Greatest aviation myth this site “de-bunked”.

[33k in the air]

Didn't they also carry the occasional Cookie to bust water mains while the incendiaries played their merry havoc? Or were those in the main force bombers?

The 'cookie' and other HE bombs were intended to blow open roofs and knock down walls, allowing the incendiaries to spread fire more easily.

The main force carried similar loads. Only the Pathfinder force carried a different load out, with some of the HE and/or incendiaries replaced with target indicator bombs and/or flares.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

The 'cookie' and other HE bombs were intended to blow open roofs and knock down walls, allowing the incendiaries to spread fire more easily.

The main force carried similar loads. Only the Pathfinder force carried a different load out, with some of the HE and/or incendiaries replaced with target indicator bombs and/or flares.

I appreciate the pull-up. I'd always thought, for some reason, that the cookies were specifically to break underground water mains. It's good to have misconceptions removed.

I knw HE was used to break buildings and provide more burning surface, but I'd always thought the heavy bombs were specifically to break underground pipes.

I'll definitely be googling some more reading tomorrow, thanks!

 

[33k in the air]

It's a shame indeed that us Americans and the Brits couldn't co-ordinate more closely on a combined objective that we could probably just murder. I think we got as close as hopeful with the targeting of fuel and railway resources.

Most of the lack of cooperation can be laid at Harris' feet. While he was instrumental in forging Bomber Command into a potent weapon, he really should have been replaced by the fall of 1944, if not earlier. But by then his stature had grown to the point that the political will to do so wasn't there.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

It took time for the Allies to realize that a target would have to be hit repeatedly to knock it out and keep it out.

Speer in his memoirs makes exactly this point, that had the Allies coordinated and practiced closer follow-up, their raids would have been more effective. If I remember he points out that Bomber Command attacked Peenemunde rather than following up on our useful -- but disastrous -- American raid on Schweinfurt.

I can imagine other possibilities where a pot-stirring Hamburg-style event could happen. The Brits were absolutely right to target the Ruhr, and we Americans should have supported. We Americans were right to target U-boat slips, and BC should have followed. But it seems our efforts were disjointed.

All this is just my opinion.

 

[33k in the air]

I appreciate the pull-up. I'd always thought, for some reason, that the cookies were specifically to break underground water mains. It's good to have misconceptions removed.

I knw HE was used to break buildings and provide more burning surface, but I'd always thought the heavy bombs were specifically to break underground pipes.

I'll definitely be googling some more reading tomorrow, thanks!

Well, given their large blast concussive effect, I'm sure it would damage lots of other things too.

(There was also 8,000-lb and 12,000-lb high capacity blast bombs, but these were dropped in far fewer numbers than the 4,000-lb 'cookie'.)

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Most of the lack of cooperation can be laid at Harris' feet. While he was instrumental in forging Bomber Command into a potent weapon, he really should have been replaced by the fall of 1944, if not earlier. But by then his stature had grown to the point that the political will to do so wasn't there.

Definitely agree; he had his own agenda and had the clout to protect it.

I must wonder if Arnold did not also, as well.

 

[33k in the air]

Speer in his memoirs makes exactly this point, that had the Allies coordinated and practiced closer follow-up, their raids would have been more effective. If I remember he points out that Bomber Command attacked Peenemunde rather than following up on our useful -- but disastrous -- American raid on Schweinfurt.

Yeah, I remember some of it as well.

He remarked on a number of critical nodes that were never subject to sustained attack. Chemical production, for example: certain chemicals were vital in the production of explosives. I recall also how he thought it odd the Americans went after airframes more than aircraft engine production, since if there aren't enough aircraft engines it doesn't matter how many more airframes are produced.

For the USAAF, airframes got priority because the aero engine plants were harder targets to locate and hit as compared to airframe production.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yeah, I remember some of it as well.

He remarked on a number of critical nodes that were never subject to sustained attack. Chemical production, for example: certain chemicals were vital in the production of explosives. I recall also how he thought it odd the Americans went after airframes more than aircraft engine production, since if there aren't enough aircraft engines it doesn't matter how many more airframes are produced.

For the USAAF, airframes got priority because the aero engine plants were harder targets to locate and hit as compared to airframe production.

For all our bluster about pickle-barrel bombing, we too had a hard time hitting a bull in the ass with a bass-fiddle. Burying the relevant city day-and-night for a few days would likely be much more useful, all humaneness set aside for another conversation.

 

[Shortround6]

British bombs in WW II. The 4000lb cookie was essentially a metal can full of HE. This one has a drum tail attached to the left end.

This is the nose. there were different noses.
It had great blast effect but ability to penetrate hard surfaces was not great. Even bombs with thicker walls sometimes split open before detonating.

However there were 3 different 4000lb bombs

the well known cookie as shown above. Over 93,000 were built/dropped during WW II.
There was a 4000lbs MC (medium case) bomb with a lower explosive weight and thicker walls, 21,000 were dropped by BC, 13,000 of them in 1944.
Perhaps it was this bomb that was used to break water mains?

There was also a 4000lb GP bomb with much thicker walls and a much lower explosive charge weight but only 245 were built and 217 dropped.

data from http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index....category&id=43:bombs&Itemid=60&layout=default

 

[33k in the air]

For all our bluster about pickle-barrel bombing, we too had a hard time hitting a bull in the ass with a bass-fiddle. Burying the relevant city day-and-night for a few days would likely be much more useful, all humaneness set aside for another conversation.

Well, in peacetime practice over Arizona it worked great. In wartime, with the enemy shooting at you and the clouds frequently getting in the way, it's a different story.

Hence why H2X becomes an important part of USAAF bomber operations in 1944, allowing bombing even in cloudy weather. (Oboe sees a lot of use in the medium bombers.) The introduction of the scouting forces ahead of the bomber force helped improve matters as well.

 

[buffnut453]

Well, the Germans shrugged off Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, the RAF Ruhr program, and so on. -109 production rose in 1944 despite our specific targeting of that.

The increase in German military production is often trotted out as proof that the strategic bombing campaign failed. However, that's an overly simplistic assessment. It ignores the challenging question of what German production COULD have been if it WASN'T affected by the Allied bombing effort. Clearly, that's almost impossible to quantify but, without doubt, strategic bombing hurt the German war effort and kept production levels in check.

 

[33k in the air]

The increase in German military production is often trotted out as proof that the strategic bombing campaign failed. However, that's an overly simplistic assessment. It ignores the challenging question of what German production COULD have been if it WASN'T affected by the Allied bombing effort. Clearly, that's almost impossible to quantify but, without doubt, strategic bombing hurt the German war effort and kept production levels in check.

In such cases the annual German production figures are cited. But annual figures are too coarse; the monthly figures as tallied by Speer's ministry paint a clearer picture.

Tooze's book has the Speer ministry numbers for each production category as well as the overall armaments index figure. If I recall correctly it also has the figures for German steel production, showing the estimated total amount of production possible and then the amount of production lost to bombing damage, air raid alerts, shortages, and other causes.

 

[33k in the air]

I'll definitely be googling some more reading tomorrow, thanks!

The Science of Bombing by Randall Wakelam examines the role of the Operational Research Section in making the bombing campaign more efficient. Might be worth a look.

If I had access to my regular computer, I could suggest quite a few other books to consider. But just going to Google Books and searching will often turn up plenty of potentially interesting reads, and frequently with enough free preview pages to give a good idea of the content.

When the National Archives in the U.K. was offering free downloads of much of its digital collection, I took the opportunity to download a large number of Bomber Command squadron ORBs for those squadrons which regularly reported the bomb loadouts. Eventually I'm going to turn that data into a database of sorts.

 

[wuzak]

British bombs in WW II. The 4000lb cookie was essentially a metal can full of HE. This one has a drum tail attached to the left end.

This is the nose. there were different noses.
It had great blast effect but ability to penetrate hard surfaces was not great. Even bombs with thicker walls sometimes split open before detonating.

I believe earlier versions had a conical nose.

The HC bombs were not designed to penetrate hard targets.

The 4,000lb MC was developed because the HC would break apart when dropped from low altitudes at high speed.

 

[wuzak]

Speer in his memoirs makes exactly this point, that had the Allies coordinated and practiced closer follow-up, their raids would have been more effective. If I remember he points out that Bomber Command attacked Peenemunde rather than following up on our useful -- but disastrous -- American raid on Schweinfurt.

Peenemünde was an important target.

Still, a raid against Schweinfurt even a few weeks after the August 17 raid could have been very effective.

 

[pbehn]

It is all very well quoting what Speer said post war. That in part was what the war was about. The British bombing efforts would have been better if he hadnt constructed dummy steel plants and other distractions. Scuttling the Tirpitz too when it was no longer able to be repaired would have saved some needless raids. LW raids on British airfields would have been much more effective if they had good recon and intel, which is precisely why recon planes were shot down and spies shot.

 

[33k in the air]

Peenemünde was an important target.

Still, a raid against Schweinfurt even a few weeks after the August 17 raid could have been very effective.

There are numerous possibilities that could have been pursued but weren't, for various reasons. The following passage from The Crucible of War illustrates one, regarding the withdrawal of G-H from Bomber Command heavy bombers.

That may have been a strategic error of considerable consequence. Perhaps heavy bombers equipped with G-H should have been directed against German aircraft factories within its range in the fall of 1943. For although they understood the significance of electronic counter-measures in evading night-fighters, a number of officials at the Air Ministry argued such devices were nevertheless an unsatisfactory method of dealing with Bomber Command's main opponent. If enemy fighter strength grew, cautioned Air Vice-Marshal N.H. Bottomley, Harris would be 'unable to maintain the night offensive' no matter what jamming took place; and the DCAS therefore called for a sustained effort against aircraft manufacturing and assembly plants in Brunswick, Stuttgart, Hanover, Kassel, and Leverkusen, for example.

The director of bomber operations, now Air Commodore S. Bufton, vice Baker, concurred. Although he had not objected to the three operations against the German capital, hoping that Bomber Command could mount a successful repetition of the Hamburg raid 'on any industrial area, Berlin or anywhere else,' it was still essential that Harris 'start towards the specific targets [of Pointblank] eventually.' For if Bomber Command and the Americans did not between them destroy the Luftwaffe's capability to resist, he cautioned ominously, postwar analysts would regard the bombing offensive as a failure in their strategic employment of air power. Observing that it might be time to hold a conference with Harris and Eaker, Portal seemed to agree.

 

[pinehilljoe]

The einsatzgruppen work in Russia and the Ukraine sort of make all that "bombing of civilians" stuff moot, don'tcha think? The Germans certainly didn't spare any civilians during Barbarossa, so I don't think they have any room to squeal about it. Maybe the Allied efforts should have tried to spare civilians more, but hey, Germany started the whole war mess, and should have forseen that "what goes around, comes around".

I would not make an equivalency of bombing enemy civilians behind enemy lines to racially targeted mass murder in territory Germany had conquered and occupied

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Peenemünde was an important target.

Still, a raid against Schweinfurt even a few weeks after the August 17 raid could have been very effective.

Oh, I'm not saying Peenemunde wasn't important; the events of 1944 definitely show otherwise. And I'd agree that that particular mission was itself important as well. I just thinking the timing could have been better in order to garner knock-on effects.

The increase in German military production is often trotted out as proof that the strategic bombing campaign failed. However, that's an overly simplistic assessment. It ignores the challenging question of what German production COULD have been if it WASN'T affected by the Allied bombing effort. Clearly, that's almost impossible to quantify but, without doubt, strategic bombing hurt the German war effort and kept production levels in check.

I don't think the CBO failed. I do think it failed to fulfill the overly idealistic hopes of bombing winning the war, which some bomber advocates held. The CBO succeeded in several ways: hampering production, as you point out, both by direct destruction and also by production-dispersion that it forced; targeting fuel production, which reduced both fuel stocks for fighting units as well as training stocks for the LW; the targeting of transportation nodes introduced further frictions into German supply-chain management, and other effects as well.

Any topic as complicated as CBO demands a nuanced assessment, which is what I'm aiming at. It may be that I'm not relaying as well as possible those nuances, and for that I'm sorry.

I agree with your final words: the CBO most certainly dealt the German war economy serious blows, and made an important difference.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

The Science of Bombing by Randall Wakelam examines the role of the Operational Research Section in making the bombing campaign more efficient. Might be worth a look.

If I had access to my regular computer, I could suggest quite a few other books to consider. But just going to Google Books and searching will often turn up plenty of potentially interesting reads, and frequently with enough free preview pages to give a good idea of the content.

When the National Archives in the U.K. was offering free downloads of much of its digital collection, I took the opportunity to download a large number of Bomber Command squadron ORBs for those squadrons which regularly reported the bomb loadouts. Eventually I'm going to turn that data into a database of sorts.

After I finish Shattered Sword (I've yet to start it, but it's on deck as I'm about finished with my current reading), I'll check TSoB out. I certainly appreciate the recco, and have bookmarked your post for later reference. Thanks!