Goering and close escort

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I agree but we can look at the situation with information the LW didnt have. They had no evidence that attacks of the Chain home system had worked and attacking chain home cost a lot of stukas. From the LW point of view, based on pilots claims, the RAF was close to collapse and just needed the knock out blow. The British made the same mistake, Leigh Mallory's incredible claims for his "big wing" cost Park and Dowding their jobs and a huge number of pilots later over France.
 
Judging by the date range on the caption I would assume a great number of those are from night attacks.
 
Koopernic said:
Luftwaffe daylight attacks were on military/industrial targets within London. Docks, oil storage, factories, electricity distribution etc. They weren't carpet bombing.
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Not intentionally, but just take a look at where the bombs actually fell. You might want to look at British civilian casualties in 1940/41 as well.

bombsight.org | 502: Bad gateway

Cheers

Steve
 
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Yes, results of chain home strikes would be difficult to gauge and if those attacks couldn't be used to bait RAF fighters effectively without heavy bomber losses then it would be unattractive compared to other coastal targets. (like Fighter Command bases and ports/factories within reach of fighter escort) The bigger point would be sticking to targets within practical range of available fighters.


As a side-note on tactical bombing of Chain Home, this would be a scenario where having fighter-bombers earlier would have been very useful, especially ones with reasonable dive-bombing capability. (modified Bf 110s, 109s, or potentially Fw 187s -even in their 2-seat Jumo 210G powered A-0 form they could out-run and out climb 109Es below 10,000 ft) Admittedly, with bomb capable 109s, you're that much closer to also having drop-tank capabilities, which adds all sorts of possibilities. In any case, Bf 110s seem like the most likely candidate for being able to carry heavy enough bombs to compete with Ju 87 bomb load while still being better able to evade enemy fighters.


pbehn said:
Most of the Blitz was night attacks.
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Indeed, and both Koopernic's comments and your own regarding baiting RAF fighters would be relevant to the early daylight attacks on London prior to the shift to night bombing.
 

He was a politician, he was evading, it would be obvious he was evading but he still dodged the question. You don't want to mention what scenarios it was designed for. Attacking the "orange force" maybe acceptable.
 

Indeed Erprobungsgruppe 210 got some excellent results with Bf110, the problem was they only had one group and didnt really appreciate the results.

I only pointed out about the blitz being at night as night raids using a bomb sight are indiscriminate. To Park seeing a raid heading towards London it was of no difference if the target was the docks or the houses. In fact you cannot bomb the docks without hitting houses.
 
Did the LW ever employ pathfinder aircraft to mark targets for the bombers?

And as to fighter-bombers, that's also a big part of my point on the lack of emphasis pre-war or early war. (that and lesser emphasis could have been placed on turning the Ju 88 into a dive bomber and ground attack aircraft if some of those roles had been more heavily emphasized on the Bf 110 early on -and bomb carrying Bf 109s as well; potentially Fw 187s)
 
Yes they used a type of pathfinder system its success or lack of it was caught up in the battle of the beams. The infamous Coventry raid was an early success.
As to pre and early war planning, what planning? From the (re)occupation of the Rhineland to the fall of France mainly one event lead to another. The planning for the attack and invasion of south England started when France fell, its hardly a surprise that they didnt have the equipment or training to do it.
The LW bomber pilots in 1940/41 had a good all round ability including night flying, by the time of the later baby blitz much of this had been lost

from wiki
The first attack on London was mounted on the night of 21/22 January.[14] Codenamed Unternehmen Mars, sections of the British capital were given codenames after devastated German cities — Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover—to emphasize the retaliatory nature of the operation for the air crews.[14] The first raid targeted the area designated as 'München'—the Waterloo area of London. The attack consisted of two waves with 447 bomber sorties, primarily Ju-88s and Do-217s, carrying 475 tons of bombs, with 60 per cent of the payload incendiaries. The first wave bombed from 2040 hours until 2209 and the second wave 0419 to 0545. Many bomber crews flew double sorties on this night.

Despite the extensive use of Düppel (the Luftwaffe equivalent of the RAF's 'Window' radar countermeasure) and target marking with white and green flares by KG 66, the Luftwaffe* '​s pathfinders, hardly any bombers reached London and only some 30 tons were estimated to have fallen on the capital, with bombs and incendiaries scattered throughout the Home Counties.[14] The Houses of Parliament, Parliament Square, Westminster Hall, the Embankment, New Scotland Yard and parts of Pimlico were all hit by incendiaries.[15] Some 14 people were killed and 74 injured.
 
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double post so heres wikis take on the coventry raid

The raid that began on the evening of 14 November 1940 was the most severe to hit Coventry during the war. It was carried out by 515 German bombers, from Luftflotte 3 and from the pathfinders of Kampfgruppe 100. The attack, code-named Operation Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata), was intended to destroy Coventry's factories and industrial infrastructure, although it was clear that damage to the rest of the city, including monuments and residential areas, would be considerable. The initial wave of 13 specially modified Heinkel He 111 aircraft of Kampfgruppe 100, which were equipped with X-Gerät navigational devices, accurately dropped marker flares at 19:20.[6] The British and the Germans were fighting the Battle of the Beams and on this night the British failed to disrupt the X-Gerät signals.

The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped high explosive bombs, knocking out the utilities (the water supply, electricity network, telephones and gas mains) and cratering the roads, making it difficult for the fire engines to reach fires started by the later waves of bombers. These later waves dropped a combination of high explosive and incendiary bombs. There were two types of incendiary bomb: those made of magnesium and those made of petroleum. The high explosive bombs and the larger air-mines were not only designed to hamper the Coventry fire brigade, they were also intended to damage roofs, making it easier for the incendiary bombs to fall into buildings and ignite them.
 
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Yes, it's a little surprising that the LW didn't pursue drop tanks sooner after the SCW even if they were of poor quality.
 
I meant planning in terms of R&D investment and vehicles/weapons production. Economic planning type stuff, civil and military both. (that goes beyond war/weapons specific planning too though -food, fuel, transporation- but I wasn't getting into that broad a topic here)

The likes of the Ju 87 and Hs 123 worked very well as close support where air superiority was fairly definite and complete and the existing LW fighters fit well enough in strafing/light ground attack roles as it was (without bombs) where air superiority was more contended over. So the point would be extending the latter to have strike aircraft capable of performing under conditions where air superiority wasn't definite but not so unfavorable as to make missions unsustainable. (where using more dedicated close support aircraft would be totally unsustainable)

So a general concept rather than any specific plan of attack and more of an evolution of the older use of bomb-capable biplane fighters apart from the larger/slower dedicated biplane attack/support and bomber aircraft. (something that came up in some of the other recent fighter-bomber discussions, as was the mention of fighters being a more logical evolution there than large bombers -sure, you could limit it to specialized fighters, tactical support dive bombers, and larger tactical and strategic level bombers, but if you were going to adapt either the former or the latter to perform many of the roles of the middle group, adapting single and twin engine fighters to the attack role seems to make far more sense than doing the same to larger multi-engine bomber aircraft -the latter better suited to being extended to recon and patrol work)

It's equally strange that the P-36 and P-40 lacked bomb racks (aside from provisions for small bomblets present on some P-36s and the initial P-40 but removed from the P-40B -the P-40C of course adding the belly shackle rated for at leas 250 lb bomb -the 52 US gal drop tank weighed over 300 lbs when full). The P-35 had been rated for 350 lb of bombs and the F2A-2 and export B-339 had racks for 2 100 lb bombs. (not a lot, but having the Bf 109E rated to carry at least a single SC-100 under the fuselage from the start would have been useful, SC-250 would be more useful and more in line with the standard 300L drop tank weight -initially introducing a smaller drop tank would have still been useful too: SC-100 or 130~150L tank would be a lot better than nothing)
 
The LW in general and the Stuka in particular performed very well upto the BoB. After the fall of France suddenly it had a new and different task. Attacking targets over a stretch of water defended by modern monoplanes controlled by an integrated air defence (which they didnt know about) is a different proposition. People will plan for what they expect to do. To plan for an attack and invasion of the UK in 1940 you must expect France to capitulate in a matter of weeks. The fall of France was probably as big a shock to Germany as it was to the rest of the world so hardly surprising that little thought had been given to how to take on the RAF and cross the channel. Bungay points out that the LW did protect Stuka formations in the majority of attacks but on the occasions that something went FUBAR and protection was lost there was a turkey shoot resulting in catastrophic losses. The success of EPG 210 and Stuka attacks is looked on with hindsight, they frequently decimated the target but sods law dictates that the "target" was a coastal command, bomber or training airfield so had no immediate effect on the defence. The LW started strapping bombs to 109s before they strapped fuel tanks to them, this seems like a strange thing to do but only because we look with hind sight. When the Jabo 109s went into operation Goering and his staff were convinced the RAF was almost beaten and a few raids catching the RAF on the ground would speed the finish. In fairness to Goering and his staff (that chokes me a bit) purely in numbers they had eliminated the RAF in terms of their front line strength in 1939 and losses claimed upto summer 1940, they completely underestimated the increase in production of planes and sourcing of pilots although the RAF pilot situation became critical. From their side at the time the decisions they made, they were logical.

I dont think it was a plan just an expedient that as a plane became outclassed as a front line fighter it was pressed into a role as a fighter bomber protected in offensive operations by the fighter that replaced it like hurricane, P40, spitfire, mk IV IX and Typhoon Tempest.
 
With the runaway success in the Battle of France, rapidly moving on to plans for an invasion of Britain really wasn't a good idea any way you look at it. Solidifying the occupation in mainland Europe, strengthening defenses, and attempting to minimize Britain's short and long-term offensive capabilities would have made more sense. (aiming at weakening their control over the channel and North Sea, with the ocean in the way and Britain's potent Navy, Germany's continued emphasis on tactical strikes rather than shifting towards a broader strategic position was totally unrealistic -cutting off Britian's trade resources through more intense anti-shipping campaigns would have been more useful too ... as would cutting off Russia's supply line in the North Sea)

Bomb-equipping 109s before plumbing them for external tanks makes plenty of sense, and fighters in general tended to more often be fitted with external bombs than external fuel tanks historically (increasing maximum internal fuel capacity tended to be the general preference there). It's the late introduction of bomb racks that is strange to me. Carrying over the 6 small 10 kg bomb hardpoints of the Ar 68 (similar to the 6x 20 lb bombs mounted on some USAAC aircraft around the same time) back with the Jumo 210 powered 109s would have made sense and later adapting a heavier centerline bomb rack to compliment the added engine power of the 109E/T would have made more sense.

The 109E itself managed a better range with bombs than the Hs 123 had as it was, and probably would have taken over that role a bit better had the larger-wing 109T been used as the basis for Jabo 109s. (adopting redesigned landing gear with wider-track would have made them more useful still -that applies to fighters as well as fighter-bombers, of course) The Ju 87B's range wasn't all that favorable either.



Dedicated tactical close-support roles that the Hs 123 and Ju 87 carried out were still useful but separate from what fighter-bombers were generally good for. (more modern dedicated close support aircraft had merits too, but aside from the Hs 129, the LW mostly had twin engined bombers and single engined fighter-bombers pressed into those roles) Dedicated dive bombers are a bit of another story, but both the Hs 123 and Ju 87 were useful for more than just dive-bombing. (fighter-bombers mostly come up here as they became some of the more notable late-war dive bombers around as well as having dive bombing itself largely origininating in their biplane fighter predecessors)
 
Koopernic said:
Luftwaffe daylight attacks were on military/industrial targets within London. Docks, oil storage, factories, electricity distribution etc. They weren't carpet bombing.
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The germans had used targetted attacks on strictly civilian targets on several occasions in the preceding years to achieve psychological outcomes that favoured them in their campaigns. There are numerous examples of this, starting with Guernica, then Warsaw, various targets in Norway and the low countries. it generally worked for them. target the civilians, with the aim of instilling terror into the population. in the first instance they hoped to secure outright surrender, such as occurred in holland. but failing that, attacking civilians instilled terror, which impeded military efficiency if nothing else.

The germans tried to employ the same tactics over Britain, and there is some evidence of it working, except that there were no land armies engaged to take advantage of the chaos, and the germans simply could not drop the necessary weight of bombs to cause a complete collapse of civilian morale on a target as big as London.

And problem for the Germans is that hitting civilian targets repeatedly, as they did, is a diminishing return. people get used to getting bombed. Trying to terror bomb the London population was a definite tactic used by the LW. It failed for a number of reasons.

Im not saying the LW did not target military targets as well. they certainly did. but they actively targeted purely civilian targets as well, for psychological reasons.
 
Koopernic said:
Luftwaffe daylight attacks were on military/industrial targets within London. Docks, oil storage, factories, electricity distribution etc. They weren't carpet bombing.
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Luftwaffe daylight attacks were initially on RAF (not just Fighter Command) infrastructure, the aircraft industry and to a lesser extent ports. The wide ranging, unfocussed and confused targeting was typical of the shambolic planning for the air war against England. It was not just the result of poor intelligence but a general ignorance of what exactly to do and what exactly the objective was. There were far to many conflicting objectives for any air force, never mind the 1940 Luftwaffe, to achieve How to achieve the wide ranging objectives was left almost entirely up to the men commanding the various air fleets and they too had widely differing views of how to do it. The whole thing was a failure waiting to happen from the start.

Low level attacks by some bomber groups (I'd have to check which) and Erprobungskommando 210 were remarkably successful compared to others, but they did incur heavy losses, thus discouraging the Luftwaffe from pursuing the tactic vigorously.

The Chain Home masts, the most visible manifestation of the system, were a tough target for any bombers, requiring a more or less direct hit. When the Luftwaffe did succeed in taking stations off air it was usually by cutting the power supply. A concerted effort against the system might have resulted in results for the Luftwaffe. Without Chain Home Fighter Command might have been forced to withdraw north of London or risk being caught on the ground. Only about 20 fighters (again I haven't checked the exact number) were destroyed on the ground during the whole BoB. This contrasts significantly with the earlier Blitzkriegs in Poland, the Low Countries and France. After the BoB the Soviet air force would again be ravaged on the ground. The Luftwaffe never had a chance of achieving the 5:1 kill ratio that Theo Osterkamp had reckoned to be required against the RAF in the air. On the ground might have been another matter.
It is also worth remembering that although Luftwaffe intelligence (almost an oxymoron) did recognise that the masts formed part of an early warning system it had no concept of how that was linked to the sophisticated command and control system developed by the British and wielded so effectively against the Luftwaffe by Dowding, Park and others during the battle. The Luftwaffe thought the system was a rather rigid one, tying fighters to individual airfield controllers and limiting their manoeuvrability, whilst in fact it was almost precisely the opposite.

Cheers

Steve
 


There really is no sense in any of these statements about Guernica and 'terror bombing' 70 years after the even.

Some of it is simply propaganda either those passionas around the Spanish civil war or latter when it became necessary to justify allied carpet bombing. It really is time to stop repeating what is essentially propaganda of 70 years ago and start looking at facts.

The Luftwaffe wasn't in the habit of bombing Spanish city without Nationalist permission or rather more commonly a Nationalists Request. The Regia Aeronuatica (Italian Airforce) participated and there was a Spanish request. So this would have to be a German-Italian-Spanish 'terror bombing' experiment which is was not.

During the Spanish Civil War the Condor Legion bombed Guernica. Soon afterwards, and even in modern day studies, historians referred to it as a deliberate act of terror bombing designed to break civilian morale. Yet there is no evidence in German air doctrine, nor in German battle plans, to suggest Guernica was targeted to break Basque civilian morale.

Richthofen, who planned the raid, did not know much about Guernica. He was unaware there were Basque parliamentary buildings in the city, a fact which he did not know until he toured the city on 30 April, after Franco's Nationalists captured it.

In other words it was just a tactical operation for the Condor legion albeit with a lot of collateral damage.

There is much debate as to why it was bombed since most participants have passed. One simple, and possible reason for Richthofen sanctioning the bombing, was that two main roads being used to supply 23 Basque battalions at Bilbao intersected at Guernica. At least the 18th Loyala and Saseta battalions were stationed in the city at the time, making it a legitimate target. If the town was fortified (which it was not but may have been), it would have made a major obstacle to the Nationalist advance, which would be unable to pass beyond the town.

If Guernica's cross roads and communications lines, the roads and train lines, as well as the bridges, would deny the enemy resupply and also an escape route and also deny them the ability to evacuate heavy equipment.

Very few Luftwaffe officers or aircrew that participated survived the war to be interviewed. A pair of He 51 reconnaissance pilots who did said they were photographing bridges.

There was also a small arms factory in the city which was supplying Republican forces and of course one can't rule out the fact that it was Spanish versus Basque thing and that the Spanish nationalists used the Germans to do their dirty work.

From a purely military perspective, it was a success, closing the city to traffic for 24 hours. Richthofen regarded it a "technical success", but was disappointed the Nationalists did not follow it up quickly, missing a chance to cut off large portions of the enemy forces. The casualty rates among modern sources suggest the civilian deaths were between 200–600, not the 1,600-2,000 as claimed by the Basque and German Governments.

The casualties involved were exaggerated and casualties(which includes injured) represented as deaths. The deaths were in the order of 300

Beyond this we have the claims of 'strafing of refugees', most presumably school girls in pig tails if Hollywood historical fiction is to be believed (which it unfortunately is without question), mothers with perambulators.

Of course it really was strafing of long lines Green enemy Army Trucks heading towards the front line while some civilians tried to evacuate in the opposite direction.

The claims of terror bombing in Warsaw are similarly hyperboble as the above. Government and military targets were attacked (command, control and communication in modern US Military lingo) locomotives but not the passenger carriages attacked. The few requests of what might be called 'terror bombing' of Warsaw targets were simply denied and not carried out . The city of Warsaw eventually was under siege with a German army stationed outside. When it becomes a choice of frontal assault by your infantry and accepting the massive causalities involved into a defended city versus bombardment of targets within guess which ones happens if the city doesn't accept terms.

Anthony Beevor actually regurgitates an completely uncited claim of actual school girl strafing as a fact in his book.

Civil war is a horrible thing, I believe the Nationalist side lost 600,000 and the Republican 1.5 million. Of course that doesn't make the nationalists worse than the communists, it just means the nationalist won and the communists lost. The communists started of the war, they tend to have a problem with religion, which they see as a reval belief system that must be deprecated or destroyed and they started of with targeted assassinations of nuns and Priests, something which caused outrage. They began threatening Soviet style gulag/concentration camps come the revolution. They took on Moscow's help. They pretty much asked for it but lost.
 
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Most historians would disagree, Hitler needed to force a surrender or capitulation of the UK. The UKs only means of attack was by air and air raids were in the most part repulsed in day time, the RAF went into the night before the LW. The Channel was closed to shipping early in the BoB and the first happy time of the U Boat war is generally said to start in June 1940. The high point of surface raider activity Graf Spee Admiral Scheer Gneisenau Bismark was about this time. The thread is about escort of German bombers and Goerings orders for it.




Again the thread is about Goering's orders for the BoB, you may think that it is sensible to put bombs onto 109s while the 109 escorts of bombers attacking London had to leave them defenceless due to lack of fuel, I disagree. The distance between France and London is well known and London was so obvious a target that Hitler demanded that he had the "say so" on when it was attacked. When London was attacked the escorts couldnt make the mission.



What is this about the HS123 in the BoB? If it was used it would have been decimated. The Ju 87 like many planes was great until it was opposed. You cannot operate "close support" over the English Channel. The LW in France quickly dislocated the air defence by over running forward airfields catching allied AC on the ground or on patrols. I dont know so much about the French air force but I know that within a matter of days the RAF started to become separated from ground crews and spares.

In the BoB the crews returned to bases and counted their losses, a combat theatre that was new to the LW. There is no doubt (as stona points out on another post) the LW didnt do a good job of taking on the RAF but bearing in mind Parks conduct the best they could ever hope for would be pushing the RAF back to fields around London. Hitler knew Russia was re arming rapidly and he had to take them on in 1941 his only chance to take out the UK was in 1940.
 
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There really is no sense in any of these statements about Guernica and 'terror bombing' 70 years after the even.
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Its hard not to accept most of the accounts that have survived. Luftwaffe records relating to Operation Rugen are for the most part destroyed, having been lost in an air raid in February 1945. However the Italian Air Legion records do survive, and though i have not accessed them myself, I am told they talk of a deliberate, targetted plan. Anti personnel ordinance was the dominant bomb type. The timing of the raid was deliberate and aimed to maximise civilian casualties. There were five waves in the attack, with the first two or three designed to seal off the city and prevent civilian escape.

I accept that it is not entirely a done deal that the attack was a premeditated attack on civilians, but the overwhelming body of evidence that does survive suggests that it was.

Unfortunately the official planning and results from the LW were destroyed, but its hard to accept that every independant account of what happened was part of a conspiracy to discredit the LW. There are many records from many different sources, all pointing to a conscious decision to target civilians in this attack.


You are right that the nationalists requested the city be attacked, but the actual planning was undertaken by the Condor Legion with the RA supporting. The Italians already had experience in Italian East Africa in this kind of attack, but the germans were keen to test assumptions and theories about direct civilian attacks. There was no conspiracy as such, since the actual mission planning was undertaken by the LW


Now, I know for a fact that the actual battle plans have been lost, which is interesting in itself. Richthofens diary provides probably the best purely German perspective on the operation, and his memoir certainly does point to a deliberate policy of attacking civilians. This i bleive is backed up by my admitedly liited knowledge of the Italian contribution. There is more than enough evidence to claim this as a terror bombing attack.


These statements are inconsistent with his actual diary.


Richthofen did not survive the war, but his diary did, and can be accessed via the bundesarchiv. here is a link to typed versions done appro ximately 1944 and at the direct request of the man himself

https://www.bundesarchiv.de/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/bilder_dokumente/02100/index.html.de

richthofen in his own words describes the attacks as intending to "break" or "raze" the city to bring the population to heel. he mentions the market day in that diary and the intended purpose ....to maximise civilian deaths. HJis references to the plan, which is all we have to go on really, was to bottle up the city market, and then raze it. If that isnt targetting civilians I dont know what is.

I don't deny that there were legitimate military targets in the city, but the focus, the aiming points, the ordinance selection, the known details about the operational plan and the timing of the attacks were all concentrated on civilian areas.

The casualties involved were exaggerated and casualties(which includes injured) represented as deaths. The deaths were in the order of 300
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Again, this contradicts richthofens own assessments. And he was using the experience to test the effectiveness of civilian targeting on achieving military objectives. At the time it was an unknown as to whether civilian morale could be broken by direct attack from the air, and further whether sufficient dislocation could be achieved by the panic that would ensue. richthofens diary shows that he was satisfied that the latter could be achieved, but the former harder to do without direct ground intervention. it was terror bombing, but with military objectives.

The truth is we dont know with certainty the death toll, but for the time it was much greater than anything that had come before it.

Its intersting also to note that the claims that one of the targets legitimising the attack as a purelyprecision strike was the munitions factory. In fact there were only three buildings left undamaged after the attack. The cathedral in the city centre, a 600 year old tree, and yes, you guessed it,the munitions factory.

Here are some images of the so called "precision strike", taken after the battle








Its a whole different area of debate concerning Warsaw, but suffice it to say that by 1939 it was a tested and established means of achieving objectives especially in the realm of "city busting". its pretty clear you are intermixing the terminology of terror bombing, area bombing, and reprisal bombing as techniques and interposing them as necessary to dodge any tarnishing of the LW reputation. The germans used direct targeting of civilians as a means of achieving military outcomes on a more or less continuous basis from the beginning of the war. With a few exceptions here and there (eg Namsos) they generally did not engage in straight up reprisal attacks.
 
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