peirse, then C-in-C Bomber Command. He explained that for almost a year his force had been attacking "the people themselves". "I mention this because for a long time, the Government, for excellent reasons has preferred the world to think that we still held some scruples and attacked what the humanitarians are pleased to call Military Targets... I can assure you, Gentlemen, that we tolerate no scruples"

An Air Staff memorandum on 'Blitz' attack' pointed out how unwise it would be "if we fail to pick the brains of an enemy who has had so much experience in developing the required technique."
This led to the adoption of high incendiary loads as well as many other changes in tactics, even leading eventually to the establishment of the Path Finder Force. It is no accident that in 1941, before the tern area attack became prevalent the attempts by Bomber Command at this type of attack was commonly called 'Blitz' attack.

Whatever the intention of the Luftwaffe attacks in 1940 it was the analysis of their effects, by the British, that sowed the seed that would germinate and grow into the huge area raids inflicted upon Germany later in the war.

Of course the one lesson the British failed to learn was the reality of the relative failure of the German campaign. It didn't seriously dislocate the economy or undermine the morale of the people. The British deluded themselves that a longer and heavier campaign would overcome that first problem. As for the German people, the British seem to have kidded themselves that for some reason they wouldn't 'take it' like the British had. One RAF intelligence report suggested that the German people "will not stand a quarter of the bombing" dished out to the British, though there was no sensible evidence to support such an idiotic conclusion. Herein lies the paradox of Bomber Command's entire strategy. It was based on an analysis of all that was effective in the Luftwaffe campaign, but ignored unpalatable conclusions about the overall results of the campaign.

Cheers

Steve