RAF Bomber Command....

Hop said:

Yes, I have.
The 8th AF didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards in France, Belgium or the Netherlands.

When they wanted to cause incidental damage to the town, as on their general missions to Germany, they used a high proportion of incendiaries.

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In France Belgium and Holland they had to keep civilian casualties to a minimum they wernt the enemy.

In Dresden the surounding population were German, everyone knew by that time what percentage (approximately) would hit the target if the marshalling yard is destroyed and the surrounding city set alight then that is a good result.

Hop said:

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?

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

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like i said i did a whole 10 minutes of research on this BUT...to answer your question above i would have to say...perhaps it would burn better. i do not know without viewing the air recon photos and intel of the target area. just to say they didnt use it in other places is not a good argument....like TEC said above wiping out your allies isnt the smartest game plan. perhaps dresden lent itself to a dutch mix of HE and Incin where other places in germany this would have been futile. i did read that dresden had a larger percentage of wooden structures ( like tokyo) . other factors...the close proximity of industry or residence....the construction of the yard itself (cement or wood ) with round houses, car barns, fuel storage tanks might have made it more than feasible...again i would have to see the hard intel to make a objective assessment.

may I make a suggestion and allow yourselves some research as to where the majority of the bombs landed in Dresden.............in the old part of the city. I can also think of Pforzheim and why it turned into a fire storm as well.

war sucks gents the puny ugly little Austrian reaped a wirl-wind of Allied wrath onto Germany, my relatives for one felt it though undeserving

I think the point that everyone is trying to make is that the USAAF were as 'guilty' of indiscriminate area bombing as BC, and used much the same tactics. This squarely contradicts Markus' claim that only BC engaged in such barbaric activities. While I find the area bombing of cities morally repugnant, Erich is right that this was total war, where ALL sides targeted civilians as a means of disrupting production and morale. With the gift of hindsight, we can see that area bombing was not as successful in those aims as it's advocates might wish.

What frustrates me is that Markus is responding to the well-reasoned and substantiated claims of other posters with a stream of vitriolic and unsubstantiated Anglophobia, insulting the memory of the BC vets, and chooses to avoid answering any challenges to his position. This is a debate I am more than happy to have, but it is frustrating when the other viewpoint is couched in such terms.

Hop said:

Yes, I have.

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

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bobbysocks already told you. Cars with a wooden superstructure, filled with wooden boxes, filled with woodchips to absorb shock and the ties were also made of wood, wood treated with combustible chemicals.

edit: The yard at Hamm was attacked seven times by 303 BG, twice as a secondary target. In the five planned attackes a mix of HE and incendiaries was used twice. Alltogether 26 times only HE was used, 22 times HE and incendiaries in the attacks on German RR-yards.

I have seen british bombers dropping incendiaries which are not bombs and cannot be dropped precisely, what were the American incendiaries like? Also a bomb dropped on a city is as much to damage water mains and blow roof tiles as anything else.

BombTaxi said:

What frustrates me is that Markus is responding to the well-reasoned and substantiated claims of other posters with a stream of vitriolic and unsubstantiated Anglophobia, insulting the memory of the BC vets, and chooses to avoid answering any challenges to his position. This is a debate I am more than happy to have, but it is frustrating when the other viewpoint is couched in such terms.

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I agree completely. I found the quote below on usaaf.net which I think gives a good account. The only thing I would add is the confirmation that those of London, Coventry and many other cities would agree with the final paragraph completely.

On the night of May 30, 1942, it mounted its first "thousand plane" raid against Cologne and two nights later struck Essen with almost equal force. On three nights in late July and early August 1943 it struck Hamburg in perhaps the most devastating single city attack of the war -- about one third of the houses of the city were destroyed and German estimates show 60,000 to 100,000 people killed. No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly alarmed and there is some indication from interrogation of high officials that Hitler himself thought that further attacks of similar weight might force Germany out of the war
and
In the latter half of 1944, aided by new navigational techniques, the RAF returned with part of its force to an attack on industrial targets. These attacks were notably successful but it is with the attacks on urban areas that the RAF is most prominently identified.

The city attacks of the RAF prior to the autumn of 1944, did not substantially affect the course of German war production. German war production as a whole continued to increase. This in itself is not conclusive, but the Survey has made detailed analysis of the course of production and trade in 10 German cities that were attacked during this period and has made more general analyses in others. These show that while production received a moderate setback after a raid, it recovered substantially within a relatively few weeks. As a rule the industrial plants were located around the perimeter of German cities and characteristically these were relatively undamaged.

Commencing in the autumn of 1944, the tonnage dropped on city areas, plus spill-overs from attacks on transportation and other specific targets, mounted greatly. In the course of these raids, Germany's steel industry was knocked out, its electric power industry was substantially impaired and industry generally in the areas attacked was disorganized. There were so many forces making for the collapse of production during this period, however, that it is not possible separately to assess the effect of these later area raids on war production. There is no doubt, however, that they were significant.

The Survey has made extensive studies of the reaction of the German people to the air attack and especially to city raids. These studies were carefully designed to cover a complete cross section of the German people in western and southern Germany and to reflect with a minimum of bias their attitude and behavior during the raids. These studies show that the morale of the German people deteriorated under aerial attack. The night raids were feared far more than daylight raids. The people lost faith in the prospect of victory, in their leaders and in the promises and propaganda to which they were subjected. Most of all, they wanted the war to end. They resorted increasingly to "black radio'' listening, to circulation of rumor and fact in opposition to the Regime; and there was some increase in active political dissidence -- in 1944 one German in every thousand was arrested for a political offense. If they had been at liberty to vote themselves out of the war, they would have done so well before the final surrender. In a determined police state, however, there is a wide difference between dissatisfaction and expressed opposition. Although examination of official records and those of individual plants shows that absenteeism increased and productivity diminished somewhat in the late stages of the war, by and large workers continued to work. However dissatisfied they were with the war, the German people lacked either the will or the means to make their dissatisfaction evident.

The city area raids have left their mark on the German people as well as on their cities. Far more than any other military action that preceded the actual occupation of Germany itself, these attacks left the German people with a solid lesson in the disadvantages of war. It was a terrible lesson; conceivably that lesson, both in Germany and abroad, could be the most lasting single effect of the air war.

I will make 2 statements and a question here...

1. I can see tempers are going to flair soon (it always does when this topic comes up every year...). Lets try and keep that from happening everyone. Play like adults and be civil and this conversation can continue.

2. War is hell people, civilians on all sides felt the brunt of the war more.

And now the question...

How was Dresden any different from London, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Guernica, Belfast, Rotterdam, Wieluń, Frampol (just to name a few)?

To talk about the BC as if they were the only ones that were bombing civilian centers is absured. All of the nations are guilty of it, and it started with the Luftwaffe (probably the most guilty of it).

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

2. War is hell people, civilians on all sides felt the brunt of the war more.

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Adler, I couldnt agree more. there seems to be a new modern day notion that civilians wernt involved in war prior to the the invention of the airplane. From the post war movie industry there is always a good guys bad guys theme. It all seems to give the idea that you can wage a good or clean war.

The Vikings in England habitually murdered civilans and especially christian settlements what we would now call ethnic cleansing, though this was probably revenge for simmilar attacks againt them in other parts of Europe.
From the days of walled cities and castles, civilians were starved into submission. there was a convention that if a city surrendered to an army they would not be molested but if they resisted the city would be sacked (rape murder theft and fire). Sacking a city that surrendered was a bad move as it meant every other city would fight to the death.
Napoleons revolutionary army pillaged their way across Europe with a fearsome reputation for destroying everything they came across. They paid a fearsome price on the retreat from Moscow (which they burned) as they were retreating through the land they had just ravaged. A German once explained to me it was this that lead to the shutsenfests in Germany, towns had to be able to defend themselves. Wellington had to maintain strong discipline with his army in Portugal Spain and especially France insisting the people wernt molested and all supplies were paid for because he couldnt afford the citizens turning against him with a small army, what we would now call "winning hearts and minds". Winning hearts and minds isnt only goodwill it is sound military practice

In the Franco Prussian war Paris was beseiged and the citizens on the verge of starvation, and in the first world war towns like Dunkerque took a battering as did every town on the front. The British in the Boer war were fighting civilians and in what is now Iraq would bomb villages.

From the start of conflicts civilians have been involved used and abused I dont know where the idea it was any different comes from.

Chris is correct we can broadcast as much as we want about all the Allied and German cities hammered during the war

think we are going back again to re-hashing the same ol stuff with nothing new to the point it is headache time, agreeing to disagree from our own points of view thus the thread is going nowhere now.

point as a matter of true fact US and BC did their job well and it was needed to crush the German moral whether by populace or by industry, it brought the cruelties of war right into the German home.

E ~

Ive watched this "debate" with increasing frustration, but I am not going to allow that to spill over onto the thread.

To me, this accusation of the british is not productive. i fail to see how any rational person can seriously argue that the british were any worse, or better, in targetting civilians, than anybody else, including the Americans.

As to war crimes and war guilt, ther are some basic qustions that each of us needs to sit back and consider....

1) Who started the war?
2) Who was the first nation to target cities as legitimate targets
3) Who was first to consider it legitimate to target civilians (such as refugees) as legitimate targets in WWII
4) Who was the first to deliberately target cities in terror attacks, and continue to do so for a great part of the war?
5) Paraphrasing, who said that if they drop 10 or 50 tons of bombs on Berlin, we will drop 10 times that amount on British cities. And was that threat ever made against an American City?
6) And in 1945, despite the war being obviously lost, and germany obviously on the ropes, who was it who refused to surrender. Who was still resisting as the so-called inneffective Bomber command levelled the city of Dresden.
7) Who told, or allowed, so many civilians to take shelter in the city, well beyond the limits of the cities civil defences?
8) Who was found guilty of conducting an illegal war of agression, along with a whole stack of other related war crimes?

The British did not start the war, but are guilty of obstimately refusing to surrender. They were there at the end, with BC doing its share of pounding Germany into the stone age. I am totally unapologetic for that. The stated allied terms of surrender were unconditional surrender, and overwhelmingly that surrender was secured, within the terms of the Geneva convention. The killing of civilians in German cities was no different to the killing of civilians anywhere in Europe. It happens in modern war. It is not a war crime, unless its avoidable. In the context of the technologies available in the war, night bombing required area bombing, and area bombing was going to kill civilians. If the Allies had used gas, that would have been a war crime, but they didnt. The Geneva convention does not prevent the killing of civilians, and it does not prevent the use of area bombing. Once a nation has capitulated, the occupying power must observe the normal rule of law, which the germans did not do, and as a consequence committed untold attrocities that were totally illegal.

And just to make it perfectly clear, I believe it was Churchill who made it perfectly clear what they (the British) were going to do. Again, paraphrasing....."we do not ask for quarter or pity in this war, but our enemies can neither expect any as well, until they surrender"

tail end charlie said:

The Vikings in England...,
Napoleons revolutionary army...shutsenfests in Germany.. Wellington had to maintain strong discipline..In the Franco Prussian...Boer war...

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This thread is degenerated.. but,

IMO the Bomber Command could have done better. Tizard and Blackett argued that even then. Speer was worried about the USAAF 8AF raids (especially against the ball bearing industry), not about British bombing campaign.

Timppa said:

This thread is degenerated.. but,

IMO the Bomber Command could have done better. Tizard and Blackett argued that even then. Speer was worried about the USAAF 8AF raids (especially against the ball bearing industry), not about British bombing campaign.

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With respect, but that is sheer fiction. He was very concerned about the impact of the British bombing campaigns as his comments following Hamburg clearly show. Germany's defences were slanted to defending against night attack until the very end of 1943, and Hitler lost his confidence in the Luftwaffe primarily because of the british offensive.

The British from the 2nd quarter of 1942 were increasingly effective at night bombing, and the Germans knew that with exceptional clarity

BombTaxi said:

I think the point that everyone is trying to make is that the USAAF were as 'guilty' of indiscriminate area bombing as BC, and used much the same tactics.

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I think that its the somewhat predictable posters from Britain who try to relativize RAF BC's actions by trying make the USAAF look like 'just as guilty' as RAF BC when it comes to indisrciminate area bombings. Yes the USAAF also did area bombing, especially towards the end of the war.

The difference lies within the world also. Despite the claim that "marshalling yards" were just an American euphenism for terror bombing, it is a fact that the Reichsbahn was in ruins by the end of war, deprieved of its rolling stock; as were the German oil industry.

And it wasn't a mysterious fairy that did it, it was USAAF and its bombers and leaders who pushed for it, and the only effective bombing performed by the Allies that actually weakened the Germans - direct bombing of factories just did not yield notable results. RAF BC was randomly hitting German cities and the countryside at a huge cost of both manpower and material for almost exactly five years (in the first half first out of incompetence, then out of immorarilty) and achieving nothing in return, and was unwilling to abandon the slaughter until its nose was bloodied over Berlin, and Eisenhowever was pushing for bombing something worthwhile in the first half of 1944 - the railway system - in France and oil refinieries in Germany.

As for BC's (or Nachtjagd for that matter) vets, they deserved the medals they've got because they were carrying out the orders they received, and they risked their lifes every night for their country. May they rest in peace. Their leaders, however, deserve nothing but rope for the orders they gave.

parsifal said:

With respect, but that is sheer fiction. He was very concerned about the impact of the British bombing campaigns as his comments following Hamburg clearly show.

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Although this is often repeated by Anglophil apologists, that Speer was "very concerned" about Bomber Command's attacks, actually Speer in his book, in Chapter The Bombing War makes it utterly clear he was very thankful for every ton of bombs randomly dropped by Bomber Command in terror raids on cities and not on factories.

If I recall correctly Speer considered a major relief that the British continued - I believed he used the phrase - "senseless terror campaign" instead of concentrating on the bottlenecks of the industry, like ball bearing plans.

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

And now the question...

How was Dresden any different from London, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Guernica, Belfast, Rotterdam, Wieluń, Frampol (just to name a few)?

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That it was a bombing performed with the pure aim of terrorizing the population, without any identifiable military goal or advantage seeked from it...?

Warsaw, Guernica, Rotterdam, Wieluń areas - and not the cities themselves - were all attacked with identifiable military goals either in direct or indirect support of the actual army operations. The military benefits were immidiate. In London the targets were identifiable as industrial, military or trasportational targets (ie. docks and factories and airfields around and in Greater London - not to mention the fact that Bomber Command was actively bombing similiar German cities since May 1940 and the Luftwaffe had not yet even responded to these for months.

Amsterdam, frankly I dunno if it was ever bombed, unless you mean the V-2 strikes in late 1944, which targeted the Allied oil lines under the Channel. Frampol OTOH does appear as valid case for targetting a small town, though oddly AFAIK nobody could ever came up with an actual German paper ordering so, rather than simply assuming they did.

Kurfürst said:

Although this is often repeated by Anglophil apologists, that Speer was "very concerned" about Bomber Command's attacks, actually Speer in his book, in Chapter The Bombing War makes it utterly clear he was very thankful for every ton of bombs randomly dropped by Bomber Command in terror raids on cities and not on factories.

If I recall correctly Speer considered a major relief that the British continued - I believed he used the phrase - "senseless terror campaign" instead of concentrating on the bottlenecks of the industry, like ball bearing plans.

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Except, of course, that BC wasn't dropping bombs "randomly" and with the introduction of Oboe, Gee and H2S BC could and did carry out "precision' bombing even at night, and they did so with far heavier and more destructive bombs than were typically used during daylight attacks, for example BC dropped 45% of the tonnage dropped against German oil targets.
Oil Campaign of World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kurfürst said:

That it was a bombing performed with the pure aim of terrorizing the population, without any identifiable military goal or advantage seeked from it...?

Warsaw, Guernica, Rotterdam, Wieluń areas - and not the cities themselves - were all attacked with identifiable military goals either in direct or indirect support of the actual army operations. The military benefits were immidiate. In London the targets were identifiable as industrial, military or trasportational targets (ie. docks and factories and airfields around and in Greater London - not to mention the fact that Bomber Command was actively bombing similiar German cities since May 1940 and the Luftwaffe had not yet even responded to these for months.

Amsterdam, frankly I dunno if it was ever bombed, unless you mean the V-2 strikes in late 1944, which targeted the Allied oil lines under the Channel. Frampol OTOH does appear as valid case for targetting a small town, though oddly AFAIK nobody could ever came up with an actual German paper ordering so, rather than simply assuming they did.

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1. In your posts above you are on the verge of becoming downright insulting to people. Choose your words more wisely. You have received enough warnings from me in other threads. There are no more.

2. You are a revisionist here and possibly a sympathizer (I believe this more and more every day...).

3. Quit kidding yourself that the Luftwaffe attacked London, Coventry, Guernica, Warsaw adn Wielun and most other cities for pure military reasons. They were not military targets, they were bombed for the pure fact that they were "enemy" cities. Nothing else. There may have been military targets in the city, but that does not warrant the complete destruction of a city. Quit trying to church up the Luftwaffe.

4. What was the military value of the millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs that were exterminated by the Nazis? Are you going to be apologetic to them?

5. Let me get this straight? It is okay for the Luftwaffe, or any German military branch to commit war crimes but you condemn the Allies for it? I never see you attack the Nazi's for committing crimes or terror bombing.

6. Do not skirt around this question. Show me with facts what were the military targets at these locations?

a. Guernica

b. Wieluń (I am really interested in this one Kurfurst. What were the military targets, come on enlighten me. Also don't give me the crap about a Polish Cav Brigade being in the City. You don't need to completely destroy a town by aerial bombardment for that reason...).

c. Warsaw (sure there may have been troops in the city, but certainly the whole city was not a military target.)

d. Frampol (I guess you consder destroying a city and killing 4000 people for practice a military target huh?

So again I ask you this Kurfurst, how did the Germans not use terror bombing but the allies did? How is it that you have no problem with the Nazi's committing war crimes? Yeah you struck a nerve here. I will refrain from personal attacks, but you might want to answer my questions above pretty darn carefully...

Now that I have answered Kurfurst, I wish to say this...

The bombing of cities is a legit target. Cities contain industry, industry is part of the overall war machine. To destroy this helps your war effort. All sides attempted to do this, it is a fact of war. Germans, British, Americans, Russians, Italians, etc... If they were not doing this, they were not trying to win the war. Period!

Another factor is to demoralize the enemy (this includes the civilian population). Who did this? Germany? You betcha. England? You betcha. USA? You betcha. If they were not doing this, they were not trying to win the war. Period!

To say that one side did not do this and that another is wrong for it, is just plane ignorant. Is it unfortunate that civilians suffer? Of course, but you know what that is an unfortunate fact of war.

parsifal:

In what way do the moral points you raise change BC mission and BC´s inefficience? They don´t. By the way, I get why the Brits did what they did, I´m just saying it didn´t work.