The data behind the bombing war in Europe

[Snautzer01]

https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1314/19527/Bombing_War_in_Europe_1939_1945.1.pdf

This is the data taken from secondary sources available to us at the time and shows strategic bombing. Records of the RAF and USAAF bombing usually record the numbers of aircraft that took off rather than those that actually bombed, and often list the intended target rather than where bombs actually fell. The sources used for Luftwafffe, Regia Aeronautica bombing, and V weapon strikes often show where bombs actually fell rather than the intended targets.

This data has been released by the IBCC Digital Archive for researchers to add to, check and correct. We are interested in recording any bombing attacks that are missing. Please contact us with any updates or additions using the form provided

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1314/19527/Bombing_War_in_Europe_1939_1945.1.pdf

This is the data taken from secondary sources available to us at the time and shows strategic bombing. Records of the RAF and USAAF bombing usually record the numbers of aircraft that took off rather than those that actually bombed, and often list the intended target rather than where bombs actually fell. The sources used for Luftwafffe, Regia Aeronautica bombing, and V weapon strikes often show where bombs actually fell rather than the intended targets.

This data has been released by the IBCC Digital Archive for researchers to add to, check and correct. We are interested in recording any bombing attacks that are missing. Please contact us with any updates or additions using the form provided

I tried sending them some data a while ago, not much response.

Project Thor [Theater History of Operations Reports] aims seems to be all airstrikes, a USAF project now non active.

Historic airpower database now online is the article about the site, but https://afri.au.af.mil/thor/index.asp does not exist anymore.

I can source data from World War II THOR Data - dataset by datamil if a member or https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/THOR/THOR.htm there are lots of duplicate records, both seem to be several years old now. The new BBOW page does not have the THOR data The Big Book of Warfare

Richard Davis is a USAF historian who wrote a biography of General Spaatz, to do this he compiled spreadsheets of all USAAF 4 engine bomber and all RAF Bomber Command and 205 group raids, quite detailed, the 8th Air Force has 5,576 entries. Date, Location, target type, aiming method, attacking, lost, HE, Frag, total bombs short tons. He only did summaries for Bomber Command to end 1941. They used to be available for download, along with the book.

However, unlike the USAAF raids, if the Bomber Command raids became scattered Davis does not always put in the complete details, even under a generic miscellaneous entry. In August 1943, Davis has 188 fewer attacking sorties and 680 fewer tons of bombs dropped for the month. Most of that is on 2 August, the final of the 4 Hamburg raids, the one that was scattered, he has 162 less sorties and 507 less tons of bombs. On the 7th he double counts the 22 pathfinder sorties that are credited with attacking 2 targets, this happens again on the 24th involving 24 sorties. Apart from the above essentially every night with a large number of bomber sorties his data misses a few sorties, usually they are from the "other targets" aircraft. To put it another way the Bomber Command report has about 120 entries/lines, the Davis data as 69.

Davis is generally better source than the web site which is using published sources like Bomber Command War Diaries.

MTO 1944/45 Davis total 296,494.6 tons. USAAF short tons, Bomber Command long tons. The 15th AF recorded the jettisoning of 16,777 tons of bombs January to October 1944, it looks like the Statistical Digest counts them as dropped.

Place	ETO	ETO	ETO	MTO	MTO	MTO	BC	BC
Source	SD	Davis	8thAF	SD	Davis	15th AF	BC	Davis
1942​	1,713​	1,713.40​	1,717​	3,251​	952.1​		45561​	42,889.86​
1943​	47,452​	44,908.80​	45,183​	50,485​	42,237​		157457​	155,217.90​
1944​	446,165​	429,065.30​	429,162​	237,440​	212,607.05​	212,942.99​	525,518.00​	524,772.40​
1945​	219,389​	211,245.80​	211,089​	90,899​	83,887.55​	84,075.20​	181,403.00​	180,253.95​
Total	714,719​	686,933.30​	687,151​	382,075​	339,683.70​	297,018.19​	909,939.00​	903,134.12​

 

[Snautzer01]

Thank you. Good set of data Geoffrey Sinclair as always of course. )

 

[GregP]

The old Thor Dataset in Excel is attached.