PR flights over KL Auschwitz

[yahya]

I'd like to inquire about PR flights over the KL Auschwitz and its sub camps, particularly about the units and aircraft which photographed that infamous place during WW II.

Yad Vashem lists the Mosquitos of the SAAF 60 Squadron, and then the F-5 Lightnings from the 5th Photographic Reconnaissance Group of the 15th US Air Force followed by the B-24 bombers of the 464th Bombardment Group.

https://www.yadvashem.org/from-our-collections/auschwitz-aerial-photos.html

Wikipedia has some photos:

Category:Auschwitz aerial photographs - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

Where there any other known PR flights than listed above?

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

Complications to any search are the English speaker ideas of names in Poland etc. then whether another location in the area is listed as the destination. Sometimes the better details are by the unit commanding the PR unit, complicated by the allies had for a time a combined reconnaissance command, there was also the USAAF 90th PR wing.

60 Squadron SAAF history can be read through watermarks at

The National Archives | Discovery Advanced Search Form

The official archive of the UK government. Our vision is to lead and transform information management, guarantee the survival of today's information for tomorrow and bring history to life for everyone.

discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk

60 Squadron South Record
Use the available for download only option when the list comes up.

The initial report of the 4 April 1944 sortie simply says targets in the Gleiwitz area, the sortie report says Mosquito LR412? Lts Barry and McIntyre, 09.25 to 14.40, the photographed 4 targets, doing 9 runs, an aircraft plant, 2 refineries and the Oswiecim rubber factory which was done around 12.03 and 12.12, using the 20 inch camera, another two targets cloud obscured.

A lot of records to go through to find the reported 31 May, 26 June, 25 August and 8 September sorties, plus any others

Bombing raids,

20 August 1944, Oswiecim/I.G. Farben Oil Refinery, 127 B-17 from the 2nd, 97th, 99th, 301st, 483rd Groups, dropping 334 short tons of HE bombs, 1 bomber category E, 6 damaged

13 September 1944, Oswiecim/I.G. Farben Oil Refinery, 96 B-24 from the 460th, 464th, 465th, 485th Groups, dropping 235.75 short tons of HE bombs, 3 bombers category E, 6 missing, 24 damaged. (Flak described as Heavy, Intense, Accurate)

18 December 1944, Oswiecim/I.G. Farben Oil Refinery, 2 B-17 from the 2nd Group, 47 B-24 from the 454th, 455th, 459th 485th Groups, dropping 109 short tons of HE bombs, 2 bombers category E, 5 missing, 1 damaged. (Flak described as Heavy, Intense, Accurate)

24 December 1944, Oswiecim/I.G. Farben Oil Refinery, 95 B-24 from the 451st, 455th, 456th, 456th, 459th Groups, dropping 169.75 short tons of HE bombs, 3 bombers category E, 8 missing, 13 damaged. (Flak described as Heavy, Intense, Accurate)

5th PRG records are available at AFHRA
Air Force History Index
reel B0752
Its records are light on detail prior to its official transfer to the 15th Air Force on 1 October 1944.

USAA PR sorties,

8 July 1944, 5th PR group just describes the countries visited, 15th Air Force notes 3 PR sorties, a) Budapest, b) Vienna, c) East Po Valley.

15th PR squadron, 5th PR Group, F-5/P-38, 1 sortie per entry, the December 1944 entries from the more detailed unit records.

29-Nov-44 Photo mission to Oswiecim
19-Dec-44 Photo mission to Oswiecim, Blechhammer, Vienna, aircraft aborted.
21-Dec-44 Photo mission to Zlina, Oswiecim, Blechhammer, Odertal, Olomouc, Prostejov, Brno, Wollersdorf, Wiener Neustadt
21-Dec-44 Photo mission to Zilina, Oswiecim, Blechhammer
21-Dec-44 Photo mission to Oswiecim, Klagenfurt, Odertal, Blechhammer
26-Dec-44 Photo mission to Moravska Ostrava, Bohumin, Blechhammer, Odertal, Oswiecim, Szechowice
5-Jan-45 Photo mission to Oswiecim
7-Jan-45 Radar Photo mission to Oswiecim
10-Jan-45 Radar Photo mission to Oswiecim, aircraft aborted.
14-Jan-45 Photo mission to Oswiecim
14-Jan-45 Radar Photo mission to Oswiecim, aircraft aborted.

 

[yahya]

Thank you very much indeed for the detailed reply. It seems that the IG Farben (Buna) facility at Auschwitz Monowitz was the obvious primary target of air raids in that area. One may wonder how the Allies learned about synthetic fuel and rubber production out there. Were the humint sources first involved?

I wonder if the 15th PR squadron, 5th PR Group's recce missions of 29-Nov-44, 5-Jan-45, and 14-Jan-45 primarily targeted the IG Farben facilities at Auschwitz. Or was the existence of the nearby Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II so obvious to the Allies that prompted them to collect at least some intelligence given that the Soviets were approaching? Auschwitz was liberated only on 27 Jan. 1945.

Do you happen to know what kind of radar was used on the 7-Jan-45 Radar Photo mission to Oswiecim?

 

[NevadaK]

Greetings Yahya,

In response to your question about how the Allies gathered intelligence about IG Farben/Auschwitz you might want to watched the documentary by Ken Burns, "U.S. and the Holocaust". Watch The U.S. and the Holocaust | Full Documentary Now Streaming | PBS. It provides a good overview of how the Allies came to learn of the holocaust and the camp system, including questions about bombing the camps. There was a separate documentary on PBS Secrets of the Dead titled Bombing Auschwitz. Bombing Auschwitz: About the Film | Secrets of the Dead | PBS Both of these provide a reasonable perspective about how the allies came to know of the camps and Auschwitz in particular.

I defer to Geoffrey Sinclair to specifics and his great depth of knowledge with regards to what flights, when, and how.

I hope these resources help answer your questions.

Kk

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

In the book Hell's cartel by Diarmuid Jeffreys the camp at Monowitz or Auschwitz III was built and run by IG Farben for its workforce, I seem to recall the SS complaining about the camp conditions. While the Farben plant was meant as synthetic rubber the allies assumed synthetic oil. Project started in early/mid 1941, there were workers from Western Europe and allied PoW present from the start.

I have no direct evidence on when the allies became aware of the complex, at around 1 square mile in size it was conspicuous, but when your main goal is death to the workers actually building the plant does not happen, Monowitz 1943, 35,000 arrivals, 25,000+ deaths.

In July 1944 the BBC broadcast about Auschwitz and other locations.

As far as I am aware the Air Force was only interested in the industrial areas, which was more than Farben, not the camps.

Radar photography for the USAAF was mostly photographing the display of the H2X radar as the aircraft flew over the target, as well as the ground, to give any H2X using bombers an idea of what to look for.

 

[yahya]

Thank you for the reply. As to the synthetic oil facilities, there were several nearby to include:

• IG Farbenidustrie AG Werk Heydebreck;
• Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke AG Blechhammer;
• Schaffgotsch Benzin Werke GmbH Odertal.

They were located merely 50 miles north-west of Monowitz.

Obviously, these facilities were subjected to numerous visitations by the USAAF bombers in the second half of 1944.

A similar facility, Hydrierwerke Pölitz, was located between Stettin and Peenemünde.

The question arises as to who may have tipped off the allies about them. Polish underground? Their intelligence sources are known to have reached Peenemünde and further. Doubtful that the PR flights in that time could uncover strategic objects, which existence had not been previously known to intelligence services and imagery analysts.

 

[NevadaK]

The question arises as to who may have tipped off the allies about them. Polish underground? Their intelligence sources are known to have reached Peenemünde and further. Doubtful that the PR flights in that time could uncover strategic objects, which existence had not been previously known to intelligence services and imagery analysts.

Greetings Yahya,

In answer to your question, pulled from a safari search:

The Allies first received reports about the Auschwitz concentration camp, including information about the adjacent IG Farben plant (Monowitz or Auschwitz III), as early as mid-1941 from Polish resistance sources.

Key events in the Allies' knowledge acquisition:

• March 1941: Witold Pilecki, a Polish Army Captain who volunteered to be imprisoned at Auschwitz, began sending reports to Polish resistance headquarters in Warsaw, which were then forwarded to the British government in London.
• Late 1942: The Polish government-in-exile provided detailed reports to the Allied leaders, and on December 17, 1942, the Allied governments issued a joint statement condemning the mass killings, indicating general awareness of ongoing atrocities.
• Early 1944: The Allies learned more specific details about the IG Farben factory in Monowitz and the mass extermination process through the escape and subsequent reports (the Vrba-Wetzler report) of two Jewish inmates, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler.
• April 4, 1944: An Allied reconnaissance aircraft on a mission to photograph the synthetic oil plant at Monowitz (Auschwitz III) took the first aerial photographs of the Auschwitz complex, which later revealed details of the camp's operations when analyzed after the war.
• August - December 1944: The Buna-Werke IG Farben industrial complex was bombed several times by the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force, confirming its status as a recognized strategic military target.

While the Allies had intelligence about the camp and the nearby factory's existence and activities from various sources starting in 1941, the full scale of the extermination process was difficult for them to fully comprehend or believe, and it wasn't until near the end of the war that the full scope of the horrors was widely accepted. The IG Farben facility itself was viewed as a legitimate industrial military target and was bombed as such.

 

[yahya]

Hello NevadaK,

Auschwitz was first mentioned in the publication by Polish authorities in London in early 1941. The scanned document is available from here:

German Occupation of Poland : Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

1940This WHITE BOOK is far from presenting an adequate record of the countless crimes and heartless conduct of the Germans in their efforts to exterminate the...

archive.org

Apparently, no action was taken by the allies to further research the matter.

Pilecki's report in PDF can be downloaded from this website:

Report W KL AUSCHWITZ 1940-1943 by Captain Witold Pilecki, Institute of National Remembrance, Pilecki Project Committee, Warsaw 2017

Report W KL AUSCHWITZ 1940-1943 by Captain Witold Pilecki, Institute of National Remembrance, Pilecki Project Committee, Warsaw 2017 - Publications

eng.ipn.gov.pl

Alas, the document does not explicitly mention the Monowitz plant. Nor Pilecki's sketches available at the end of this PDF book.

Then, there was the Raczyński Note dated December 10, 1942. It reported about German atrocities committed during Operation Reinhart but did not mention the Monowitz plant.

In January 1943, allied SIGINT intercepted and decrypted the Höfle telegram, which detailed the Holocaust atrocities during the 1942 Operation Reinhart at Belzec (B), Sobibor (S), Treblinka (T), and at Lublin-Majdanek. However, this decrypt was again unrelated to Auschwitz III Monowitz.

The Vrba–Wetzler report of 1944 can be downloaded from here:

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English45.pdf

It also does not explicitly mention the Monowitz plant.

Hence my confusion.

Press publications in the West did not mention the Auschwitz name, eg.:

https://www.nytimes.com/1942/11/25/archives/himmler-program-kills-polish-jews-slaughter-of-250000-in-plan-to.html

Then, did the photo recce mission of April 4, 1944 eventually provide the first hand information on the Monowitz plant, which was subsequently targeted by allied bombers?