RAF Bomber Command....

From the very outset of blitzkrieg towns and villages were bombed to flood the roads with refugees and prevent movement of the opposing army thats why stukas have sirens isnt it?

Copy paste from wiki the leading paragraph went missing however:

The period of calm came to an end in April 1942 when, following a destructive RAF attack on the Hanseatic medieval city of Lübeck, Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to retaliate, leading to the so-called Baedeker Blitz:

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

The Führer has ordered that the air war against England be given a more aggressive stamp. Accordingly, when targets are being selected, preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life. Besides raids on ports and industry, terror attacks or retaliatory nature are to be carried out against towns other than London. Minelaying is to be scaled down in favour of these attacks.

-14 April 1942.

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The whole thing started when these evil German hit back. Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, a medieval city in Germany for a medieval city in England. There is no denying that the Luftwaffe answered BC's terror with its own terror.

More on the background:

Lübeck was bombed on the night of 28/29 March 1942. Arthur "Bomber" Harris, Air Officer Commanding RAF Bomber Command, wrote of the raid that "Lübeck went up in flames" because "it was a city of moderate size of some importance as a port, and with some submarine building yards of moderate size not far from it. It was not a vital target, but it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city". He goes on to describe that the loss of 5.5% of the attacking force was no more than to be expected on a clear moonlit night, but if that loss rate was to continue for any length of time RAF Bomber Command would not be able to "operate at the fullest intensity of which it were capable".

A. C. Grayling in his book Among the Dead Cities makes the point that as the Area bombing directive issued to the RAF on 14 February 1942, focused on the "morale of the enemy civil population", Lübeck, with its many timbered medieval buildings, was chosen because the RAF "Air Staff were eager to experiment with a bombing technique using a high proportion of incendiaries" to help them carry out the directive — The RAF were well aware that the technique was effective against cities and not against industrial targets because cities such as Coventry had been subject to such attacks by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz. In retaliation for the Lübeck raid the Germans bombed Exeter on 23 April 1942, the first of the 'Baedeker' raids. The Lübeck raid along with the raid on Rostock caused "outrage in the German leadership ... and inspired the retaliatory 'Baedeker' raids".

Kurfürst said:

Copy paste from wiki the leading paragraph went missing however:

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No, I only did what you do. Copy and paste the part that I want to. You are very good that, aren't you? Anything that makes the allies out to be Satan that is.

If anyone posts anything contradictory to your beliefs they are "Anglophil apologists" or "Allied Apologists" or anything else you can think of.

The Allies were evil, the Germans were sent from heaven and only responded with terror when it was used upon them. You do a really good job of burying yourself, no one has to help you.

Oh well, I am going to bed. It is not worth discussing anything with you. I only get more and more frustrated with the BS. I am going to revert to the same tactics you do and then it goes against the very things I preach against. I really understand where the other members of this forum come from, when I have to tell everyone to calm down.

To everyone else, have a good night.

Kurfürst said:

The whole thing started when these evil German hit back. Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, a medieval city in Germany for a medieval city in England. There is no denying that the Luftwaffe answered BC's terror with its own terror.

.

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Tell us which cities BC "terrorized" to justify the attacks on Warsaw and Rotterdam?

RCAFson said:

I guess you've never heard of the Pathfinders? This force acted as a target marker force and could use the high altitude capability of Mosquito to enhance the range of Gee and Oboe. "The Path Finder Force flew a total of 50,490 individual sorties against some 3,440 targets."
Pathfinder (RAF) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am not saying that BC didn't engage in area bombing designed to "de-house" civilians but the fact is that BC could and did engage in "precision" bombing against targets in Europe at night, and did so successfully.

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I'm quite aware of 8 group , I just believe the resources of Bomber Command could have been better applied then on raids with very iffy results and very high costs

well I will concede this....at least Kurfurst has the gumption to answer his critics, even if everything he is saying on this subject doesnt seem right. His mate Markus doesnt seem capable of providing any answers except some glib, unsubstantiated one liners

i am sorry i thought the battle of britian was in 1940...not 42... my mistake

Kurfürst

You are making me laugh now, as a brit I must apologise here and now for causing outrage in the german leadership, I didnt realise the poor dears were so delicate and sensitive. Are you really comparing Lubeck (nice though I am sure it was) to London as a city of architechural or historical importance, after ordering the destruction of London what did he expect?

pbfoot said:

I'm quite aware of 8 group , I just believe the resources of Bomber Command could have been better applied then on raids with very iffy results and very high costs

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I don't disagree that BC and that Commonwealth bomber production could have been more profitably employed and that some BC campaigns were wasteful.

A word of warning, gentlemen. If this thread continues in the direction it appears to be going, I will close it.

This "pot calling the kettle black" stuff has got to cease. If you're going to quote sources, quote the entire portion
of your source, not just the parts that you think will help your arguement. I don't want to put anyone on the beach,
but this thread has raised some hackles with the mods/admins.

Continue the march.....

Charles

Kurfürst said:

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..

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Makes sense that the bombs that fell wide and missed their targets would be pleasing to Speer. What about those that did find their mark???? I hardly think Speer would be rather pleased at the results of the Hamburg raids. The quote you are making is being taken out of context. He was thankful when they missed, not that they were hitting targets. He may have thought a precision attack would be of more use, but the RAF had deemed this was not an option available to them at that point in the war (1942-3), because of the potential losses

parsifal said:

Makes sense that the bombs that fell wide and missed their targets would be pleasing to Speer. What about those that did find their mark???? I hardly think Speer would be rather pleased at the results of the Hamburg raids. The quote you are making is being taken out of context. He was thankful when they missed, not that they were hitting targets. He may have thought a precision attack would be of more use, but the RAF had deemed this was not an option available to them at that point in the war (1942-3), because of the potential losses

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the Hamburg raids caused less then 40-50 days of lost production which according to official RAF Historian was not much it the scheme of things ,

Well you can believe that if you wish, and misquote whatever you like, but the raid has been described as the most effective raid in Europe in the pre-nuclear age. It was devastating enough for Goebels to record in his diary that the bombing of Hamburg was the first time that he thought Nazi Germany might have to call for peace.

The bombing of Hamburg is described in post war assessments as wreaking utter destruction to the city and regardless of what happened to the city itself, it did a great deal to hearten people in Britain who had seen London and many other cities attacked and bombed with the resulting casualties.

The first attack came in the early hours of Sunday 24th. In one hour, between 01.00 and 02.00, 2,300 tons of bombs were dropped which included 350,000 incendiary bombs. 15,000 people were killed and approximately 65000 wounded. In previous bombing raids, the RAF had sent in pathfinder planes to illuminate the target by dropping incendiary bombs. The main bulk of the attack followed on to what was now a burning target. For the attack on Hamburg, the RAF combined the use of high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs, which were dropped together. The result made all but useless any form of fire fighting.

The Americans attacked on Monday 26th July and sustained heavy losses as a result of Luftwaffe attacks. An American attack on the Tuesday was called off due to poor weather.

The raid was resumed on the Wednesday. The 722 bombers were loaded with an extra 240 tons of incendiary bombs and dropped a total of 2,313 tons of bombs in just 50 minutes. The impact of this attack led to a firestorm with temperatures estimated to have reached 1000oC. Bomber crews reported smoke reaching 20,000 feet. Winds on the ground reached 120 mph. While not exclusively a wooden city, Hamburg did have many old wooden houses and after a dry summer they easily burned.

In the second and third raids 30,000 were killed, and an estimated 130000 wounded . On the Thursday the smoke blotted out the sunlight associated with July. Goebbels called the raids "the greatest crisis of the war." Hamburg was cordoned off for the remainder of the war; such was the unnerving impact the raids had on the Nazi hierarchy.

It is estimated that over 80% of the bombs dropped hit the target area, which was the city centre, measuring only 2 miles by 1 mile. Most other bombs fell somewhere within the city. The attacks ignited fires that gradually spread fire eastwards. The firestorm lasted for about three hours, consuming approximately 16,000 multi-storied apartment buildings. Most fatalities were from carbon monoxide poisoning when all the air was drawn out of their basement shelters. Fearing further raids, two-thirds of Hamburg's population, approximately 1,200,000 people, fled the city in the aftermath. So the total fatalities in these raids were in the order of 45000 killed, and a 195000 maimed. When you consider that in all the war the germans suffered less than a million civilian casualties from Bombing, the importance of hamburg in the effects of the overall campaign cannot be over-stated.

What were the long term effects of the raid. Speer estimated that production in the city was not restored to meaningful levels for three months, but the effects went much deeper. Hamburg as an industrial city never returned to its former economic importance of the war. It thoroughly alarmed the Nazi leadership. Did the raids have any value? There can be little doubt that the reported impact of the raids did a great deal to lift morale in Britain. They also clearly had an impact on the Nazi government - Hitler refused to visit the city, possibly not wanting to see what his war had resulted in. Hamburg was the major port of the north and the work done by the port was disrupted. I also believe that Speers assessment postwar is based on his immediate reports to Hitler at the time, and not a subsequent part y conference held in December 1944, which is the reference made by Kurfurst in his earlier post

Hello Kurfürst
Quote: "…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…"

As Hop already wrote, the transport plan was a brainchild of Solly Zuckerman, a British zoologist working for Tedder. And of course also BC participated its implementation. And if you think that BC achieved nothing, all I can say, read more. That doesn't mean that IMHO BC was used optimal way, IMHO from 1943 onwards, when navigation aids arrived, there would have been more effective ways to bomb as Peenemünde and BC attacks on oil targets in later part of 44 showed.

I agree with Rotterdam, even if LW bungled it unbelievably badly if we believe the German version of it. But Wielun, what military targets were there? At least the Kampfgruppe from Heer's 1st Light Div, which was the first German unit in the town didn't mention any enemy contact according to the unit history, but the troops were rather shocked of the level of destruction and the number of killed civilians there. IMHO the bombing of Wielun wasn't a war crime but a product of bad intelligence.

Quote:" 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."

I reality LW had made small scale attacks on GB from early on, first British civilian was killed in March 40. For ex on May 24/25 1940, 7 bombs were dropped at Southbank and Middlesbrough, Teeside. Also two cottages were damaged in Norfolk and a chickenhouse in Essex. On 18/19 June 40 air raids killed 10 and injured 26 civilians, Cambridge was worst hit, 9 killed. And the claim that LW targeted only specific targets was somewhat nullified by the use of aerial-mines, sea mines with contact fuzes hanging under parachute, first used against London Sept 16/17 1940. That was seen by British as a use of area weapon, IMHO with reason, because of it is difficult to see how one could believe to hit with that kind of weapon to a specific target by night during normal level attack.

Juha

pbfoot said:

the Hamburg raids caused less then 40-50 days of lost production which according to official RAF Historian was not much it the scheme of things ,

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By the figures quoted here 50,000 died and 200,000 were injured they certtainly didnt resume production within 40-50 days and one thing Germnany definitely ran out of was man power.
It is impossible for any raid to destroy production for longer than it takes to build new production facilities which in a war is months, therefore every raid will be termed a failure until the nation as a whole loses the capacity to rebuild.

I should wish to make one further observation. With around 200000 wounded people arising from Operation Gomorrah, it takes around six people in the immediate surroundings to nurse them back to health. This is exclusive of the workforce not directly associated with their rehabilitation, like people working in the drugs companies and the like.
So, based on the known military statistics for the numbers of carers per serious casualty one could expect around a million personnel needed to care for the sick and wounded. Wartime, the Ersatz heer reports an average of 5-7 months to convalesce a wounded soldier. If that statistic is at all applicable to civilian casualties fro a firestorm, then the raid would have occupied the attentions of at least 1.2 million people, most of them workers of some description, for at least seven months.

On top of that the statistics concerning produstion do not include statisitics needed to return the city to a semblance of normality in terms of city services. Hamburg never recovered from the housing shortages it suffered as a consequence of the raids, its civil infrastructure never really recovered either.


So to try and argue that the raid was not that effective is total bollocks to me

Statistics

Many contributors to this debate are using post war statistics to support or criticise wartime decisions. If every body in BC and USAAF were so sure of what the effcts of bombing were at the time why was so much time taken after the war evaluating the effects of the bombing? The fact is no body had any clue as to the real effectiveness just an opinion. Even now I find the effects of the eastern front almost witewashed from the discussion. Germany lost most of its men tanks and aeroplanes in the east and finally ran out of oil when the eastern oilfields were over run. The bombing by the western allies speeded the downfall of Nazi Germany it didnt bring it about, Russia did that.

Bomber Harris spent the whole war being told that the destruction of one industry or another would bring about Hitlers downfall. None of these magic solutions were correct. His solution to bomb and bomb until Germany had had enough of it was pretty much what happened and as I understand it that is what the Casablanca conference was all about.

Poland suffered higher casualties than either Germany or the Soviet union as a percentage of population, why is no one pleading their case or expressing outrage at their treatment after all they didnt invade anybody.

To anyone who believes that the LW targeted strictly military targets and civilian deaths and destruction were just collateral damage I would offer "The Baedecker Raids" of April - June1942. On 14 April the Luftwaffe Operations Staff issued the following order: "The Führer has ordered that air warfare against England is to be given a more aggressive stamp. Accordingly when targets are being selected, preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life. Besides raids on ports and industry, terror attacks of a retaliatory nature are to be carried out against towns other than London. Minelaying is to be scaled down in favor of these attacks."

The raids were named after a German Publishing company that printed tourist guidebooks. Hitler had announced that the Luftwaffe would destroy every building in Britain to which Baedeker had awarded three stars of its places of interest.

parsifal said:

I should wish to make one further observation. With around 200000 wounded people arising from Operation Gomorrah, it takes around six people in the immediate surroundings to nurse them back to health. This is exclusive of the workforce not directly associated with their rehabilitation, like people working in the drugs companies and the like.
So, based on the known military statistics for the numbers of carers per serious casualty one could expect around a million personnel needed to care for the sick and wounded. Wartime, the Ersatz heer reports an average of 5-7 months to convalesce a wounded soldier. If that statistic is at all applicable to civilian casualties fro a firestorm, then the raid would have occupied the attentions of at least 1.2 million people, most of them workers of some description, for at least seven months.

On top of that the statistics concerning produstion do not include statisitics needed to return the city to a semblance of normality in terms of city services. Hamburg never recovered from the housing shortages it suffered as a consequence of the raids, its civil infrastructure never really recovered either.


So to try and argue that the raid was not that effective is total bollocks to me

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While I agree that the claim that the Hamburg raid was ineffective is bogus I think your casualty care estimate is rather off.
From the figures presented so far we have no idea how many of the 200,000 were seriously injured or wounded. How many were critical? how many were serious? how many were "walking wounded"? Of course there may have been thousands with minor injuries that never went to aid stations to be treated.

Granted with such numbers everything is an average but how long does it take to recuperate from a broken leg or arm? Much less than sever burns over a large part of the body. Many Soldiers returned to duty after suffering gun shot wounds in less than 5-7 months. A simple straight through puncture wound to an arm or leg as opposed to a hit in the body cavity or a major bone broken (femur).
Of the death tolls, how many were dead on the day/s of the raids and how many died in the weeks that followed?

Njaco said:

The raids were named after a German Publishing company that printed tourist guidebooks. Hitler had announced that the Luftwaffe would destroy every building in Britain to which Baedeker had awarded three stars of its places of interest.

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I have just read the life story of Harry Patch Britains last British army survivor from the trenches he was in Bath when the Baedeker raid happened there 401 killed 875 wounded (360 seriously)19000 buildings damaged but mainly houses......waste of effort if you ask me. Harry Patch's opinion is that the raids were revenge in part and industrial targets were getting better defence so it was an easy option. He does say that the design of torpedoes and the mulberry harbours were in Bath so to some extent all targets are potentially military.

When you use a tourist guide to decide your next offensive target I think you are in the wrong job, it sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland.