RAF Bomber Command....

Nikademus said:

So now it's a question of which AirForce was more effective?

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Nikademus


Markus seems to have overlooked the fact that bombs in 1940 were mainly dropped on ports to counter the invasion and airfields in N Europe in the BoB since the invasion didnt take place it must be termed a success. By 1942 the Germans saw little point in attacking ships defended by the British when they could quite happily sink completely undefended ships within sight of the US coast.

Nikademus said:

The Med was a sideshow made possible by Italian indescretion. The Germans made it important by going there and providing force levels small enough for Britian to fight against and learn. The British did not make it happen. The Germans reinforced failure by continuing the fight with insufficient force levels to complete the job ultimately providing a training ground for the American ground forces as well.

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Exactly, the Med was the only place where the UK could safely and effectively hurt the Axis. Italy directly and Germany indirectly.

Markus said:

Exactly, the Med was the only place where the UK could safely and effectively hurt the Axis. Italy directly and Germany indirectly.

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What is indirect about a battle with the Afrika Korps? You have also forgotten Norway and Dieppe which were disasterous however without Norway Dieppe N Africa and Italy then D Day may well have been a disaster too.
You use 20/20 hindsight on every issue, the British didnt choose to fight in Africa because it was "safe" or they could be "effective" the alternative was to hand the whole continent of Africa and the middle east to the Axis. Sinilarly the BEF going to Belgium and France was always an extremely bad idea but had to be undertaken due to international treaty obligations.

Another thing you seem to have completely forgotten or probably never knew. An air raid causes damage and death. To avoid this populations take cover and have an alarm system. Being sent to air raid shelters night after night is wearing and eventually affects production. There was no doubt about this to the British because it happened to them during the Blitz.

I fail to see how scrapping BC would increase the troop levels in North Africa by any appreciable level. It might mean more aircraft, but this would have been cancelled out by more German aircraft as well, as well as more armaments, including U-Boats with which to wage war on the British. To say nothing of the feeling of sheer helplessness for the british, with no weapon that even showed the slightest inkling of being able to strike at the Germans for the foreseeable future.

parsifal said:

To say nothing of the feeling of sheer helplessness for the british, with no weapon that even showed the slightest inkling of being able to strike at the Germans for the foreseeable future.

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Parsival

That was a major part of thinking in the UK 1939 to 1942 were very dark days, to spend three years just "taking it" doing nothing may well have broken everyones spirit. I have heard 1 lancaster in flight and it is impressively noisy I can only imagine what noise a few hundred would make. It must have given a great feeling of something being "done".

Much of these discussions rely on post war statistics which is useful for historians and strategists but it can lead to nonesense. For example I (and anyone reading the BoB thread here) am much more aware of the situation day by day on both sides of the channel than Churchill, Hitler, Dowding or Goering during the BoB.

It is easy to say this was wrong or that was stupid we are looking at the whole situation in the cold light of day not in the height of battle through the fog of war. Some decisions by Hitler and Goering were quite clearly stupid because they were based on completely false intelligence, the allies suffered the same problem.

It was impossible to say exactly what the effects of a raid were you may flatten a factory completely but you dont know if all machine tools had been moved out the week before or you may have a lucky hit like a single V1 that killed or injured about 1000 troops in a cinema.

Whatever the rights and wrongs or any proof that BC raids were ineffective or immoral I cannot remember meeting anyone who lived through those times who didnt think it was the right thing to do, and that to me is what matters. My uncle was a navigator in BC in the early years a gentle kindly guy, devout christian without a violent bone in his body. He left me his medals in his will and was quite clearly proud of what he had done even though he never spoke about it, what he did was bombing the heart out of Nazi Germany. Thankfully Pnemonia invalided him out of BC before the Luftwaffe got him. Even my mother (his brother) a devout church going christian who hates violence says "God bless those boys" when she sees an old airman soldier sailor or especially Chelsea pensioner on T.V.

However such things do have an amusing side in the modern day, after the bombs in London on 7 July 2005 there was an old guy in London laughing at the T.V. camera. he said "if the arabs think this is terror they are jokers I was here in the Blitz, more people have died of old age than with these bombs, they are cowards".

So the Germans could have countered more ASW a/c and they could have countered more bombers for the Med so well that they would have become inefficient. Follwing that logic they could have also countered some bombers trying to set some towns in Germany on fire.

To say nothing of the feeling of sheer helplessness for the british, with no weapon that even showed the slightest inkling of being able to strike at the Germans for the foreseeable future.

That means BC´s biggest effect in it´s early days was PR!?

Markus said:

So the Germans could have countered more ASW a/c and they could have countered more bombers for the Med so well that they would have become inefficient. Follwing that logic they could have also countered some bombers trying to set some towns in Germany on fire.

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I must disagree with this as the Luftwaffe were overstretched for the vast majority of the war and certainly from the start of the attack on Russia and couldn't counter more of anything anywhere.

To say nothing of the feeling of sheer helplessness for the british, with no weapon that even showed the slightest inkling of being able to strike at the Germans for the foreseeable future.

That means BC´s biggest effect in it´s early days was PR!?

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To a degree that is true remembering that the PR was both in the UK and Germany. It can play an important part of the war. There was one meeting between Russia and Germany when the siren went and eneryone had to go to the shelters. The Germans wwere saying that the British were on their last legs and bound to lose. The Russian minister asked if that was the case why was he in the bomb shelter and not the British.
Another fact is that lessons had to learn and navigation techniques developed. This is often overlooked but it should be remembered that when Germany launched the Little Blitz in early 1944, the Luftwaffe had great difficulty finding London which is only 50 miles from the French Coast.

Markus said:

That means BC´s biggest effect in it´s early days was PR!?

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Don't forget that PR has a big effect on morale.

On both sides.

Many raids and strikes were planned for PR results alone by many nations.

Doolittle's raid on Tokyo is one. Early French and Russian raids on Berlin are others.

Little or no military value but good PR or propaganda. They could and did also cause redistribution of enemy forces and in some cases alterations in production allocations.

Glider said:

I must disagree with this as the Luftwaffe were overstretched for the vast majority of the war and certainly from the start of the attack on Russia and couldn't counter more of anything anywhere.

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That´s just perfect.

Many raids and strikes were planned for PR results alone by many nations.



Agreed, the British raid on Berlin in 1940 had an influence on Germay attacking London which changed the course of the BoB. One raid on berlin later in the war was purely to disrupt a broadcast by Goering.

Markus said:

That´s just perfect.

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What would be perfect is if you could respond to these points that I have already raised and you have ducked:

1. Why is it that BC were butchers, but 8th AF and XX AF, using exactly the same tactics, were not?

2. You stated that the 8th AF wore the LW down while BC did not. How do you square this with the fact that the LW had to maintain a large NF force solely to counter BC raids, absorbing resource which could have been used elsewhere?

3. What could German industry have acheived if it wasn't being bombed around the clock? And how much more war material could have been produced if it wasn't for the damage and disruption caused by the BC and 8th offensives?

Cheers

BT

as regards PR the first raid by the USA in Europe was made in planes borrowed from the RAF specifically so it could be made on the 4th July. see the USA bombers thread.

I think it would be true to say the USAAF wore down what was left of the Luftwaffe in conjunction with the other forces on east and west fronts. There were over 50,000 Bf109 and FW 190s produced and thousands of others of various types, to claim wiping out the whole force is egging the pudding a bit.

BombTaxi said:

What would be perfect is if you could respond to these points that I have already raised and you have ducked:

1. Why is it that BC were butchers, but 8th AF and XX AF, using exactly the same tactics, were not?

2. You stated that the 8th AF wore the LW down while BC did not. How do you square this with the fact that the LW had to maintain a large NF force solely to counter BC raids, absorbing resource which could have been used elsewhere?

3. What could German industry have acheived if it wasn't being bombed around the clock? And how much more war material could have been produced if it wasn't for the damage and disruption caused by the BC and 8th offensives?

Cheers

BT

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Calm down, his statement was made in responce to my comment about the germans being overstretched, not about what you posted.

I'm calm mate I just feel Markus has said little of substance to support his trashing of BC, nor resolved some of the contradictions in his own statements. My last post wasn't meant to come across angry, apologies to all if it did

dresden will always be a topic of controversy much like hiroshima. people have opinions and like sports or religion you are not going to sway them from their point of view. when i was going through my father's papers i ran into this article about it. he did not escort the bombers to dresden but to chemnitz that day. i can not vouch for the "correctness" of the information and facts but since the subject of dresden was breached several posts ago...here it is in it entirety:

editorial by walter brown md - excepts of the article.

the dresdeners

every year just before valentine's day there are stories published about the bombing of dresden germany on feb 13-14, 1945. the articles written by revisionists accuse the united states and great britian of firebombing unnecessarily. television and radio carried reports of similar themes. the media once again did not have the moral or ethical sensibilities to look for the facts concerning the dresden raid and present them accurately.

the time was early 1945. russian troops were advancing on germany from the east at a rapid clip. our ground troops had finally won the batle of the bulge and were heading for germany from the west. the nazis had pulled many of their troops and most of their war equipment back from the russian front and purposely amassed them in the marshaling yards in dresden. those weapons were to be thrown up against the american soldiers in attempts to slow forward progress across germany towards berlin. the german leaders apparently thought we would not bomb dresden-that their valuable guns and vehicles would be safe. they were warned by the allies in advance to move the equipment into the city or expect the worst. days before the bombing, leaflets were dropped on the city advising the citizens of the situation. the germans continued to move equipment into the city.

the night of february 13, the raf area bombed the city in night raids just as they had been doing in their attacks on german industrial cities for previous years of the war. the following day 461 b-17s of the first air division precision bombed the marshaling yards with good results. general lew lyle, flying lead aircraft, attests to the target for the day and the military reasons for the raid on dresden. the target was the marshaling yards in dresden. john greenwood, president of the 8th afmmf, flying as lead navigator gives a detailed account of the mission. his story was recently written up in the new york times. most telling, however, is the evidence of harry gobrecht who flew the mission with the 303rd bomb group and is their official historian. harry has done extensive research into all the missions the 303rd flew and has found classified mission reports on the dresden raid. these secret documents leave no doubt as to the purpose of the mission to dresden.

questions asked as to why dresden was bombed so close to the end of the war are senseless as those journalists who write according to their own aganda and for reasons other than historical accuracy. no one knew at the time that the war would end three months later. the german army was still fighting and the allied soldiers were being killed.

the 8th air force ( and all allies ) was still losing fighters and bombers every day. perhaps the dresden raid was instrumental, as most bombing raids were, in saving allied lives and hastening the surrender of the nazi regime. perhaps the "political revisionists" should consider the facts of the war as they existed at the time. and perhaps they should consider what the alternative outcomes of the war would have been.

peter f. ardizzi, editor
"keystone tale winds"
p,o, box 102
warminster, pa 18974-0511

(*** i do not know how old this article is or if the publication is still in existance. but it does site names and references for research if you are so inclined to dig deeper)

The B-17s sent to the "marshalling yards" in Dresden carried nearly 40% incendiaries. Dresden was a city area raid by the 8th AF, both in practice and intent.

Hop said:

The B-17s sent to the "marshalling yards" in Dresden carried nearly 40% incendiaries. Dresden was a city area raid by the 8th AF, both in practice and intent.

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Have you ever seen a railroad marshalling yard or railcars for that matter? Somehow I doubt it!

@bobbysocks: 8th AF drooped less than 800 tons of all kind of bombs while BC dropped 1.200 tons of incendiaries., plus 1.400 ton of HE. Thus 8th AF´s attack isn´t seem as more than an addendum.

actually i live near one of the biggest rail yards in the state and pretty much the region. they are tightly compact and have thousands of rail cars end to end..side by side and spread for miles. a single car fire can damage/destroy the 8 or more adjacent cars and if it spreads its worse. these are modern steel cars. rail cars in those days were made primarily of wood, tanker cars each carry thousands of gallons of....syrup, oil, fuel, antifreeze...etc. wrecks in the yard take days to clear up as to you have to shuffle cars to different sidings get the wreck train in...and that is a small scale. oh, yes...most of them are in very close proximity to industrial or/and residentual areas. so, yeah...i do know a little about choo choos.

bobbysocks said:

actually i live near one of the biggest rail yards in the state and pretty much the region. they are tightly compact and have thousands of rail cars end to end..side by side and spread for miles. a single car fire can damage/destroy the 8 or more adjacent cars and if it spreads its worse. these are modern steel cars. rail cars in those days were made primarily of wood, tanker cars each carry thousands of gallons of....syrup, oil, fuel, antifreeze...etc. wrecks in the yard take days to clear up as to you have to shuffle cars to different sidings get the wreck train in...and that is a small scale. so, yeah...i do know a little about choo choos.

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You must live near chatenooga bobby.

As you say most rolling stock was made of wood and so were ammunition boxes. But as your previous post it was a war, whether Dresden was full of soldiers or not it was full of Germans, people putting out fires arnt fighting. Buildings around marshalling yards are also important.

Have you ever seen a railroad marshalling yard or railcars for that matter? Somehow I doubt it!

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Yes, I have.

The point is, Bomber Command didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards. The 15th AF didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards. The 8th AF didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards in France, Belgium or the Netherlands. When they were on a specific mission like operation Clarion, the 8th AF didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards in Germany.

But when the 8th AF were planning an area bombing raid against a German city, and used "marshalling yards" as a cover, they did use incendiaries. A lot of them.

So why the difference? Why did the 8th AF think German marshalling yards, attacked using radar aiming, would burn better than French, Belgian or Dutch marshalling yards? When they had a specific order to attack German marshalling yards handed to them (Clarion), why didn't they use incendiaries?

Richard G 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.

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Why were the Dresden rail yards thought worth 40% incendiaries?

The evidence is the 8th AF used HE on marshalling yards when the marshalling yard itself was the main target. When they wanted to cause incidental damage to the town, as on their general missions to Germany, they used a high proportion of incendiaries.