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These heavy bombers were like a flock of geese flying in formation. Would improving their firepower have made an appreciable difference versus these fighters? I doubt it. That wasn't their problem. You send any non-fighter aircraft into a zone like that on a mission and they have to be fighter-escorted. That was their problem.
I believe exactly this was tried with the YB40. It didn't work - one of the problems was that after the standard B-17s had dropped their bombs the gun and armour -laden YB40 was unable to keep up.I have often wondered if having 'gunships' ie a heavy bomber armed to the teeth with cannon / .50 mg but, no bomb load could have acted as a better bomber stream defence rather than arming individual bombers...
What do you think?
Cheers
John
I liked the idea, John, until I read CobberKane's reply. Now I'm in doubt.I have often wondered if having 'gunships' ie a heavy bomber armed to the teeth with cannon / .50 mg but, no bomb load could have acted as a better bomber stream defence rather than arming individual bombers...
What do you think?
Cheers
John
I believe exactly this was tried with the YB40. It didn't work - one of the problems was that after the standard B-17s had dropped their bombs the gun and armour -laden YB40 was unable to keep up.
reality is bombing civilian targets made perfect sense, remove the workers from thier houses, from thier jobs, take away thier skills either by driving them away, killing or maiming, and you remove the ability of your enemy to produce weapons that kill your people!
why should the people who make the weapons that kill your people be immune from attack?
The 8th AF certainly wasn't "enthusiastic" about bombing civilians, though. At the time they admitted to area bombing cities, and the orders and post raid reports show that, but by the end of the war they were using the euphemism "marshaling yards" to hide their area bombing raids, and their post war reports made no mention of the area bombing attacks they had ordered.
Terror was not the intention of any British or US raid,that was left to weapons like the V-1 and V-2. The allied raids were attempting to hit valid targets and obtain valid objectives.
We were attempting to bomb the Germans into surrender. Noone knew that this wouldn't work because,as Harris said,it had never been tried before. Harris' generation were haunted by memories of the land warfare of WWI,something they sought,ultimately unsuccessfully,to avoid at any cost.....any cost.
To apply a modern morality to the mindset of early 20th century commanders is nonsense.
Do you have relatives slaughtered on the Western Front? Have you picked your way through the ruins of the City of London,Coventry,Belfast,Liverpool etc? Their moral compass was calibrated quite differently from ours.
Churchill's comment was ill considered and an attempt,late in the day, to cover his own arse. He was never forgiven for that by either Harris or many other senior Bomber Command officers,not to mention the men who did the work. It's not atypical of the man,loyalty,personal or party was not exactly his strong point. At least we had the sense not to re-elect him when the fighting was done!
Steve
]Hop - what I said, and what I stand behind, is that USAAF-ETO did not Target citiy population centers, absent some perceived strategic site, as Doctrine.
First - the commanders weren't sending 1000 bombers, crews, bombs and fuel at low value targets.
Second - USAAF was lousy at radar bombing on small targets selected as high value within a populated area But the target briefed was the target they were trying to hit via radar - and given a briefed radar location signature - would attempt to bomb on that target.
Third - there Were published guidelines regarding targets of opportunity when Primary and Secondary targets were completely obscured with no radar signature and the mission commander had the authority to direct the force to bomb them.
but rather to the target Selection - namely ball bearing factory, etc. versus 'any and all other as long as there was a concentration of German people to be had'.
No towns or cities in Germany will be attacked
as secondary or last resort targets, targets of
opportunity, or otherwise, unless such towns contain
or have immediately adjacent to them, one (1)
or more military objectives. Military objectives
include railway lines; junctions; marshalling yards;
railway or road bridges, or other communications
networks; any industrial plant; and such obvious
military objectives as oil storage tanks, military
camps and barracks, troop concentrations, motor
transport or AFV parks, ordnance or supply
depots, ammunition depots; airfields; etc.
It has been determined that towns and cities
large enough to produce an identifiable return on
the H2X scope generally contain a large proportion
of the military objectives listed above. These centers,
therefore, may be attacked as secondary or
last resort targets through the overcast bombing
technique.
Seperating this from RAF practice is simply splitting hairs. I would argue that the RAF was simply being a bit more honest about its capabilities. It had a couple of extra years to assess what could and couldn't be done.
You are essentially contradicting your previous post, no? Yes, TERROR was one of the goals of many of the bombings. Even if not for the sake of terror itself but to shorten the war by making the enemy give up. If you consider that acceptable, that is your choice. Are acts of German bombing of British civil population acceptable because they essentially had the goal of making Britain leave and stay out of the war?You are missing the point.The objectives listed by Harris were therefore considered valid targets.They had been since Rotterdam,unless you can give a plausible explanation or other purpose to that raid.
We were attempting to bomb the Germans into surrender. Noone knew that this wouldn't work because,as Harris said,it had never been tried before. Harris' generation were haunted by memories of the land warfare of WWI,something they sought,ultimately unsuccessfully,to avoid at any cost.....any cost.
To apply a modern morality to the mindset of early 20th century commanders is nonsense.
Do you have relatives slaughtered on the Western Front? Have you picked your way through the ruins of the City of London,Coventry,Belfast,Liverpool etc? Their moral compass was calibrated quite differently from ours.
Churchill's comment was ill considered and an attempt,late in the day, to cover his own arse. He was never forgiven for that by either Harris or many other senior Bomber Command officers,not to mention the men who did the work. It's not atypical of the man,loyalty,personal or party was not exactly his strong point. At least we had the sense not to re-elect him when the fighting was done!
Steve
You are essentially contradicting your previous post, no? Yes, TERROR was one of the goals of many of the bombings. Even if not for the sake of terror itself but to shorten the war by making the enemy give up. If you consider that acceptable, that is your choice. Are acts of German bombing of British civil population acceptable because they essentially had the goal of making Britain leave and stay out of the war?
Much is made of the area bombing of Germany but, I had yet to see German aircrew being held accountable for the death and destruction they rained on Britain during the Blitz....
The Luftwaffe made its first raids on military and economic objects in England only about seven weeks after the conclusion of the French campaign.
More than 2,000 tons of bombs fell on my city destroying 12,391 houses, 302 factories, 34 churches, halls and cinemas, and 205 other buildings. Thousands of other properties were damaged. I'd happily repay that with 20,000 tons on a similar industrial city in the Ruhr.
Since the 1950s most German historians have sought to portray the Luftwaffe as fighting a "clean" war, the RAF in contrast is claimed to have carried out war crimes against Germany. It seems to me to simply be an attempt to mitigate German war guilt.
Most modern German historians still practice this. If you look at Horst Boog, for example, he simply glosses over earlier Luftwaffe attacks in an effort to portray Britain as having started area bombing.
For example, one of Boog's claims:
That's contrasted with British bombing of Germany in May, June and July 1940.
The Battle of France ended on 25 June 1940, so Boog is claiming the first Luftwaffe attacks on Britain were in mid August 1940. Granted the first attacks on the Orkneys etc in early 1940 are not well known, and the first larger scale attacks on the 5/6 June are usually overshadowed by the BoB, but no historian could possibly miss the much larger scale of attacks that were underway in early July.
The truth is that the Luftwaffe bombed Poland, then Norway, then France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and got around to Britain when it had finished with its closer enemies. In each of those countries it carried out large scale bombing of towns and killed hundreds or thousands of civilians.