RAF Bomber Command....

[Milosh]

you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC but the fact being neither BC nor USAAF were very accurate so for all intense purposes they both area bombed , Harris IMHO was a jerk who really dragged his feet on the objectives of hitting the Petro industry

I find that hard to understand when BC dropped 93,691 tons while the 8th AF dropped 66,497 tons of bombs on the Petro industry.

 

[tail end charlie]

The day-bombing USAAF wore down the Luftwaffe´s fighters, at the same time BC was getting it´s butt kicked by the nightfighters. Which ended only because Göring was sending night fighter pilots to bring day fighter units up to strenght.

The above is at least disrespectful and at worst insulting to both allied forces. I dont know what a member of the 8th involved in an unescorted raid in 1943 would have called it but I doubt it would be "wearing down the Luftwaffe". The Germans ceased unescorted daylight raids due to heavy losses, the British ceased unescorted daylight raids including raids with B17s due to heavy losses, so please tell me how the people who decided to commence unescorted raids deep into Germany are persueing some great strategy?

How many US aircrew were lost in the European campaign?


this document is an interesting read
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA398044

 

[tail end charlie]

you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC but the fact being neither BC nor USAAF were very accurate so for all intense purposes they both area bombed , Harris IMHO was a jerk who really dragged his feet on the objectives of hitting the Petro industry

All BC raid crew were told of some strategic objective and everyone knew there was little chance of hitting it without killing civilians, but the same is true for the USAAF. Look at the civilian deaths on raids in France by day or night!

 

[pbfoot]

I find that hard to understand when BC dropped 93,691 tons while the 8th AF dropped 66,497 tons of bombs on the Petro industry.

I wonder how many tons of 96000 BC bomb tons were dropped prior to late 43 , Thats when the USAAF started throwing their weight around amd BC started to get accurate

 

[parsifal]

I wonder how many tons of 96000 BC bomb tons were dropped prior to late 43 , Thats when the USAAF started throwing their weight around amd BC started to get accurate

I dont have the figures here with me...they are at home. But the overwhelming majority of bombs dropped were done so after June 1943, probably in the order of 60000 tons. And what is really galling to this debate, is that as 1944 wore on, and increasing percentage of those bombs dropped could be easily classified as precision attacks, dropped with far greater accuracy than the American ever achieved with visual aids. Technical advances, such as OBOE meant that the days of bombs dropping 5 or 10 miles wide were long gone. With devices like OBOE, bombs could, and were, dropped with astonishing accuracy.

None of this matters to those so blind as to not even want to know the truth. What is focussed on are the painful learning years when bombs really were dropped very wide, and losses climbed well past the 5% mark. it doesnt seem to register that by the latter part of 1944, loss rates were bouncing around at the 1% mark, tonnages easily exceeding those dropped by the US, and more accurately, or that LW losses in Nightfighters were running at about three times the losses for BC. None of this matters, or so it would seem

 

[Milosh]

I wonder how many tons of 96000 BC bomb tons were dropped prior to late 43 , Thats when the USAAF started throwing their weight around amd BC started to get accurate

How many American bombers were attacking oil targets in early 1941 when BC's priority was synthetic oil production?

 

[pbfoot]

During the last 6mo of 1944 this was the breakdown of BC raids
Attacks on cities 53%
attacks on RR and canals 15%
attcks on oil 14%
attacks on troops and fortifications 13%
attacks on naval or other objectives 5%
oil does not seem to be a priority

 

[Milosh]

The following statistics are from the British Bombing Survey Unit. Figures are for the oil campaign in the last year of the war.

Number of attacks - 8th AF / BC

May 1944 - 11 / 0
June 1944 - 20 / 10
July 1944 - 9 / 20
August 1944 - 33 / 20
September 1944 - 23 / 14
October 1944 - 18 / 10
November 1944 - 32 / 22
December 1944 - 7 / 15
January 1945 - 17 / 23
February 1945 - 20 / 24
March 1945 - 36 / 33
April 1945 - 7 / 9

Total - 233 / 200

That is 285.4 tons/attack for the 8th AF and 468.5 tons/attack for BC. Since BC dropped larger bombs there was more permanent damage done to the facilities. The Americans had to keep going back to finish the job.

The tonnage stated in a previous post was for the above months.

Hall, R. Cargill. Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment. University Press of the Pacific. ISBN 1-4102-2480-5 1998, p. 158.

 

[Hop]

you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC

But what was a military target?

The 8th AF defined a military target as any town with more than 50,000 people. From standing orders issued in 1944:

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

Read that policy. It boils down to: large towns have military targets in them, if you can see a town on radar it must be big enough to have military targets in it, therefore you can bomb it.

By this definition every Bomber Command attack was on a military target.

so for all intense purposes they both area bombed

The USAAF knew they were area bombing and did it deliberately. At first they admitted it, and listed targets attacked as city areas. Later they denied doing it but instead attacked "marshalling yards". However, most of their marshalling yard attacks in Germany were carried out using lots of incendiaries (which don't work well against marshalling yards) and using radar bombing, which in USAAF hands wasn't accurate enough to hit anything smaller than a city.

The use of incendiaries shows how cynical the claim of attacking "marshalling yards" was.

When the RAF attacked marshalling yards they used about 2% incendiaries. The 15th AF also used about 2% incendiaries in their attacks on marshalling yards. In attacks on French marshalling yards, the 8th AF used about 2% incendiaries. In their attacks on Germany yards, they used over 20% incendiaries.

The intent was to area bomb but claim otherwise.

I wonder how many tons of 96000 BC bomb tons were dropped prior to late 43 , Thats when the USAAF started throwing their weight around amd BC started to get accurate

On oil? 2,361 tons. Mostly in 1940, with small amounts in 1941 and tiny amounts in 1942 and 1943.

In 1944 BC dropped 48,043 tons and in 1945 47,510 tons on oil.

Attacks on cities 53%
attacks on RR and canals 15%
attcks on oil 14%
attacks on troops and fortifications 13%
attacks on naval or other objectives 5%
oil does not seem to be a priority

In the same period the 8th AF dropped 16% of their bombs on oil targets.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Hind sight is always 20:20 isn't it ..... .

Adam Tooze's economic analysis of the period 1933-45 ("Wages of Destruction") addresses the RAF bomber campaign against the Ruhr. Tooze claims it was much more effective than generally acknowledged, in these PC days. The Ruhr wasn't just coal, coke and steel but also synthetic oil -- so the objectives were veried. As for "Area Bombing" - collateral damage is collateral damage whether you burst a dam and flood the area around it, or set fires that consume neighbourhoods.

The use of strategies like Mosquito Pathfinders, and OBO navigation, were RAF's efforts to make the strikes as effective as possible. Nothing has changed from then to now except that the tools the USAF has in Af'stan and Pakistan are much more sophisticated, portable and accurate than those of 1943. But weddings still get accidentally targetted. Is Patraeus a war crimial? Hardly.

In WW2, Britain was fighting back as effectively as she could with the available tools and technology. Quite frankly I find the whole BC criticism UNPRODUCTIVE - it brings out the worst in people and usually insults 1,000's and 1,000's of airmen - a large proportion of whom were Commonwealth servicemen.

I admit being repulsed by Hamburg and Dresden - but I am repulsed by the Somme and Ypres also. War is war and countries that start wars should pay the price.

To argue that Germany should have "surrendered" or sued for Peace is specious. After Versailles in 1918, there was NOT going to be any end to WW2 short of the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of Germany and the DISCREDITATION of the NAZIS idealogy. To the extent that "innocent" Germans went along with Nazism, they suffered. This was no accident. This was strategy ... and it worked. Look no further than modern Germany for proof of that.

MM
Proud Canadian

 

[parsifal]

Excellently put MM, and I second the post

 

[Markus]

I dont know what a member of the 8th involved in an unescorted raid in 1943 would have called it but I doubt it would be "wearing down the Luftwaffe".

I was (very obviously) refering to escorted raids in 1944.

you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC but the fact being neither BC nor USAAF were very accurate so for all intense purposes they both area bombed , ...

My point exactly. They had orders to drop their bombs on factories ect. but in the pre laser-bomb age a lot of the bomb hit the surrounding residential areas by accident and not on purpose. That is a big difference.

That is 285.4 tons/attack for the 8th AF and 468.5 tons/attack for BC. Since BC dropped larger bombs there was more permanent damage done to the facilities. The Americans had to keep going back to finish the job.

Facilities.

 

[Nikademus]

Hind sight is always 20:20 isn't it ..... .

To argue that Germany should have "surrendered" or sued for Peace is specious. After Versailles in 1918, there was NOT going to be any end to WW2 short of the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of Germany and the DISCREDITATION of the NAZIS idealogy. To the extent that "innocent" Germans went along with Nazism, they suffered. This was no accident. This was strategy ... and it worked. Look no further than modern Germany for proof of that.

MM
Proud Canadian

IIRC.....Harris considered "morale attacks" a panacea. (among many other things) He viewed the primary goal of the area bombing to be the dislocation of the enemy workforce as well as outright destruction of the tools in which production was made. The strategic bombing campaign....(the whole one, not just BC) proved that Duchot's theories were incorrect...that populations would not bow down in terror and demand peace, rather it hardened attitudes. The firebombings of Hamburg and Dresden "might" have altered that....if the Allies could create them at will. Therein lay the problem...they couldn't. (at least not over Germany....Japan's paper cities were much more conducive to generating firestorms but even then, the population held out)

 

[Hop]

My point exactly. They had orders to drop their bombs on factories ect. but in the pre laser-bomb age a lot of the bomb hit the surrounding residential areas by accident and not on purpose. That is a big difference.

It's incorrect. The USAAF frequently didn't have a factory as their aiming point. Often the aiming point was a city centre, a high proportion of incendiaries was used, and radar aiming was employed. This was deliberate area bombing.

 

[BombTaxi]

I was (very obviously) refering to escorted raids in 1944.

So the 8th AF engaging the LW 'wore the LW down', but BC engaging the LW and forcing them to maintain a nightfighter force SOLELY to counter BC raids had no effect upon the fighting capacity of the LW at all?

My point exactly. They had orders to drop their bombs on factories ect. but in the pre laser-bomb age a lot of the bomb hit the surrounding residential areas by accident and not on purpose. That is a big difference.

Really? It's no difference at all. The Americans pretended that they were precision bombing but area bombed, while BC admitted it couldn't hit anything smaller than a city and area bombed. The results are exactly the same. Good intentions do not mitigate the effects of a 500lb GP bomb...

As far as I can see Markus, your main driving force seems to be a fairly rabid Anglophobia which means you cannot see the BC campaign for what it was; just one of a series of area bombing campaigns carried out by powers on both sides during the war. I have no idea what your own nationality is, nor do I care. But it would be a good idea to leave your baggage out of the debate...

 

[Milosh]

My point exactly. They had orders to drop their bombs on factories ect. but in the pre laser-bomb age a lot of the bomb hit the surrounding residential areas by accident and not on purpose. That is a big difference.

Facilities.

303rd BG (H) Combat Mission No. 81
5 November 1943
Target: Center of City, Gelsenkirchen, Germany
Crews Dispatched: 19
Crews Lost: Lt. A.G. Grant, 1 crewman KIA, 9 crewmen POW
Length of Mission: 5 hours, 10 minutes
Bomb Load: 42 x M47A1 Incendiaries
Bombing Altitude: 26,500 ft
Ammo Fired: 15,485 rounds

303rd BG (H) Combat Mission No. 83
26 November 1943
Target: City area of Bremen, Germany
Crews Dispatched: 2 Groups, 17 18 crews
Crews Lost: Capt. A.A. Cote, 10 KIA; 2Lt. H.J. Rocketto,
T/Sgt. R.K. Roberts and 2Lt. L.S. Johnson all KIA
Length of Mission: 6 hours, 10 minutes
Bomb Load: 8 x 500 lb G.P. 20 x M47A1 Incendiaries
Bombing Altitudes: 26,500 ft 27,000 ft
Ammo Fired: 47,000 rounds
Enemy Aircraft Claims: 2 Destroyed

303rd BG (H) Combat Mission No. 107
8 February 1944
Target: City area, Frankfurt, Germany (PFF)
Crew Dispatched: 20 plus 2 spares
Crew Members Lost or Wounded: 1 minor wound, 1 frostbite
Length of Mission: 7 hours, 40 minutes
Bomb Load: 21 or 42 x 65 lb M47A1 Indendiary bombs
Bombing Altitude: 26,400 ft

More examples and this is just one BG, 303rd BGA Combat Missions and Reports

facilities = refineries

 

[Markus]

More examples and this is just one BG, 303rd BGA Combat Missions and Reports

facilities = refineries

I noticed something. In all three cases the target was obsucred by clouds or smoke. Then I noticed the attacks were flown during the winter, when the weather is generally poor. Hence I picked some dates in the summer and viola, specific targets were attacked. Just once or twice a city area was the target but the report stated it was a "last resort" target due to low clouds. Fit´s into the orders Hop quoted, whenever possible aim visually at individual targets.

 

[tail end charlie]

I noticed something. In all three cases the target was obsucred by clouds or smoke. Then I noticed the attacks were flown during the winter, when the weather is generally poor. Hence I picked some dates in the summer and viola, specific targets were attacked. Just once or twice a city area was the target but the report stated it was a "last resort" target due to low clouds. Fit´s into the orders Hop quoted, whenever possible aim visually at individual targets.

Markus

I dont know where you live but low cloud in North Europe is the norm for a major part of the year, your previous triumphal posts about the 8th seem to only refer to escorted missions on a nice summers day. Who is sugar coating history now.

I tried looking on the net and cannot find any complete figure for losses by the Eighth Air force, the Bomber command figure of 55,000 is well known and includes all losses. Please advise how many air crew were lost in bombers and fighters and due to training take off landing accidents in both UK and USA. The report I gave a link to is a good start.

for example
To highlight this problem one only needs to look at the data from 1944 in the Eighth AF:
there were 2562 aircraft accidents not related to combat, involving 2835 aircraft, and
resulting in the death of 1692 persons.
and
1944, 2,835 aircraft of the Eighth Air Force were involved in 2,562 non-combat
related accidents, of which 47.5% were completely destroyed and 17.4% resulted in the
death of one or more persons. The total number of accidents per month averaged more
than 200, ranging from 148 in February to 271 in July, with well over half the accidents
occurring during non-operational flights.3 Over the twelve month period, the Eighth Air
Force averaged 1.79 non-operational accidents per 1000 hours of flying time.
4 Translating
this into today's figures would mean the Eighth AF was averaging 179 non-operational
accidents per 100,000 hours of flight time. The B-17 had an accident rate of 110 per
100,000 hours of flight time and the B-24 was experiencing 96 accidents per 100,000
hours of flight time.
5 These mishap rates were nearly twice as bad as the average mishap
rate USAAF wide. Clearly, these would be unacceptable numbers in anyone's mind today
and evidence suggests that Generals Arnold, Spaatz, Eaker, and Doolittle, did not
comprehend the severity of these rates or thought of these as the "costs of doing
business."

 

[tail end charlie]

Hind sight is always 20:20 isn't it ..... .


To argue that Germany should have "surrendered" or sued for Peace is specious. After Versailles in 1918, there was NOT going to be any end to WW2 short of the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of Germany and the DISCREDITATION of the NAZIS idealogy. To the extent that "innocent" Germans went along with Nazism, they suffered. This was no accident. This was strategy ... and it worked. Look no further than modern Germany for proof of that.

MM
Proud Canadian

well said MM

Most contributors here have an elected government, during 1940 the British government was concerned morale may crack and the government forced to sue for peace. This was not a consideration of Hitler he wasnt elected and would only be removed by a coup or assasination. If the assasination attempt in July 1940 or various other plots had succeeded then allied air bombing would have been completely vindicated.

 

[Hop]

From American Bombardment Policy against Germany, by Richard G Davis, official USAF historian:

The first area raid noted in Eighth Air Force
records occurred on August 12, 1943, when 106
bombers attacked the city of Bonn, visually, as a
target of opportunity.

The Eighth's first ordered
city or area raid occurred on September 27 1943
when it dropped, through complete overcast, 506
tons on an objective specified as the 'city of
Emden.' This was also the first raid in which the
Eighth employed radar-bombing techniques

Within a span of
two weeks after the introduction of a mere six sets
of radar for the entire force, the Eighth went from
a command that had never authorized a city area
raid to one that would launch more than one such
raid a week, on average, until the end of the war.
On October 10 the Eighth, employing visual sight-
ing struck the city of Munster as a primary target
and the German city of Coesfeld and the Dutch
city of Enschede as targets of last resort.

The day
after this raid the Commander of VIII Bomber
Command, General Anderson, outlined American
target priorities, 'first destruction of the Luftwaffe,
its factories and planes; second essential German
industries, and third, the cities themselves.'

Anderson also introduced another change in
Eighth Air Force policy. It began to take effect at
the same time as the introduction of H2S - a large
increase in use of incendiary bombs. Anderson
had begun to encourage greater use of firebombs,
in July 1943.

The September 27 Emden mission
was the first of the Eighth's mission to load more
than 20% incendiaries, while the October 2 mission
against Emden was the Eighth's first strike to
deliver more than 100 tons of fire bombs on a sin-
gle target. Henceforth, the Eighth would not only
conduct intentional area bombing, it would do so
using area bombing techniques.

After the Second Battle of Schweinfurt bombing
policy changed. On the next mission, October 18,
the Eighth instructed its bombers to hit as their
primary 'Duren, Center of City,' and as their sec-
ondary 'Any German city which may be bombed
using visual methods without disrupting fighter
support.'

On October 30 the Eighth amended the
bombing instructions for secondary targets to,
'Any German city which may be bombed without
disrupting the Fighter Support.'

On November
30, 1943 the formulation became 'Any industrial
city positively identified in Germany.' The term
'industrial' tended to be a distinction without dif-
ference as almost any city in Germany qualified as
such. By the end of Lt. General Ira C. Eaker's
tenure with the Eighth, the formulation for sec-
ondary city targets had reverted to 'Any city posi-
tively identified as being in Germany which can be
attacked without disrupting fighter support.'

The
exact wording of the field orders may have
changed from mission to mission, but the Eighth's
intent to authorize area bombing in a broad range
of circumstances remained constant.

Just once or twice a city area was the target but the report stated it was a "last resort" target due to low clouds. Fit´s into the orders Hop quoted, whenever possible aim visually at individual targets.

So how do you explain the heavy use of incendiaries? Were the 8th AF changing bomb loads in flight, after they had left the UK? Obviously not. So the fact remains they often loaded up with incendiaries and set out to area bomb German cities.

There's no doubt about that. The USAAF might have tried to conceal their policy later in the war, but area bombing was one of the tactics they used frequently. More from Davis:

Rail yards as such, however, were poor targets for
incendiaries. If the fire bombs landed directly on or near rail cars, they destroyed
or damaged them; otherwise, they could do little harm to the heavy equipment or
trackage. The Eighth realized this. Of the 9,042 tons of bombs dropped on
French rail yards, mostly during the pre-OVERLORD transportation bombing
phase, when the Americans took scrupulous care to avoid French civilian casual-
ties, 90 percent were visually sighted and only 33 tons were incendiaries.
Even over Germany itself, during Operation CLARION, when the Eighth bombed
dozens of small yards and junctions in lesser German towns, it dropped, over a
two-day period of visual conditions, 7,164 tons of bombs in all, but less than 3
tons of fire bombs.
In contrast, using H2X, the Eighth pummeled marshaling yards and rail sta-
tions in large German cities with high percentages of incendiary bombs. For
example, rail targets in at least four major cities garnered the following percent-
ages of fire bombs out of all bombs dropped on them: Cologne, 27 percent;
Nuremberg, 30 percent; Berlin, 37 percent; and Munich, 41 percent.
"Marshaling yards" undoubtedly served as a euphemism for city areas. Because
the yards themselves were not good targets for incendiaries, the prime purpose
in employing such weapons was to take advantage of the known inaccuracy of
H2X bombing in order to maximize the destruction of warehouses, commercial
buildings, and residences in the general vicinity of the target. Large numbers of
planes scattering their bombs around their mostly unseen and unverifiable aim-
ing points surely would cause great collateral damage to any soft structures
located nearby.

The target category "marshaling yards" received more of the Eighth's bomb
tonnage than any other, somewhere between 175,000 and 200,000 tons of bombs.
At least 25 percent of all the Eighth Air Force bombs dropped over Europe fell on
"marshaling yards." One-third of the American incendiary bombs dropped over
Germany fell on the same system.

If you believe the 8th AF didn't carry out deliberate area bombing attacks, you've fallen for the 8th's own late and post war propaganda.