The Augsburg raid on April 4, 1942 was even more extreme - 7 out of 12 shot down. I know that was a daylight raid but I think the point is well made that heavy bombers were virtual death traps in low-level missions.
they had a huge effect on moral, which can only be a good thing, the only reason they weren't as successful as they could have been was becasue germany had an amazing ability to recover from attacks, look at the dams raid, within 48hours they had comething like 20,000 workers on the site......................
Heavy bobers at low levels, is always bad But now a missle will to the trick. The damb raids were a show the the RAF was lookig at every angle to try ad stop the Germans. As was Gerany.
The point was, Wallis (at least) was hoping to bring the war to a hault in a matter of weeks. Instead, a substantial part of the damage had been repaired in a matter of weeks. The raid did exactly what it was supposed to do, it's effects just weren't what had been hoped for.
In terms of publicity and propaganda it was a phenomenal success. It also proved thet bomber command could hit a pinpoint target at night (ironically, that precision strike still resulted in massive area damage).
So why not go back and try to take out the dambs again or kep them out?
The RAF did very good Area bombing, even the US daylight raids were area bombing though that turm was not liked or used.
Lank thanks. I have been reading a little and some tv stuff has shown that it really was just a play on words. The US Norton was very good when it was used in the Arizona desert but it did not do as well under war conditions. Also time has passed and we can admit to some things now yes?