In Desperate Battle: Normandy 1944

[Peregrine]

You keep going back and quoting things I have attempted to correct. I did make a mistake. I don't dispute the graphs. I believe that this was identified in Ultra in Sept 1944 and was caused by raids in May 1944. Bomber command therefore had no idea what was being achieved until Sept 1944. At this point it was again reiterated, OIL, not factories should be the priority. This was a pattern throughout the air campaign.

Every other service is judged by what it's commanders set out to do, what their commanders stated was possible, the resources and methods used. You still haven't expressed an opinion as to what you think bomber command tried to do and why it was a success.

Russian comparison. Please attribute the sentence "The Russians were clearly successfully as they the were on the winning side of the war" to me laughing so hard at your introduction of the comparison that I failed to write a coherent sentence. Again, I should have ignored it. I personally don't see how the conduct of the war in the east can be compared to Bomber Command effort but if you want to actually add details as to why you believe they should be compared feel free.

success - grey area - failure

[Sgt Joch]

My position is that Bomber Command didn't set out to shorten the war. They set out to win it. They utilised a lot of manpower and production along the way. Again feel free to state what you believe Bomber Command set out to do and why it was a success.

Only the most die hard air power advocates thought you could win the war from the Air alone and by mid-war, pretty much every one realised it was not going to happen. Applying your standard of only judging success based on initial goals is interesting, but by that standard, pretty much every WW2 land, sea, air - battle, operation, campaign was a failure. Does that mean the Allies did not win the war?

[SlowMotion]

Only the most die hard air power advocates thought you could win the war from the Air alone and by mid-war, pretty much every one realised it was not going to happen.

I don't know if it counts as winning the war, but owning the air may *end* the war. If you think what happened in Japan.

[LongLeftFlank]

OK Jon, seems like you've hammered this particular nail right through the board at this point. Peregrine doesn't seem like one of those apologists who believe that the strategic bombing was an act of pointless savagery or at best bloodthirsty revenge for the Blitz (i.e. a "war crime"), feeding postwar German neurotic revisionism that "we really didn't behave all that much worse than our enemies." A point of view all too readily abetted by self-hating leftists here in Canada.

[noob]

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Air/Dresden-Ethics/index.html#cn1

(From the above link)

CONCLUSIONS

Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of War on the United States, we joined with the British in their fight against the

--19--

German war machine. Germany had been wreaking havoc over England using bombers, fighters, and remote vehicles (V-1 and V-2 rockets). At Casablanca we melded our bombing strategies to form the Combined Bomber Offensive, whose mission was the destruction of the German Air Forces -- the USAAF using daylight precision bombardment and the British using area or "terror" bombing to undermine the morale of the German people. While we did not agree with the aim of the British terror bombing, we ultimately concurred on its use.

Although no specific order or directive from Spaatz (or any other person of responsibility) could be found that directed the use of area or "terror" bombing by the USAAF, it is apparent that this indeed did take place at Dresden. Targeting maps (see Appendix, Figure 1) indicate that the city was the target for the RAF (consistent with their "terror bombing" campaign used throughout the war).

USAAF after-action reports also indicated that the "Center of built up area DRESDEN" was the primary target. Figure 2 (see Appendix) shows the combined USAAF and RAF area of destruction. It indicates that while 100 percent of the center of the city was destroyed, the Friedrichstadt marshalling yards were left untouched. The three railroad stations, where people would be expected to be, were also 100 percent destroyed -- indicating to this writer that the people, not the marshalling yards, were deliberately targeted.

The American ethic of daylight precision bombing had changed through technological advancements and a gradual change of ethic by USAAF leaders. Despite the damage control done to save face over what had happened at Dresden,

--20--

the USAAF did lose face with the American people. Dresden was the last USAAF attack of this magnitude in the European Theater.

The tactical lessons learned from Dresden, however, were soon put to use in attacks on Tokyo and the Japanese mainland. Had it now become acceptable for Americans to use area bombing? Not really, but as American efforts shifted towards the Pacific theater, the American people were now in the same situation the British were at the start of WW II. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had violated American sovereignty. Germany had not violated that of the United States. But Japan had, and they had to pay. Moreover, American casualties were mounting as the war dragged on. President Truman wanted the war to end -- and to end quickly. The death and destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the culmination of US air strikes against Japan. The world knows that the Japanese surrendered immediately after these horrendous bombings. Even though the bombing of Dresden had little effect on the overall outcome of the European war (other than the notoriety of being the most devastating raid during World War II), it may have served as a model for the "new" US bombing ethic in the Pacific. Did it in fact portend the first use of atomic weapons?

[LongLeftFlank]

Dude, this paper was written in 1998, and not very well it seems. The passages above do not speak directly to official policy or even private opinions at the time. Show me a contemporary quote or source that uses the terms "terror bombing" or anything like it to describe RAF strategy or aims. Yes, I get that "dehousing" German workers and undermining German support for their war were indeed part of the rationale at the time; but the primary aim was always to undemine German warmaking potential by strikes on infrastructure. The Nazi war machine was the existential threat; its strength had to be sapped by any means possible.

And as Jon has suggested above and I noted in another thread, what seems obvious in hindsight with the benefit of on the ground surveys and other side interviews simply wasn't obvious at the time at all. The kamikaze -- the world's first truly effective "Smart bombs" were a terrible shock, as were V2 rockets and jet fighters. God alone knew at the time what the Nazis or the Japanese militarists were going to pull out of their arse to, if not turn the tide, make finishing the job all the more difficult and bloody. The RAF returned to costly daylight bombing and poured resources into special units (e.g. 617 squadron) to hit Peenemunde, U-boat pens, etc. Churchill knew what the Nazis were still capable of; he had far more important priorities than "terror" or revenge, although I'm sure incinerating Hamburg etc. helped get Stalin off his back re the "second front."

No, the Allied leaders were in no position to pull punches with these particular enemies pretty until Dresden when it was clear that Germany was finished. But even then.... those Alpine redoubts!

[Sgt Joch]

I am reminded of an anecdote told by a U.S. fighter pilot who flew ground attack missions in Normandy. One day, he came upon a German truck convoy in broad daylight and as he attacked, he could see his MG rounds hitting soldiers as they exited a truck and flinging them into the ditch like rag dolls. When he got back to his base, he was physically sick over what he had done. The next day, he flew on to his next mission, not because he liked it, but because he knew it was a job that had to be done.

Am I proud about Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima? Of course not, but I don't feel guilty either. In WW2, they were all valid military targets. War is a dirty business and WW2 was dirtier than most.

As Robert E. Lee said: "It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it."

[Peregrine]

OK Jon, seems like you've hammered this particular nail right through the board at this point. Peregrine doesn't seem like one of those apologists who believe that the strategic bombing was an act of pointless savagery or at best bloodthirsty revenge for the Blitz (i.e. a "war crime"), feeding postwar German neurotic revisionism that "we really didn't behave all that much worse than our enemies." A point of view all too readily abetted by self-hating leftists here in Canada.

I tried to shrug of the initial wild rhetorical responses in the hope of some sort of discussion popping out the other side. It didn't seem to.

[JonS]

Peregrine doesn't seem like one of those apologists

No, I don't think he is. I just thought he had something that was interesting to say. Instead it's just various forms of "Lolz. Harris was a buffoon. herp derp."

Disappointing.

[Peregrine]

Only the most die hard air power advocates thought you could win the war from the Air alone and by mid-war, pretty much every one realised it was not going to happen.

Many at Bomber Command felt that it could be won that way. History has coloured Harris so badly that it is difficult to understand what he truly believed in his hearts of hearts but when it came time to carve up resources this was the line that continued to be pushed. This isn't a criticism per se as this is one thing that is common to pretty much all the allied commanders. Funny how at every critical juncture nearly every General/Admiral/Air Marshall always felt the he personally was in the best position to strike the next blow.

Flat out guess but I can't see these wouldn't have been cabinet decisions made post Battle of Britain.

Applying your standard of only judging success based on initial goals is interesting, but by that standard, pretty much every WW2 land, sea, air - battle, operation, campaign was a failure. Does that mean the Allies did not win the war?

It is more that so much of what Bomber Command did repeatedly fell into grey areas.

The premise that they were resourced upon was never realised. Oil was repeatedly referred to as a priority but the carpet bombing aspects had a tendency to the receive the focus. They had no genuine understanding of what they were achieving and this oscillated both ways from massive overstatement to understatement. Made it very difficult to repeat good things and stop the bad ones. Britain had been on the receiving end of a bombing campaign when these resourcing decisions were made yet still did not recognise the difficulty in achieving the goals but attempted it anyway.

The resources used to do this were at the expense of other arms.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

This quote from the article noob referenced in his most recent post:

The British plan was to attack in two waves, far enough apart to allow firefighters and rescue teams to begin working. Then, three hours later they would catch them in the open, destroying both them and their efforts.64 Pathfinders marked the stadium just west of the old city center as the aiming point. Bombardiers were instructed by the master bomber to concentrate their strikes east of the aiming point, in the center of the old town.65 The first bomb struck at 10:15 p.m., beginning a night of terror for the inhabitants of the city.

It seems pretty clear to me that Bomber Harris with his tactic of using 2 massive waves of bombers, deliberately tried to maximise the chances of a firestorm targeted on the most populous area of the city and ensure that any resulting fires couldn't be fought due to the destruction of any resources trying to fight them in the 2nd wave of bombings. The marshalling yards weren't targeted, nor the city's major airfield but the main population centre instead. This to me clearly indicates Harris's complete disregard for civilian casualties and, in fact, the specific targeting of civilians. His goal was the extermination of the entire German people's and if he was given a completely free hand, he would have done his utmost to achieve it.

Now, I'm not in any way saying this act was as criminal as the attempted annhilation of the Jewish population in Europe at the hand of the Nazi's or other horrors under that regime conducted on the Eastern Front but does anyone seriously think that the Dresden firestorm which killed 135,000 people in one fell swoop would not have been prosecuted as a war crime if, heaven forbid, the Axis managed to win?

No, I didn't think so.

Regards

KR

[JonS]

the Dresden firestorm which killed 135,000 people in one fell swoop

Oh good grief You know, there is a reason that Irving is reviled as a fux0ring retard.

[Mord]

the Dresden firestorm which killed 135,000 people in one fell swoop would not have been prosecuted as a war crime if, heaven forbid, the Axis managed to win?

No, I didn't think so.

Regards

KR

Well, considering they started the whole shebang, why would you think any different? If you start a fight and a guy knocks your teeth out in response, he shouldn't have to pay your dentist bill. But if you knock his teeth out...well, it's your fault he has a gap in his smile, not his.

Moral of the story...don't punch a dentist if you don't wanna see your cities burned to the ground.

Mord.

[sburke]

Moral of the story...don't punch a dentist if you don't wanna see your cities burned to the ground.

Mord.

LOL I'll have to remember that one. My first attempt to find a dentist in SF after moving here was a guy named - no lie- Les Plaque. I shoulda smelt a rat.

As to Bomber Harris- Everyone in charge of almost anything whose job is dependent on that thing will tell you it'll do whatever you want including jump start your car and make your coffee. Do they really believe it? Probably not, but they aren't gonna let that stand in the way of funding dollars.

[LongLeftFlank]

My understanding was that ACM Harris was instrumental in getting 617 Squadron up and running for the "Dam Busters" operation and subsequent "special operations". A lot of commanders (and CEOs) would -- and did/do -- bridle at having their best and brightest personnel pooled into unproven undertakings using highly experimental technologies. For a soulless butcher hell bent on incinerating German children, the man seemed to actually have a great deal of vision and a human, though gruff, touch.

The Hamburg strike was aimed at Germany's largest port complex, a large part of which was in..... wait for it, the Old Town. The firestorm was an unexpected bonus. And by the way, the Germans tried the exact same tactic on Southwark in 1941 -- setting the London docks (a highly legitimate military target) alight using a lethal mix of HE and incendiaries. My dad (aged 11 and just returned from Cornwall) watched it from Harrow hill. But with Barbarossa looming, the Luftwaffe couldn't deliver the total payload needed to ignite a firestorm; the Hamburg old town was also a lot older (wooden) than Southwark (brick).

So besides Dresden, which is a bit of an outlier event for numerous reasons, can you name other German cities targeted by the RAF for large scale non-precision bombing that contained few or no industrial targets? I doubt many such places existed; the Industrial Revolution in Europe was a highly urban phenomenon, and as of the 1940s industry was still labour-intensive. In other words, located by definition in the industrial districts of cities, and closely hemmed in by the homes of their workers. Commuting was highly unusual for the European proletariat.

Look, I have no doubt the Brits took a grim satisfaction in bringing the war home to the German population who had now supported a maniacal leader in beginning a second apocalyptic war 25 years after the first. And the RAF leadership was taking its orders from a capital where you could already look across miles of bombed flat ruins.

But there's no serious argument to be made that "terrorizing" the German population via mass bombing was anybody's primary aim. German civilian suffering was certainly a matter of profound indifference to the British at that point. But as I noted above, even after American entry into the war, neither the fact nor the ease of victory were a foregone conclusion; the British had vastly more existential concerns than ratcheting up the pain factor for German civilians. At significant cost; the losses in the Nuremberg raids of February 1944 almost broke Bomber Command.

P.S. Reichman, I am already deeply suspicious of that paper based on a brief scan. What sources does the author cite that the 3 hour gap was deliberately engineered to kill firemen? None, I'll bet. The author is a mid level military officer checking a box to move up in his career, not a reputable historian. Unless he can cite primary sources, it's just some guy spouting off like the rest of us.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

So besides Dresden, which is a bit of an outlier event for numerous reasons, can you name other German cities targeted by the RAF for large scale non-precision bombing that contained few or no industrial targets?

The thing is... at the time of the Dresden bombing, Bomber Command was more than capable of pretty much precision bombing using their Mosquito pathfinders to drop flares and electronic gadgetry available to guide then to the correct point to drop the bombs. They achieved a pretty tight grouping on the old part of the city east of the city centre, the place where most civilians lived. It was clear what the target was from the outset and they achieved it with remarkable efficiency.

If they really intended to cripple the infrastructure of the city, surely the one major bridge that spanned the Elbe through which all rail transport flowed would have been a high priority target? As it turned out, it was never targeted and left completely untouched despite the number of bombers used in the raid. It's very clear what the target was... the occupants of the city.

The part I'm quoting below are the stated aims of Bomber Command in their bombing campaign as referenced in Wikipedia on the subject of Bomber Harris.

the aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany.[16][17]

... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.[18]

[LongLeftFlank]

Wikipedia? Who's doing the writing, pray tell? Someone with an axe to grind, maybe? And who are they quoting here?

[Sgt Joch]

Now, I'm not in any way saying this act was as criminal as the attempted annhilation of the Jewish population in Europe at the hand of the Nazi's or other horrors under that regime conducted on the Eastern Front but does anyone seriously think that the Dresden firestorm which killed 135,000 people in one fell swoop would not have been prosecuted as a war crime if, heaven forbid, the Axis managed to win?

good grief, that old canard again? Goebbels must be happy.

Now, more than 60 years later, it seems we must lower our estimates. After four years’ work, an impressive commission of German historians this week filed its report on this issue, and it seems that even the lowest figure so far accepted may be an overestimate. Drawing on archival sources, many never previously consulted, on burial records and scientific findings -- including street-by-street archaeological investigations -- plus hundreds of eye-witness reports, the “Dresden Commission of Historians for the Ascertainment of the Number of Victims of the Air Raids on the City of Dresden on 13/14 February 1945” has provisionally estimated the likely death-toll at around 18,000 and definitely no more than 25,000.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/death-toll-debate-how-many-died-in-the-bombing-of-dresden-a-581992.html

[Sgt Joch]

The thing is... at the time of the Dresden bombing, Bomber Command was more than capable of pretty much precision bombing using their Mosquito pathfinders to drop flares and electronic gadgetry available to guide then to the correct point to drop the bombs. They achieved a pretty tight grouping on the old part of the city east of the city centre, the place where most civilians lived. It was clear what the target was from the outset and they achieved it with remarkable efficiency.

If they really intended to cripple the infrastructure of the city, surely the one major bridge that spanned the Elbe through which all rail transport flowed would have been a high priority target? As it turned out, it was never targeted and left completely untouched despite the number of bombers used in the raid. It's very clear what the target was... the occupants of the city.

A common misconception. With the targeting systems, flight profile and ordnance used by the heavies in 1945, it was very hard to hit specific targets even during the day. The theory was that if you dropped enough bombs, at least some would hit the target. The charts JonS posted earlier show this clearly. At night, it was even worse, it would have been impossible for the RAF to target a bridge at night. So the fact that the bridge was not targeted means exactly nothing.

[LongLeftFlank]

Also, by 1945 both air forces (having occupied many target cities) had recognized the "creep back" phenomenon where the Pathfinder would mark the target, the first bombers would hit around the target and then, as flak intensified, the subsequent waves would release their loads earlier and earlier, creating a linear swathe of destruction that doubtless consumed many nonmilitary targets (as well as empty fields). So they compensate by marking forward of the core target set. Bombing, especially at night, is a very blunt instrument; the RAF's economics, born of necessity earlier in the war, were to haul more bombs to the target rather than air gunners and escort fighters, and thereby compensate for the loss of precision. (Collateral damage? Sorry, not relevant... bonus points in fact. Serves Jerry right).

Again, we all see what we want to see here. Dresden was an unusual raid; the city had not previously been intensively bombed, but its proximity to the front in 1945 made it a military transportation target. Blocking the narrow streets that lead to the bridges could be as useful as hitting the bridges themselves. The heavies had engaged in ground support carpet bombing and behind the lines interdiction, including cities (Rome, Caen) for years; this was an example of the latter. This was normal, grim course of business, not some last minute act of sadism or retribution. One more time: the Allies had vastly more important stuff on their minds.

Again, the operation proved needless only in hindsight, and with the German war nearing its end (Rhine, Elbe and Oder crossed, Ruhr and Silesia occupied etc.)

[Erwin]

IIRC the Allies were experimenting with the concept of creating a firestorm in Dresden as a new method of using their bombing fleet to enhance destruction. The firestorm didn't happen by accident. And it worked brilliantly from their POV. Not sure why Dresden was selected. Maybe they needed a "virgin" city untouched by previous bombing so they could have a proper appreciation of the results.

[Sgt Joch]

The resources used to do this were at the expense of other arms.

which ones?

very early in the war, the Allies decided they would fight a production/material attrition war since that was the kind of war they were garanteed to win.

By 1944, the Allies had achieved overwhelming material superiority in all areas and had more ships, aircraft, tanks, artillery, ammo, etc. than they needed and more than enough to build up a substantial cushion of replacement weapons.

Assuming the Allies had decided to forgo building a strategic Bomber force, it would not strengthen their land forces which were already at 100% TOE in terms of equipment for most of 44-45.

However, it would strengthen the Germans who would have had more fighter planes, more and better experienced pilots, more oil/gas, more men, weapons and ammo at the front; All valuable resources which the Germans had lost or were tied down in the air defense of the Reich.

[Erwin]

Apologies if anyone has already mentioned this, but in addition to bombing anything to do with oil production, there was the critical German target of the ball-bearing factories in Schweinfurt which enabled pretty much all the German engines, so arguably was an even more critical target.

[JasonC]

Erwin - the ball bearings target was a complete mistake. US analysis thought it was critical for German fighter production, but it simply wasn't, and was also easily dispersed, and a very difficult target. Machine tools are quite resistent to bombing with high explosive and recovery times from raids on such targets were a couple of weeks, tops.

The oil target set was the correct one, and it is an analysis stuff-up that this wasn't figured out earlier. The US specifically hit robust portions of the aircraft production supply chain for all of 1943 and the first half of 1944 with little effect - German fighter output continued to soar throughout that entire period.

Both the US and the UK also diverted huge resources from their heavy bombing campaign to low return, defensive targets, in the form of the U boat pens all along the French coast and V-1 launch sites (and later, V-2 sites, a bit less wastefully since those were a better target).

What won the air war over Germany was the combat between US fighters escorting the raids of early 1944, which ran the Germans out of trained pilots through direct air combat attrition. They were actually able to keep up with their loss rate in fighter output, but could not put experienced men in the seats of all the new fighters they were still producing. Falling pilot quality snowballed into continued high losses in air to air combat. New units had to be rotated to the east to train before being risked in the west, and the effective sortie rate of fighters over Germany and France fell off as a result.

By the end of the spring, France was clear and Germany was falling. The allies then went after the transport target set in France, and finally went after the oil target set in earnest, over Germany. Both were effective - the former helped D-Day succeed by slowing the German response, but it was the latter that grounded what remained of the Luftwaffe.

Once they couldn't fly all their fighters for lack of aviation fuel, the airfields themselves became vulnerable to fighter bombers. Aircraft factory targets remained poor targets even at that point. The Allies were, however, able to go after the transportation target set clear over Germany, once the skies were clear of German fighters. This dislocated what was left of the German war economy.

It should not be overstated - the German war economy did not peak until the late summer of 1944. Its decline thereafter was partly due to scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel to replace the losses in the east in Bagration, and in the west in France. The Wehrmacht lost a million men in those campaigns in the summer of 1944, and to replace them they had to dig deep into the remaining male workforce in Germany.

This manpower call up coincided with oil output plummetting far below usage - although the army was still able to run on stocks until the winter of 1944 (the air force took the hit before that). The transport network, energy sector, and manpower all contributed to the absolute decline in German output in the last third of 1944.

Notably, the night time bombing throughout by the Brits did not prevent German output from increasing. It did divert resources to air defense and reconstruction, certainly, and prompted dispersal efforts that probably reduced overall industrial efficiency somewhat. But armaments output went right on climbing anyway, until the breakdown of fuel, transport and labor inputs described above. Which required the prior defeat of the German fighter force in direct air to air combat - it was not first brought about by bombing preventing enough fighters from being made or gotten into the air.

[Erwin]

Interesting briefing. Thanks...