RAF bombing of Germany after 1943
SolomonW
bombing cities and not military targets.
If say after 1943, Bomber Harris would have been replaced as I doubt he
would have changed the targeting now say the RAF targets was set to a more
military and economic targeting would it have made much difference to the
war?
William Black
Harris didn't pick the targets and didn't set policy.
If he was replaced the only difference would be one of emphasis by
whoever got the job next.
--
William Black
"Any number under six"
The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of
Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat
single handed with a quarterstaff.
Padraigh ProAmerica
airborne radar was available, you really couldn't hit a specific
strategic target in th darkness.
US heavies bombed during the day; although the vaunted Norden bombsight
wasn't a great as advertised, and the crews were often jittery about
flying through flak, hitting specific startegic targets was possible,
but often had lesser impact than expected.\
American accuracy did improve once Gen. Curtis LeMay imposed rules on
trying to evade flak while on the bomb run ('jinking' a bit, but not
real moves). He proved his point by flying lead on the first such raid;
acuracy was increased.
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them
surprise you with their ingenuity."
Gen. George S. Patton
Don Phillipson
news:hgiv8c$cms$2...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Harris didn't pick the targets and didn't set policy.
This is misleading . . . Harris (as top man in Bomber Command
HQ staff) could pick targets of his choice from the terms of
reference (policy) promulgated by the Cabinet. (The Cabinet
debated for weeks the policy of "area bombing" of cities. Harris
became C-in-C of Bomber Command shortly after the Area
Bombing policy was selected.) Harris is reported to have
personally picked some targets, e.g. Cologne for his first
"Thousand Bomber Raid," e.g. Hamburg for Operation Gomorrah.
He consulted directly with US Eighth Air Force command and
thus influenced their choice of targets (e.g. German aircraft production.)
Secondly when ordered to bomb other targets (e.g. the Transportation
Plan of 1944 (preparing for and following up the D-Day invasion, e.g.
the later Oil Plan to wreck German fuel supply) Harris notoriously
complied only minimally with these orders (and let RAF supreme
command know unambiguously he disapproved of them.)
(Thirdly) the tragedy of Harris's career at the top is that he com-
pleted the planned 1943 expansion of Bomber Command only as
late as 1945 (partly because of unsustainable casualties in such
prolonged failures as the "Battle of Berlin") -- and then unleashed
his huge forces to level more cities in January-April 1945 when such
destruction was least likely to shorten the war.
The likeliest professional defect in Harris (item no. 4) is that he
never understood like the US AAF the role of the escort fighter
in the survival of bomber aircraft. He claimed in 1942 that, if
only given as many bombers and trained crews as he wanted,
Bomber Command could alone win the war, i.e. the number of
fighters (British or German) and submarines (British or German)
simply did not matter. This was a professional error for an
air force commander on which Harris acted all the time. He
never admitted his error (which is normal: hardly any successful
commanders admit errors publicly even if they recognize them.)
> If he was replaced the only difference would be one of emphasis by
> whoever got the job next.
This may or may not be true but no one has suggested facts that
would illuminate the question. CIGS Alan Brooke's wartime diaries
revealed how top army commanders were selected, because of
their character (personality, reputation) no less than their professional
ability (demonstrated skill in command in particular campaigns) and
some RN narratives deal with this -- but (so far as I know) nothing
similar has ever been published about the top RAF commanders
despite the special importance of air power in WW2 (cf. Coastal
Command and antisubmarine warfare as well as Bomber and
Fighter Command.) We know a lot about a very few RAF commanders
(Portal, Harris, Tedder, Coningham, Park, Douglas, Slessor etc.)
but next to nothing about the several dozen of their contemporaries
of equal rank in 1939. We know nothing about the processes by which
(say) Tedder was selected to be Eisenhower's deputy, or why
Harris became C-in-C of Bomber Command rather than (say) Cochrane.
No historian has ever attempted to compare Bowhill and Slessor as
chiefs of Coastal Command. (This would be intricate and difficult
since they commanded different resources in different strategical
contexts.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:hgjjjo$6c7$2...@theodyn.ncf.ca...
> "William Black" <willia...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:hgiv8c$cms$2...@news.eternal-september.org...
>
>> Harris didn't pick the targets and didn't set policy.
>
> This is misleading . . . Harris (as top man in Bomber Command
> HQ staff) could pick targets of his choice from the terms of
> reference (policy) promulgated by the Cabinet. (The Cabinet
> debated for weeks the policy of "area bombing" of cities. Harris
> became C-in-C of Bomber Command shortly after the Area
> Bombing policy was selected.) Harris is reported to have
> personally picked some targets, e.g. Cologne for his first
> "Thousand Bomber Raid," e.g. Hamburg for Operation Gomorrah.
> He consulted directly with US Eighth Air Force command and
> thus influenced their choice of targets (e.g. German aircraft production.)
And the 8th Air Force selection of targets had influences on Bomber
Command, and the directives specified targets to hit. Basically Harris
picked the target for the night, but not for the month/quarter.
> Secondly when ordered to bomb other targets (e.g. the Transportation
> Plan of 1944 (preparing for and following up the D-Day invasion, e.g.
> the later Oil Plan to wreck German fuel supply) Harris notoriously
> complied only minimally with these orders (and let RAF supreme
> command know unambiguously he disapproved of them.)
This seems a continuous theme against Harris, the trouble is what
does minimal mean?
There is no doubt he protested against the pre invasion transport plan,
but then found Bomber Command better at attacking the targets. This,
along with the strength of the night defences of Germany at the time
meant Bomber Command did more invasion support than the 8th
Air Force. If Harris is minimal, what does that make the 8th Air
Force effort?
Harris was wrong in assuming the bomb accuracy attacking Germany
applied to targets in France. As the pre D-day strikes showed. He
raised considerable objections to Bomber Command being used for
these strikes but it is interesting to note at the end of the war Eisenhower
seems to have rated Harris as more co-operative than the USAAF
Commanders. Harris for example flew to the weekly SHAEF meeting,
Spaatz tended to send a representative.
Harris was wrong about oil, mainly out of conviction over the many
plans to "easily" stop German production, molybdenum, ball bearings,
aircraft industry for example that failed so badly. Another reason for
his error was he was never shown the Ultra information in 1944 at
least, and possibly not in 1945, he was not on the list. All he received
were intelligence reports classified as "reliable". Like those that
backed up the earlier target choices.
On the other hand he should have appreciated the increase in accuracy
over France in mid 1944 translated to an increase in accuracy over
Germany once the radio guidance ground stations were set up on the
French border in the final quarter of 1944. He seems to have decided
Germany was simply too big to be able to really hurt a key sector of the
economy. What he missed was how much bigger, in effective bombing
capability terms, the allied air forces had become in the first 9 months
of 1944.
Having been through the efforts made by the 8th Air Force and Bomber
Command in the final year of the war my conclusion is if you want to
blame Harris for failing to hit specific targets you need to do the same
to the 8th Air Force.
Simply put the weather decided what sort of raid was done, the RAF
was open about calling the bad weather raids area attacks, the USAAF
was not.
Invasion support transport plan,
8th Air Force / Bomber Command, percentage of bombs dropped
on Germany, 1944
February 71% / 98%
March 69.5% / 71%
April 61% / 42%
May 55% / 23%
June 22.5% / 9%
July 66% / 23%
August 49% / 22%
September 86% / 39%
You can see which force was doing more direct invasion support,
again not surprising given the strengths and weaknesses of both.
Despite the well known disagreement between Harris and Portal over
oil attacks the reality is Harris did the raids, he did not expect them
to work but was not going to be blamed for not doing enough when,
as he expected, the plan failed.
Data from Richard Davis' allied strategic bomber raids, short tons
8th Air Force, month, total bomb tonnage dropped / percentage
dropped on oil,
May-44 36006.6 / 7.98
Jun-44 58271 / 8.52
Jul-44 45212 / 15.22
Aug-44 47979.2 / 19.57
Sep-44 40348.1 / 18.93
Oct-44 43571.7 / 11.73
Nov-44 40455.8 / 39.61
Dec-44 41224.4 / 7.21
Jan-45 39004.7 / 7.31
Feb-45 51576.4 / 11.98
Mar-45 73715.7 / 12.93
Apr-45 46949 / 3.50
Total 76,060.5 tons of bombs on oil targets out of 564,314.6 tons dropped in
this period. All up 13.5% of the bombs dropped May 1944 to April 1945.
Bomber Command, month, total bomb tonnage dropped / percentage dropped
on oil,
Jun-44 64008.7 / 9.25
Jul-44 64226.3 / 7.66
Aug-44 74330.5 / 17.06
Sep-44 58498.8 / 7.68
Oct-44 68501.0 / 5.97
Nov-44 59240.4 / 24.04
Dec-44 54714.7 / 13.58
Jan-45 36643.6 / 27.59
Feb-45 51439.2 / 28.38
Mar-45 74969.8 / 28.28
Apr-45 38630.7 / 15.73
Total 105,770.2 tons of bombs on oil targets out of 654,404.8 tons dropped
in this period. All up 16.4% of the bombs dropped June 1944 to April 1945.
It is clear, given the percentages of effort, the bombers based in England
in particular could have mounted more attacks on oil targets. Most of the
blame attaches to Arthur Harris, who made no secret of his belief the oil
campaign would not achieve the results being claimed for it. So how
much did this affect Bomber Command's choice of target? One way to
check is to compare the effort of Bomber Command to that of the 8th
Air Force.
Similarities are both forces used the same intelligence systems, both had to
cope with the same weather.
The differences are, the night defences were much stronger than the day
defences until around September 1944, and it was not until mid July 1944
the missing rate for night heavy bombers attacking German targets dropped
below the maximum acceptable, on average, the strength of the defences
denied the bombers the best, clear moonlight nights until later in the year.
In autumn weather, ignoring ground fog and haze, the night bombers had
around 1.8 times more chance of clear weather, in winter 2.6 times, in
summer the day bombers had 1.4 times the chance of clear weather than
the night bombers, in spring the night bombers had 2.7 times the chance of
clear weather. Note one reason Bomber Command was allocated the oil
targets in the Ruhr was the persistent ground haze. In high summer many
German targets were out of reach for the night bombers, the deep winter
similar rules applied to the day bombers. SHAEF had control of target
allocation until mid September 1944 which meant only when attacking Germany
can we assume the majority of the targets selected were at the discretion of
the Air Forces. Bomber Command devoted a greater percentage of effort,
along with the better weather needed for such raids, to invasion support
until
November 1944. The 8th Air Force was initially allocated more oil targets
than Bomber Command, a situation that appears to have remained
unchanged until November 1944. Initially Bomber Command was given
responsibility for the Ruhr plants, due to the strength of the defences,
the haze over the area and the length of the night. When targets were
reallocated in November 1944 it was believed all Bomber Command
targets were knocked out.
Note the following data ignores the attacks made on Czechoslovakian oil
targets, by the 8th Air Force in May, August and September 1944 and
February 1945, 5 attacks 961.5 tons of bombs, and Bomber Command in
January 1945, 1 attack of 959.6 tons of bombs. It is what happened when
the bombers struck targets in Germany, when the Air Forces had the most
discretion as to the choice of target during the SHAEF period of control.
Table is date, 8th Air Force bombs on Germany, tons / % of those bombs
on oil targets // Bomber Command bombs on Germany, tons / % of those
bombs on oil targets.
May-44 19880 / 12.89 // 9479.8 / none
Jun-44 13120.5 / 34.01 // 5443.5 / 83.82
Jul-44 29838.3 / 22.33 // 14670.1 / 26.14
Aug-44 23597.4 / 26.07 // 16119.3 / 11.49
Sep-44 34818.4 / 21.12 // 22955.3 / 19.56
Oct-44 43552.2 / 11.74 // 57679.1 / 7.09
Nov-44 37798.8 / 42.39 // 58870.2 / 24.20
Dec-44 41092.1 / 7.23 // 51132.1 / 14.54
Jan-45 38551.3 / 7.40 // 33218.9 / 27.55
Feb-45 51187.2 / 11.93 // 50891.2 / 28.69
Mar-45 72951.1 / 13.06 // 74969.8 / 28.28
Apr-45 35646.1 / 4.61 // 38103.1 / 14.80
For the 8th the percentage of effort devoted to oil targets is higher if you
only consider targets in Germany, compared with the total effort figures.
For Bomber Command there is one major exception to this, August 1944
when it put in a major effort against oil targets in France, mainly storage
and depot targets. That would raise oil target percentage to around 17.1%
for the month.
While there were refineries in western Europe outside Germany the reality is
almost all German oil production reachable by the England based bombers was
within the 1937 German borders. So the extra effort devoted to oil targets
outside Germany is not surprising.
I will ignore June 1944 as an aberration, since Bomber Command needed a very
good reason to go to Germany in June, the defences were at their peak and
the targets that could be attacked were at a minimum. In terms of
percentage of
effort the two air forces matched each other in July and September 1944, the
8th took the lead in August, October and November 1944, thereafter Bomber
Command took the lead.
8th Air Force, date, percentage of visual attacks for the month /
percentage of visual attacks on targets in Germany / percentage of effort
devoted to targets in Germany // Bomber Command percentage of
effort devoted to targets in Germany
Jun-44 60.16 / 59.38 / 22.52 // 8.5
Jul-44 58.52 / 44.43 / 66.00 // 22.84
Aug-44 92.42 / 89.41 / 49.18 // 21.69
Sep-44 44.13 / 37.29 / 86.30 // 39.24
Oct-44 22.83 / 22.81 / 99.96 // 84.20
Nov-44 12.49 / 12.64 / 93.43 // 99.38
Dec-44 34.78 / 34.65 / 99.68 // 93.45
Jan-45 32.13 / 32.50 / 98.84 // 90.65
Feb-45 25.18 / 24.61 / 99.25 // 98.93
Mar-45 43.47 / 43.01 / 98.96 // 100.00
Apr-45 78.74 / 72.17 / 75.93 // 98.63
So in the initial months the percentage of effort devoted to oil attacks
on German targets by the 8th Air Force is roughly half the percentage of
visual bombing of Germany. It can be seen for June, July and September
1944 the amount of Bomber Command attacks outside Germany, which
were run requiring the better weather, is greater than the amount of visual
bombing the 8th Air Force achieved. August 1944 is an exception and it
appears part of the reason oil targets were not hit harder is SHAEF
requesting a series of strikes on Motor Transport targets in Germany, Bomber
Command devoted 1,758.1 tons of bombs to these targets compared with
1,852.6 tons to oil targets in Germany. The 8th had a similar request made,
resulting in 8 attacks of 1,720.9 tons on AFV and Motor Transport targets,
compared with 6,151.4 tons devoted to oil targets. The 8th continued the
AFV and Motor transport strikes in September 5,766.7 tons of bombs versus
7,352 on oil targets in Germany and again in October 7,110.8 tons of bombs
versus 5,112.2 tons on oil targets in Germany.
The figures for October 1944 are complicated by Operation Hurricane, the
attempt to mount a maximum effort over the Ruhr, Bomber Command
managed just over 10,000 tons on Duisburg in less than 24 hours, in
two attacks. In bomb tonnage terms this represented just under 15% of the
effort for the month. Trials of formation bombing using GH were also city
strikes, apparently to see what sort of bomb patterns would result.
The figures for November 1944 show the 8th still taking the lead but the
Bomber Command targets were assessed as non operational in the third
week in November so no further attacks were done on them that month
and it was not until early December oil strikes resumed, now against targets
previously attacked by the 8th. The delay appears to be the result of the
target allocation system and Harris being concerned about the defences
of the more distant targets. So the figures for the month are really the
8th for 4 weeks versus Bomber Command for 3.
In December 1944 the need to help stop the Ardennes offensive meant oil
same second, in addition the lack of daylight limited what the day bombers
could do. Unsurprisingly given the weather and time of year Bomber
Command was given the lead against oil targets for effectively the rest of
the war.
Another way of checking effort is to compare Bomber Commands percentage
of effort against cities the amount of visual bombing done by the 8th Air
Force.
The USSBS European Theatre report 62, Weather factors in combat
bombardment operations in the European Theater target weather table on page
8 notes for around two thirds of non visual bombing the weather was in the
"blind" category, 8/10 clouds or worse.
The following table is 2/3 percentage of non visual bombing by the 8th //
Bomber Command percentage of effort against cities.
Jun-44 25.6 // 1.3
Jul-44 27.7 // 16.8
Aug-44 5.1 // 16.7
Sep-44 37.2 // 28.3
Oct-44 51.4 // 75.3
Nov-44 58.3 // 54.4
Dec-44 43.5 // 36.2
Jan-45 45.2 // 35.5
Feb-45 49.9 // 50.2
Mar-45 37.7 // 44.2
Apr-45 14.2 // 6
(Note in earlier posts the April 1945 figure for Bomber Command was
given as 14.6%, which was an error)
The above figures include the Bomber Command target classification city
and rail facilities, if you use just city as the designation then the
percentages
change to Dec-44 26%, Feb-45 15.3%. Dresden was listed as city and
rail.
It should be noted Bomber Command strikes sent out after a specific
target but encountering weather too bad to carry out that strike are usually
recorded as doing city strikes, not a strike against the original target.
Any time the second figure is greater than the first is an indicator Bomber
Command was doing area strikes in more than just bad weather. In
August 1944 Bomber Command did a series of strikes on German ports,
including 2 on Konigsberg, some 950 miles from English bases, as part
of an effort to help the Red Army by disrupting Baltic sea traffic.
Although some of the raids had aiming points on the docks they are all
listed as city strikes. In October 1944 there was operation Hurricane,
and the GH trials. In February 1945 operation Thunderclap.
It would be remarkable if Harris, given his strong views, did not cause
some Bomber Command sorties being shifted from specific targets,
not just oil but other targets like transport, to city strikes. His views
would have made it harder to propose specific strikes and would have
influenced his staff's ideas of the feasible. There are thousands of
sorties to choose from, though to choose any specific raid requires
consideration of the weather forecast for that operation and what the
intelligence was at that time. Then add operations ordered from outside
of Bomber Command and the time lag in September/October 1944 in
setting up the ground based radio aids in France the night bombers
needed to be consistently accurate. Given the problems with picking a
given strike we are left with the trends. The conclusion is Harris did
divert sorties, but they were at the margin, not a major reassignment.
Assuming for the moment Bomber Command could have exactly matched
the percentage of effort of the 8th Air Force when attacking Germany then
the extra bomb tonnage would amount to the following, table is month,
alteration of Bomber Command effort in tons of bombs (negative indicates
Bomber Command had a greater percentage effort that month) // tons of
bombs actually dropped that month on oil targets in Germany,
Jun-44 -6535.25 // 9024.3
Jul-44 -1135.29 // 10498.5
Aug-44 3439.34 // 8004.0
Sep-44 539.79 // 11843.2
Oct-44 2025.44 // 9200.2
Nov-44 6877.48 // 30267.6
Dec-44 -2230.26 // 9444.4
Jan-45 -8881.97 // 12964.6
Feb-45 -8576.43 // 20708.9
Mar-45 -11099.74 // 30728.4
Apr-45 -3632.77 // 7282.6
Ignoring June 1944 the table below is cumulative bomb deficit in tons //
cumulative bombs dropped on oil targets in Germany since 1 July 1944 //
percentage of cumulative total the extra Bomber Command bombs would
represent.
Jul-44 -1135.29 // 10498.5 // -10.81
Aug-44 2304.06 // 18502.5 // 12.45
Sep-44 2843.84 // 30345.7 // 9.37
Oct-44 4869.29 // 39545.9 // 12.31
Nov-44 11746.77 // 69813.5 // 16.83
Dec-44 9516.51 // 79257.9 // 12.01
Jan-45 634.54 // 92222.5 // 0.69
Feb-45 -7941.90 // 112931.4 // -7.03
Mar-45 -19041.64 // 143659.8 // -13.25
Apr-45 -22674.41 // 150942.4 // -15.02
This of course ignores the reality Bomber Command had heavier commitments
to invasion support than the 8th Air Force. It represents a maximum figure
for diversion away from oil strikes to the end of November 1944.
> (Thirdly) the tragedy of Harris's career at the top is that he com-
> pleted the planned 1943 expansion of Bomber Command only as
> late as 1945 (partly because of unsustainable casualties in such
> prolonged failures as the "Battle of Berlin") -- and then unleashed
> his huge forces to level more cities in January-April 1945 when such
> destruction was least likely to shorten the war.
It should be pointed out things like the Dresden attack were a
specific request to Harris.
In 1945 the weather played a big part in bombing raids, the bad
weather meant area attacks at night and H2X attacks by day.
The conclusion is if Harris was really after cities, his bias is
small compared with the effects of the weather. You can of
course argue the city and rail facilities were really cities, but
then given the USAAF H2X attacks on marshalling yards
you need to do the same to the USAAF figures.
> The likeliest professional defect in Harris (item no. 4) is that he
> never understood like the US AAF the role of the escort fighter
> in the survival of bomber aircraft.
When Doolittle floated the idea of a mass combined daylight raid
on Berlin Harris said no, not enough escorts.
> He claimed in 1942 that, if
> only given as many bombers and trained crews as he wanted,
> Bomber Command could alone win the war, i.e. the number of
> fighters (British or German) and submarines (British or German)
> simply did not matter.
This was consistent with pre war theory and day fighters are of
limited use at night.
> This was a professional error for an
> air force commander on which Harris acted all the time. He
> never admitted his error (which is normal: hardly any successful
> commanders admit errors publicly even if they recognize them.)
Harris seems to have assumed more airpower and it could have
been done. Note in early 1944 Spaatz was thinking along the
same lines and that Bomber Command would do most of the
defeating.
>> If he was replaced the only difference would be one of emphasis by
>> whoever got the job next.
>
> This may or may not be true but no one has suggested facts that
> would illuminate the question. CIGS Alan Brooke's wartime diaries
> revealed how top army commanders were selected, because of
> their character (personality, reputation) no less than their professional
> ability (demonstrated skill in command in particular campaigns) and
> some RN narratives deal with this -- but (so far as I know) nothing
> similar has ever been published about the top RAF commanders
> despite the special importance of air power in WW2 (cf. Coastal
> Command and antisubmarine warfare as well as Bomber and
> Fighter Command.)
Not collectively but all the senior commanders have their biographies,
or auto biographies.
> We know a lot about a very few RAF commanders
> (Portal, Harris, Tedder, Coningham, Park, Douglas, Slessor etc.)
> but next to nothing about the several dozen of their contemporaries
> of equal rank in 1939.
You would need to name them, military history tends to concentrate
on combat commanders, not for example the training commanders,
nor the supply people.
> We know nothing about the processes by which
> (say) Tedder was selected to be Eisenhower's deputy, or why
> Harris became C-in-C of Bomber Command rather than (say) Cochrane.
Tedder was chosen because he was senior air commander in the
Middle East, the USAAF commanders were not senior enough
at the time, nor were the RAF commanders commanding the
RAF in the western Mediterranean. Eisenhower trusted Tedder
he wanted him as his deputy.
Harris was senior to Cochrane.
> No historian has ever attempted to compare Bowhill and Slessor as
> chiefs of Coastal Command. (This would be intricate and difficult
> since they commanded different resources in different strategical
> contexts.)
Their biographies should reveal their strengths and weaknesses,
then look at the Coastal Command history.
Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.
Duwop
wrote:
> The differences are, the night defences were much stronger than the day
> defences until around September 1944,
Thank you very much for the very valuable information and informative
post. Could you, or someone expand on how night defenses were stronger
than daytime defenses? It's very counterintuituve and have not seen
this stated before.
David H Thornley
>
> Harris didn't pick the targets and didn't set policy.
>
Near the end of the war, he continued city-busting over the
objections of his superior, but it was not considered worth
relieving him.
In fairness, we should note that the US strategic bombing forces
couldn't stick to the program either. If you look at bombing
of the important targets, the oil and transportation targets, you'll
see that the USAAF kept hitting other things, although much more
varied.
The main problem with Bomber Command after approximately D-Day was
Harris' insistence on a target policy that wasn't all that useful.
The main problem with the USAAF was a lack of consistency in target
policy.
> If he was replaced the only difference would be one of emphasis by
> whoever got the job next.
>
I think you underestimate the power of a high-level military
commander.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
Alan
> Harris picked the targets, and to some extent he did set policy.
> Near the end of the war, he continued city-busting over the
> objections of his superior, but it was not considered worth
> relieving him.
It's odd the reluctance in both England and the US to relieve
commanders who were either ineffective or wanted to set policy
themselves. General Lee in the ETO and Admiral King both come to mind
for the US. General Harris seems to be the worst example for the
British.
Alan
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:b1319c9e-75a4-4f70...@y10g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
As for counter intuitive consider night reduces loss rates, it is very
hard to set up a large scale night battle with 1940's technology.
This works for both the attacker and the defender.
Probably the best way to note the impact of the defences is the 8th
Air Force Bomber losses to enemy fighters, then enemy flak, as a
percentage of effective sorties, note the big drop after April 1944 in
casualties inflicted by fighters.
Jan-44 / 2.77 / 0.54
Feb-44 / 2.26 / 1.08
Mar-44 / 2.03 / 1.28
Apr-44 / 3.16 / 1.06
May-44 / 1.51 / 0.87
Jun-44 / 0.49 / 0.71
Jul-44 / 0.42 / 1.07
Aug-44 / 0.32 / 1.26
Sep-44 / 0.88 / 1.33
Oct-44 / 0.21 / 0.66
Nov-44 / 0.33 / 0.96
Dec-44 / 0.17 / 0.45
Jan-45 / 0.33 / 1.51
Feb-45 / 0.07 / 0.79
Mar-45 / 0.22 / 0.57
Apr-45 / 0.40 / 0.42
Note the above figures are for operations against all targets. Attacks
on Germany usually had higher loss rates. (To use the Richard Davis
figures, overall loss rate was 1.5% for the campaign for bombers
credited with attacking, that breaks down into, for targets in Germany
the loss rate was 1.7%, for non German targets 0.95%).
The Despatch on War Operations by Harris has a graph which is
Bomber Command heavy bomber losses for attacks on Germany.
It is calculated for blocks of 3,000 sorties, not by month.
So Jan-44 around 6.4%, Feb 5%, Mar 5%, Apr 4.3%, May 4.5%,
Jun 6.6%, Jul 3.8%, Aug 3.5%, Sep 1.5%, Oct 0.8%, Nov 1.2%,
Dec 1.1%, Jan-45 1.5%, Feb 1.4%, Mar 1.7%, Apr 1.7%. Figures
read from graph.
Again note the drop off after August 1944. (June was a special case
with priority oil target missions, very few sorties)
Also note the definition of loss can be flexible, Harris uses failed to
return, not counting those that crashed in the UK or were written
off after landing. The USAAF statistical digest has an "other causes"
column for losses on operations, the column totals for the 8th Air
Force heavy bomber losses are, to fighter, 2,452, to flak 2,439, to
other causes 657, at this point I am assuming a USAAF loss includes
written off as well as losses over the UK but I need to confirm that.
As a result of the definitions you cannot directly compare the RAF
and USAAF figures.
In the first half of 1944 the Luftwaffe day fighter force engaged in
a prolonged battle that it lost. Even though the front line strength
was kept up, and even expanded, the loss of pilots ensured the
force suffered what proved an irreversible loss in quality.
The night fighter force did not suffer as much attrition. However
in the period June to September 1944 the RAF introduced more
jamming (Mandrel, Jostle IV), took possession of a Luftwaffe
night fighter with the latest equipment (MB Window to jam the new
NF radar, signals silence to stop the passive homing devices onto
Monica and H2S) and new tactics, (diversion raids and more night
fighter support). In addition the allied armies over ran the coastal
radar sites.
The overall result was for the remainder of the war the Luftwaffe
usually only managed to start tracking night raiders after they were
near or had crossed into Germany, which gave much less time to
figure out which was the real bomber force and real target. The
Nachtjagd War Diaries by Boiten give day by day accounts,
showing how hard it became to work out what the RAF was
doing. There are examples of a clear raid track being
established and since it was so clear the raid being assumed a
diversion, not a failure of allied jamming.
The day fighter force continued to decline so much the USAAF
took to flying direct courses, to save on fuel and to make it easier
for the Luftwaffe to intercept.
Over and above this came the loss of Luftwaffe avgas supplies,
not important before the decline of the defences but increasingly
important as the war went on.
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<b1319c9e-75a4-4f70...@y10g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
tut...@hotmail.com (Duwop) wrote:
> Could you, or someone expand on how night defenses were stronger
> than daytime defenses? It's very counterintuituve and have not seen
> this stated before.
The German night fighter force was strong and largely immune to allied
fighters (the Mosquito night fighter being an exception). The German air
control was also extremely effective in vectoring fighters until Window
was used.
Ken Young
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
Phillipson) wrote:
> could pick targets of his choice from the terms of
> reference (policy) promulgated by the Cabinet.
Target choice was dictated by weather and the time of year. Berlin
could only be hit in Winter with the long nights.
> (e.g. the Transportation
> Plan of 1944 (preparing for and following up the D-Day invasion, e.g.
> the later Oil Plan to wreck German fuel supply) Harris notoriously
> complied only minimally with these orders
Well you are wrong about the Transport Plan Bomber Command ceased
practically all attacks on Germany during the run up to Normandy. As for
the oil plan yes but with caveats. Most of the oil targets were beyond
the range of Gee and Oboe until stations could be set up in France. So
the only navigational aid available was H2S which was far form giving
pin point accuracy. Harris was influenced by the attempts in 1941 to hit
oil targets which did no significant damage.
Off course the overrunning of Ploesti had more to do with causing a
German oil shortage than any air strikes. The transport disruption
caused by area strikes contributed to local oil shortages.
> is that he
> never understood like the US AAF the role of the escort fighter
> in the survival of bomber aircraft
He understood very well that daylight attack required fighter escort.
He understood that be fore 8th Air Force. Unfortunately RAF fighters
were designed as interceptors and nothing with suitable range and
performance existed. Night bombers could not be escorted. However in
1944 and 1945 Mosquito night fighters and intruders operated in the
vicinity of bomber streams and caused a toll on German night fighters.
Ken Young
dilore
> If say after 1943, Bomber Harris would have been replaced as I doubt he
> would have changed the targeting now say the RAF targets was set to a more
> military and economic targeting would it have made much difference to the
> war?
Harris had the backing of Churchill and Portal, Portal and Harris
believed Bomber Command
could win the war by itself by killing or harming so many civilians,
preferably workers,
so that the Hitler regime would eventually be overthrown by a
revolution like in 1918.
Churchill was, especially after the start of the V-weapon attacks, but
maybe already
since the Blitz, thinking much in terms of reprisals. Area bombing
fitted well into this, but
he also considered Anthrax and poison gas.
These men had of course not solely the say in how the air war in
Germany was to be conducted.
The Americans had the final word in what the 8th and 15th would bomb
and during the Normandy
invasion, Eisenhower made the final decisions. He listened more to the
British air commanders
who preferred the bombing of transportation targets.
Eisenhower's authority over the allied bomber fleets ended in mid-Sept
44 but left its marks on
the bombing strategy. After the success of the 'Transportation Plan'
in France, Portal began to
view these kind of attacks more favourably than before, but still
believed in city bombing as the
war-winning strategy. On the other hand, the RAF 'Oil- and
Transportation-lobby' (Tedder, Leigh-Mallory,
Bottomley) who had invented this very successful plan became less
influential after the invasion.
And Churchill became first after the bombing of Dresden in March 45 an
opponent to area bombing.
While Bomber Command in 1943 had devoted 80% of its bombs to area
bombing and almost 0% on communications
and oil, in 1944 and 1945 this changed to 35% on area targets, 18% on
transportation and 10% (44) / 30% (45)
on oil. This change occurred more or less against Harris believes, but
on the other hand he had vastly
more resources at his disposal. The 80% of area bombs in 1943
corresponded to 131 464 tons, the 35%
in 44/45 corresponded to almost double than that, 251 170 tons, so
Churchill's, Portal's and Harris's
goals could still be pursued with emphasis. Also the Americans were
adapting the British strategies
over Japan, so it was not only Churchill, Portal, and Harris, there
were also LeMay, McNamara, Truman
and others who thought that targeting civilians was a war-winning
strategy, and this continued throughout
the cold war.
If Harris had been replaced in early 1944, Churchill and Portal would
still set the overall tone for
the RAF bomb war in Europe. Yes, Harris disobeyed orders to attack
'panacea-targets' from time to time
and he was a rather obstinate and stubborn character, but one can
assume that he was well aware that
he had the backing 'higher up'.
Would a change in RAF bombing strategy have made a difference? There
was no revolution in Germany, so
obviously Portal's and Harris's plan failed and most of the men and
material spent on this plan was used
in vain.
What positive side effects were there of area bombing and what
alternative targets were possible? This has
been discussed in absurdum here during the years. IMHO the most
accurate answers can be found in the
strategic bombing surveys conducted by the British and Americans after
the war. The American Strategic Bombing
Survey came out with a figure which suggested that area attacks had
caused a loss of 9% in all German
production in 43 and 17% in 44. The figures of the British study are
8.2% in the second half of 43, 7.2% in the
second half of 44, and 9.7% during 45. Its estimates for loss of
specific war production such as armaments
were lower still: they averaged less than 3% for 43 and barely 1% for
44.
Almost half of Britain's war industry was allocated to Bomber Command.
It lost 55 500 expensively educated
aircrewcrew, each killing about 10 Germans and destoying unvaluable
cultural treasures.
Both studies found that oil- and transportation targets were the most
damaging attacks to the German war machine.
The RAF Bomber offensive bound a lot of German resources, but one can
assume that this would have been the
case, probably even to a larger extent, if more vital areas of the
German war machine had been attacked.
Dirk
SolomonW
> post.
Yes. It is extremely good.
> Could you, or someone expand on how night defenses were stronger
> than daytime defenses? It's very counterintuituve and have not seen
> this stated before.
In the daytime, the fighters defending the bombers can see the enemy
fighters.
Michele
news:HH2Xm.64295$O74....@newsfe25.ams2...
Area bombing _was_ aimed at economic targets.
Now passing to military targets, which ones are you thinking about? Keeping
in mind the accuracy of the tool at hand.
Duwop
I read defense as referring to the Germans (and wasn't alone on this).
Writing about darkness as "bomber defense" is new to me, so read it as
German nightime defenses were stronger than daytime defenses. Which I
think we'd agree is odd.
I see by Mr. Sinclair's intent in his response, so the point is
clarified.
Thanks though.
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:16429fe1-ff65-4880...@d10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> On 19 Dec, 17:00, SolomonW <Solom...@nospamMail.com> wrote:
>
>> If say after 1943, Bomber Harris would have been replaced as I doubt he
>> would have changed the targeting now say the RAF targets was set to a
>> more
>> military and economic targeting would it have made much difference to the
>> war?
>
> Harris had the backing of Churchill and Portal, Portal and Harris
> believed Bomber Command could win the war by itself by killing
> or harming so many civilians, preferably workers, so that the Hitler
> regime would eventually be overthrown by a revolution like in 1918.
Actually the target was the things down there, civilian casualties were
expected, but if the civilians were the real targets then armour
piercing bombs to hit shelters, fragmentation bombs to hit civilians
in the open and targeting the areas people moved to at night would
have been done. Civilian morale, from so much being destroyed,
not civilian deaths from so much being destroyed.
> Churchill was, especially after the start of the V-weapon attacks, but
> maybe already since the Blitz, thinking much in terms of reprisals.
Perhaps it would be best to actually show the evidence Churchill was
in this sort of mood.
> Area bombing fitted well into this, but he also considered Anthrax
> and poison gas.
Perhaps it might be mentioned the anthrax and poison gas plans
were all about if the Nazis started using chemical warfare.
> These men had of course not solely the say in how the air war in
> Germany was to be conducted.
They actually did until the start of 1943, and effectively for most
of 1943, given the overall strength of the 8th Air Force at the time
and the troubles it was having.
> The Americans had the final word in what the 8th and 15th would
> bomb
Actually the Combined Chiefs of Staff had the final say in setting overall
objectives, given it was a combined offensive.
> and during the Normandy
> invasion, Eisenhower made the final decisions. He listened more to the
> British air commanders who preferred the bombing of transportation
> targets.
Actually there were people in the USAAF advocating the same plan,
and in mid 1944 the transport plan was all about cutting German
Army communications. However it was controversial as the
experience from Italy appeared mixed and the French transport
system was bigger. It was adopted more as the only plan on the
table, rather than with great confidence. Things like fighter bomber
effectiveness against bridges still needed to be proved.
The evidence from France showed how disruptive it would be to
the German economy.
> Eisenhower's authority over the allied bomber fleets ended in mid-Sept
> 44 but left its marks on the bombing strategy.
Actually the evidence from France was important. After something
of a what next period as the war went into another winter.
> After the success of the 'Transportation Plan' in France, Portal began to
> view these kind of attacks more favourably than before, but still
> believed in city bombing as the war-winning strategy.
This would be rather contradicting his correspondence with Harris
asking for a more concentrated effort on specific target classes.
> On the other hand, the RAF 'Oil- and
> Transportation-lobby' (Tedder, Leigh-Mallory,
> Bottomley) who had invented this very successful plan became less
> influential after the invasion.
No actually, the oil plan was carried out, the transport plan was put
into proper service against Germany.
Leigh-Mallory was not very influential, he seems to upset most people.
> And Churchill became first after the bombing of Dresden in March 45 an
> opponent to area bombing.
Dresden was in February 1945, and Churchill shortly after wrote a
memo the air force chiefs asked to be withdrawn, as it looked like
Churchill was distancing himself from the policies laid down for
Bomber Command.
> While Bomber Command in 1943 had devoted 80% of its bombs to area
> bombing and almost 0% on communications and oil,
Which is not surprising given the problems in finding those targets
in Germany at night in 1943. Please note, bombing cities did plenty
of damage to the transport infrastructure there, they were simply
called area attacks, not transport strikes.
> in 1944 and 1945 this changed to 35% on area targets, 18% on
> transportation and 10% (44) / 30% (45) on oil.
Bomber Command did not start bombing oil targets until June 1944,
similar for ground support.
1944, 35% area, 9% oil, 19% transport, 18% troop support, 12%
V weapons.
1945, 37% area, 26% oil, 15% transport, 14% troop support.
Given the majority of the 1945 campaign was fought in winter
and early spring, and the winter had been a bad one, it is not
surprising area bombing was used.
Also the troop support had a disproportionate effect on the
campaign as it demanded the better weather.
> This change occurred more or less against Harris believes, but
> on the other hand he had vastly more resources at his disposal.
> The 80% of area bombs in 1943 corresponded to 131 464 tons,
> the 35% in 44/45 corresponded to almost double than that,
> 251 170 tons,
In 1944 Bomber Command dropped 48,034 tons of bombs on
oil targets, this compares with 157,457 tons of bombs dropped
for all of 1943, of which 136,433 tons were dropped on Germany.
Simply no oil campaign was going to work in 1943, the bomb
lift was not enough, the reduced set of targets would have really
helped the defences as well.
There was no possibility of a concentrated attack on a key sector
of the German economy without something approaching air
superiority. Also the accuracy the night bombers needed meant
it was not until 1944 they could really start such a campaign.
When it came to bombs dropped on Germany the mid point of
the Bomber Command campaign was the end of September 1944.
> so
> Churchill's, Portal's and Harris's
> goals could still be pursued with emphasis.
One day the weather will be mentioned, instead of this assumption
it was all a free choice. The emphasis had switched to more
specific plans, with area attacks the bad weather option. There
is at least one large attack on a oil plant classified as an area
attack because of bad weather. Similar for a series of trial
attacks using the new GH bombing aid.
> Also the Americans were adapting the British strategies
> over Japan,
By the way, given the casualties in the Blitz why exactly does everything
start with the British? The Germans used sea mines with parachutes,
and also fragmentation bombs.
> so it was not only Churchill, Portal, and Harris, there
> were also LeMay, McNamara, Truman
> and others who thought that targeting civilians was a war-winning
> strategy, and this continued throughout the cold war.
Try the basic rule, to destroy the thing you really want the bombers
generally had to destroy lots of other things. The knocking out of
the supporting infrastructure was often more damaging than the
hits on factories.
There are plenty of villages destroyed because they had an important
bridge, or rail station etc.
> If Harris had been replaced in early 1944, Churchill and Portal would
> still set the overall tone for the RAF bomb war in Europe.
What about Eisenhower? Or should that be Overlord? What
happened to the Combined Chiefs directives?
> Yes, Harris disobeyed orders to attack 'panacea-targets' from time
> to time
This seems to be a refrain based on his words, rather than a specific
action.
> and he was a rather obstinate and stubborn character, but one can
> assume that he was well aware that he had the backing 'higher up'.
Perhaps fewer assumptions and more looking at the targets chosen
might be in order. Start with the weather.
For example, when the 8th Air force expected under 5/10 cloud at
the target they found this correct 155 times, found 5 to 7/10 cloud
42 times and 8/10 or more cloud 39 times.
When expecting 5 to 7/10 cloud the figures were under 5/10 cloud
31 times, correct 68 times, more cloud 83 times.
When expecting 8/10 or more cloud, the figures were 9, 16 and 81
respectively.
Overall from 524 raids, 203 faced 8/10 or more cloud.
> Would a change in RAF bombing strategy have made a difference? There
> was no revolution in Germany, so obviously Portal's and Harris's plan
> failed and most of the men and material spent on this plan was used
> in vain.
So since Britain did not surrender in 1940 the German attack on France
and the Low Countries was also in vain?
What a criteria, the enemy has to surrender otherwise the campaign is
useless.
> What positive side effects were there of area bombing and what
> alternative targets were possible? This has
> been discussed in absurdum here during the years. IMHO the most
> accurate answers can be found in the
> strategic bombing surveys conducted by the British and Americans after
> the war. The American Strategic Bombing
> Survey came out with a figure which suggested that area attacks had
> caused a loss of 9% in all German
> production in 43 and 17% in 44. The figures of the British study are
> 8.2% in the second half of 43, 7.2% in the
> second half of 44, and 9.7% during 45. Its estimates for loss of
> specific war production such as armaments
> were lower still: they averaged less than 3% for 43 and barely 1% for
> 44.
Are you aware the UK methodology assumed some unbombed German
towns were controls, to be used to figure out production would have
been if other towns had not been attacked? That the more successful
the bombing the more the "control" towns have their production cut
as well, as everything is linked, and so the effects of the bombs are
therefore understated? (Unbombed town fails to increase production,
bombs on other towns therefore did little)
Hence the way as the attacks grew the figures for production loss
stay the same or go backwards? Heard that as the overall damage
grew to so much what were minor repairs were not done for low
priority factories very quickly, forcing extended shut downs? There
were not enough repair crews.
That things like the Atlantic Wall would have been tougher if the
construction assets working in Germany were released?
I note there is no answer to the what else was possible idea.
You are aware of the inefficiencies on the oil campaign, plants would
be back in production for a few weeks before being attacked again,
other plants would be attacked before they were back in production?
It is not like the allies had good intelligence on the damage being done
to German industry.
> Almost half of Britain's war industry was allocated to Bomber Command.
This is simply wrong. You only have to look at the rest of the war
economy and the size of the army for example.
The British Bombing Survey Unit, the one with the effects of area
bombing calculation, decides Bomber Command overall cost 7%
of the British war effort, but 12% in the final 30 months of the war.
> It lost 55 500 expensively educated
> aircrewcrew, each killing about 10 Germans and destoying unvaluable
> cultural treasures.
Apparently the bombers did not actually damage and destroy factories,
only art works and civilians.
And the above should be on average 1 Bomber Command crew member
died per 10 Germans killed in an air raid. Of course it appears only
Bomber Command killed German civilians using the 10 to 1 ratio.
The death toll has been put at 410,000 German civilians killed, then
add 23,000 police and civilians working in the military, 32,000 foreign
workers and PoWs plus 128,000 displaced persons, total 593,000.
This total is from the post war investigations of the German Statistical
Office.
Also note the 55,000 aircrew deaths figure includes training accidents.
> Both studies found that oil- and transportation targets were the most
> damaging attacks to the German war machine.
As expected, they were the most systematic.
> The RAF Bomber offensive bound a lot of German resources, but one can
> assume that this would have been the
> case, probably even to a larger extent, if more vital areas of the
> German war machine had been attacked.
Ah, so if the attack is more successful the Germans are going to have
more stuff to defend against the attack. Which presumably means things
like the German army have lots less? Oh, I see, even if the attack works
the Germans are granted more defences so the attack does not work.
Can it be explained why the Luftwaffe day fighter force did not return
to rule the skies over Germany then?
Alternatively the success means the air defences will be weakened as well.
Given the emphasis on civilians you are aware the U-boats killed tens of
thousands of civilians? The crews and passengers on the ships attacked?
Do any of say the people building U-boats become legitimate targets?
Michele
news:16429fe1-ff65-4880...@d10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> Both studies found that oil- and transportation targets were the most
> damaging attacks to the German war machine.
Transportation targets are always important for the movement of troops; and
they are always important for the movement of supplies. However it is
unquestionable that they become even more important once the industrial
system producing those supplies has been decentered and dispersed. Now why
should one disperse his industries, build redundant secondary plants, have
different parts of the same weapon system produced in ten different
locations, and so on? Well, because his main industrial centers are being
beaten into the ground.
IOW, the campaign against transportation targets would have been useful in
any case, but the fact that the Germans had been forced to disperse the
production made it much more useful.
Note that it is always very difficult to draw "alternate" possible decisions
on the basis of the assessments you quoted, alone. For instance, if one
considered only the success of the oil campaign according to the studies, he
might be tempted to conclude that the British should have focused on oil
targets from the start, and should have continued on those all the time.
By which he would be neglecting issues as the knot of issues concerning
Ploesti, for instance: availability of suitable bases, range of bombers,
initial Romanian neutrality, the fact that it could be removed from the list
of targets by mid-1944, regardless of any choice concerning the Western
bombers...
Or he could be neglecting the issues concerning target size and night
bombing accuracy, which was not the same in 1939 and 1945. And so on.
Don Phillipson
news:efc68f2b-c326-4933...@n31g2000vbt.googlegroups.com...
> It's odd the reluctance in both England and the US to relieve
> commanders who were either ineffective or wanted to set policy
> themselves. General Lee in the ETO and Admiral King both come to mind
> for the US. General Harris seems to be the worst example for the
> British.
Army generals deemed ineffective as battlefield commanders
(e.g. at Anzio) seem to have been replaced fairly fast by
both US and British high command. Their weaknesses
seem to have been recognized in a way that naval and air
warfare did not facilitate. Individuals can always be found
who perhaps should have been replaced, e.g. Adm. King,
US CNO, Gen. Browning of the British paratroopers, but
their situation was different: King supervized other things
than battles (convoy policy, supply, choice of commanders)
and Browning's only battle was Arnhem, unless you count
crossing the Rhine in 1945.
Harris is the most interesting and difficult case for unique
reasons, cf. his general fixation on area bombing (and opposition
to "panacea" targets) and his success in keeping Bomber
Command alive and aggressive after catastrophic casualties.
It would be interesting to see an accurate comparison of
command in the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command,
as (probably) indicated by the replacement of group/wing/
squadron COs deemed "unsuccessful." Memoirs suggest
the USAAF replaced weak commanders more often than
did the RAF. Does this reflect greater American control
at the top or greater RAF strength at the bottom?
SolomonW
> 8th Air Force / Bomber Command, percentage of bombs dropped
> on Germany, 1944
>
> February 71% / 98%
These are fantastic statistics you are quoting, where did you get them from
please?
dilore
> Area bombing _was_ aimed at economic targets.
You are quite wrong.
"The aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German
workers
and the disruption of civilised community life throughout Germany. It
should
be emphasised that 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 the accepted and intended aims of our
bombing
policy. They are not by products of attempts to hit factories. The
successes
gained should be publicly assessed in terms of the extent to which
they
realise this policy. It should be made clear that the destruction of
factory
installations is only a part and by no means the most important part
of the plan.
Acreagres of housing devastation are infinitely more important."
Harris to Undersecretary of State, Air Ministry, 25 Oct 1943. PRO Air
14/843.
Dirk
Michele
news:ef684556-c4e1-4da1...@m26g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
You think that "factories", which are only a part of the plan, are what have
been called "economic targets". They are not the only economic targets.
Destroying the cities creates an economic problem because cities are an
important part of the economic system. Killing workers affects production
and therefore the economy, and workers can be killed in their houses.
Disrupting civilian life and the services used by those workers, including
their housing, also affects production, and therefore the economy. Causing a
refugee problem obviously affects the economy.
So almost all of the individually listed objectives, above, _are_ ways to
attack the enemy's economy.
In other words, are abombing _is_ aimed at economic targets. Mostly. There
is a non-economic objective, yes.
The one non-economic objective is, of course, the breakdown of the morale.
The hope that victory could be achieved solely by affecting the enemy's will
to fight. But note this is one, and the last one, of the intentions. And
there is a redundancy, because even if victory cannot be achieved solely by
sapping the enemy's will to fight, anyway the policy above will have
affected the enemy's _capability_ to fight - by hitting them in the economy.
In short, you are wrong.
William Black
Since when were workers houses not economic targets?
Malcom "Mal" Reynolds
<4b30f4d3$0$1137$4faf...@reader1.news.t
in.it>,
"Michele" <don'tspamm...@tln.it>
wrote:
>
> The one non-economic objective is, of course, the breakdown of the morale.
> The hope that victory could be achieved solely by affecting the enemy's will
> to fight. But note this is one, and the last one, of the intentions. And
> there is a redundancy, because even if victory cannot be achieved solely by
> sapping the enemy's will to fight, anyway the policy above will have
> affected the enemy's _capability_ to fight - by hitting them in the economy.
>
> In short, you are wrong.
Why did Britian feel that the Germans
would react differently, morale wise,
than the British did? It's my
understanding that the bombing of London
caused higher levels of morale
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
don'tspamm...@tln.it (Michele) wrote:
> Disrupting civilian life and the services used by those workers,
> including their housing, also affects production, and therefore the
> economy. Causing a refugee problem obviously affects the economy.
The projected effects of the bombing program were based on an
assessment of the effects of the Blitz on Britain. A combination of
information from "Mass Observation" and various production figures
allowed what seemed to the planners fairly accurate projections. Off
course there was also the point that the bombing program was the only
way to damage Germany and from 1941 could be pointed to whenever Stalin
demanded a second front.
Ken Young
Louis C
> Why did Britian feel that the Germans
> would react differently, morale wise,
> than the British did? It's my
> understanding that the bombing of London
> caused higher levels of morale
The bombing of London caused British morale to be tested, although it
held.
British authorities were worried about morale. The conclusion was that
a heavier strategic bombing offensive could work, the German bombers
had simply not been numerous enough and heavy enough. Also, the Allied
campaign was expected to be better run than the German one.
Finally, there weren't all that many alternatives. Note that to the
Germans, too, the Blitz was Plan B.
LC
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
atlas-...@invalid.invalid ( Reynolds) wrote:
> It's my
> understanding that the bombing of London
> caused higher levels of morale
The so called Blitz spirit was a popular myth. Sorry I can not remember
where I read this. Moral results varied greatly and it was found that
people who had spent the nights in shelters were not so efficient as
workers. Having factories bombed flat definitely affected production.
Triumph had designed a 350 twin which had been accepted as the standard
army motorbike. Production never started as the prototypes and jigs were
destroyed when Coventry was bombed. Somewhere I have a book on the
British efforts to move ammunition stowage and factories underground.
This involved an enormous amount of work in shifting spoil from mines
and quarries and lining the tunnels and caverns to control moisture.
IIRC this work continued until the end of 1943.
Ken Young
William Black
> Malcom Reynolds wrote:
>> Why did Britian feel that the Germans
>> would react differently, morale wise,
>> than the British did? It's my
>> understanding that the bombing of London
>> caused higher levels of morale
>
> The bombing of London caused British morale to be tested, although it
> held.
slept in the fields.
Throughput from the docks in Hull fell 70% despite the Germans not
disrupting the rail lines to any great extent because the workers could
get to work.
In 1941 bombing worked to an extent that worried the British leaders.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On 21 Dec, 16:49, "Michele" <don'tspammeat...@tln.it> wrote:
>
>> Area bombing _was_ aimed at economic targets.
>
> You are quite wrong.
No he is right.
> "The aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German
> workers
Workers are not economic targets? Cities are not major producers
of economic activity?
> and the disruption of civilised community life throughout Germany.
No more killings then, just make a mess of civil society. That will
hurt the economy.
> It should be emphasised that the destruction of houses, public
> utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on
> an unprecedented scale;
So Harris wanted most to survive to create a major refugee
problem. Which would strain the German economy. Note
what happens even today with large numbers of refugees.
> and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle
> fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are the
> accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy.
So break morale by the threat of more bombing.
> They are not by products of attempts to hit factories.
So Harris is admitting they expect the bombs that miss to have
an effect.
> The successes gained should be publicly assessed in terms of the
> extent to which they realise this policy. It should be made clear
> that the destruction of factory installations is only a part and by
> no means the most important part of the plan.
> Acreagres of housing devastation are infinitely more important."
> Harris to Undersecretary of State, Air Ministry, 25 Oct 1943. PRO Air
> 14/843.
So in effect, bomb the factories, bomb the cities to cause disruption
to the workforce and kill workers. The Coventry example showed
the disruptions to the city and workforce were more than the damage
to the factories.
Note by the way in 1943 Bomber Command could not really claim
to be hitting factories to someone so senior in the system, that person
would be able to see the intelligence.
In this one quote to rule them all idea I did not bother to write down
the exact words, but the gist goes like this,
Harris has made it clear he considered civilian war workers legitimate
targets, he considered Germans outside the economy, the young,
elderly, housewives (given they officially did not "work") to be left
alive, they were classified as a drain on the war economy.
So yes Harris was after military targets, and he defined them as
including the infrastructure supporting the targets, and creating
problems for the war economy by the need to replace all the
infrastructure. not just the machines at the factory.
Harris intended to destroy Germany's industrial cities, which would
kill civilians, Harris did not intend to kill German civilians because
that would destroy cities. After all there were plenty of Germans
living in small communities, the defences of which were so weak
that lower level, therefore more accurate, raids could be launched
against them.
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:mM1Ym.96437$Vq3....@newsfe04.ams2...
Despatch on War Operations by Harris.
The Strategic Air War Against Germany (The British Bombing
Survey unit report).
Both the above have been republished by Cass, in 1995 and 1998
respectively.
The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany by Webster and Frankland.
Mainly the final volume, documents and statistics.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, various reports.
One thing, it is clear the BBSU and USSBS reports contain a
steady number of errors about the other partner's activities.
That is use the US reports for USAAF the UK reports for the
RAF, rather than one report for both.
Spreadsheets of allied heavy bomber raids against the axis in Europe
by Richard Davis.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/catalog/books/Davis_B99.htm
If you click "download" you will be directed to a pdf file of the
book, if you click "CD-ROM" you will have the spreadsheets.
Michele
messaggio news:atlas-bugged-668D...@aries.ka.weretis.net...
First of all, let's remember more than one consideration that, while not
directly supporting the hope that a nation's morale could collapse under the
bombs, still weighed, IMHO, on the minds of the British decision-makers.
1. The British lacked another way to get back at Germany for quite some
time. They were fighting in secondary theaters, and there was the naval
war - where they were often on the defensive. Once the SU came into the
picture, showing the Soviets that Germany was being attacked became even
more important.
2. The decision-makers were of course influenced by the advice of top
military professionals. That means RAF top brass. And these men believed in
strategic bombing exactly because that was what prevented an air force from
being a "handmaid to the army". So it _had_ to work.
3. Plain and simple vengeance. The Germans had bombed London for two months
straight. They had bombed cities of low industrial significance, just in
hopes to, well, break the British morale (the so-called Baedeker raids). Now
it was their turn, as ye sow, etc.
Then there are the considerations that actually would apply to the
assessment of the chances of a German morale collapse.
4. The Londoners' morale held (calling it "higher" seems a bit too much).
Nevertheless the authorities were preoccupied at times. There were the
little incidents that got little publicity both at the time and in later
celebratory accounts; personnel refusing to leave the shelters; the fact
that sleeping in the tube was forbidden but the prohibition largely ignored;
the note by Nicolson, a junior government member, in his diary: "everyone is
worried about the feeling in the East End where there is much bitterness; it
is said that even the King and the Queen were booed the other day" (Sep 12
entry).
5. The British seem to have failed to notice the difference in the
relationship between the national authority and the population in Britain,
and in Germany. Some who had more insight seem to have thought that while
the German population would be powerless, Hitler's power was not as deep as
it seemed and the generals would have turned a morale collapse into
significant internal action.
6. All told, in any case, the German effort, which did cause the difficult
moments mentioned above, had lasted not all that long, and had been carried
out by a large fleet of medium bombers. What if we carry it on indefinitely,
with an immense fleet of heavy bombers?
7. And in any case, there is the redundancy I mentioned. The targets they
pounded in hopes to achieve that morale collapse were the same targets that
slowed, disrupted and finally crippled German war production. So even if
they did not achieve the morale collapse, they would degrade Germany's
war-making capabilities.
dilore
wrote:
> "dilore" <dirklo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> Actually the target was the things down there, civilian casualties were
> expected, but if the civilians were the real targets then armour
> piercing bombs to hit shelters, fragmentation bombs to hit civilians
> in the open and targeting the areas people moved to at night would
> have been done.
Answered with a quote of Harris in another reply. Civilians were the
main target.
Some participants here call them economic targets, I call that an
euphemism.
> > Churchill was, especially after the start of the V-weapon attacks, but
> > maybe already since the Blitz, thinking much in terms of reprisals.
>
> Perhaps it would be best to actually show the evidence Churchill was
> in this sort of mood.
E. g. from Tedder's 'Without Predudice', pg 581: " I advised strongly
against the
idea of reprisals, with which the Prime Minister was toying." (this
was in summer 44
after the flying bombs had began to be launched). More on that below.
> > Area bombing fitted well into this, but he also considered Anthrax
> > and poison gas.
>
> Perhaps it might be mentioned the anthrax and poison gas plans
> were all about if the Nazis started using chemical warfare.
No, it had nothing to do with a response to German chemical or
biological
attacks, but partly with V-weapons. Churchill to Ismay in summer 44:
1. I want you to think very seriously over this question of poison
gas. I would
not use it unless it could be shown either that (a) it was life or
death for us,
or (b) that it would shorten the war by a year.
2. It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used
it in the
last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church.
On the
other hand, in the last war bombing of open cities was regarded as
forbidden.
Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question
of fashion
changing as she does between long and short skirts for women.
3. I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay us to
use
poison gas, by which I mean principally mustard. We will want to gain
more
ground in Normandy so as not to be cooped up in a small area. We
could
probably deliver 20 tons to their 1 and for the sake of the 1 they
would bring
their bomber aircraft into the area against our superiority, thus
paying a heavy
toll.
4. Why have the Germans not used it? Not certainly out of moral
scruples
or affection for us. They have not used it because it does not pay
them. The
greatest temptation ever offered to them was the beaches of Normandy.
This they could have drenched with gas greatly to the hindrance of the
troops.
That they thought about it is certain and that they prepared against
our use of
gas is also certain. But they only reason they have not used it
against us is
that they fear the retaliation. What is to their detriment is to our
advantage.
5. Although one sees how unpleasant it is to receive poison gas
attacks,
from which nearly everyone recovers, it is useless to protest that an
equal
amount of H. E. will not inflict greater casualties and sufferings on
troops
and civilians. One really must not be bound within silly conventions
of the
mind whether they be those that ruled in the last war or those in
reverse
which rule in this.
6. If the bombardment of London became a serious nuisance and great
rockets with far-reaching and devastating effect fell on many centres
of
Government and labour, I should be prepared to do [underline]
anything
[stop underline] that would hit the enemy in a murderous place. I may
certainly
have to ask you to support me in using poison gas. We could drench the
cities
of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most
of
the population would be requiring constant medical attention. We
could
stop all work at the flying bomb starting points. I do not see why we
should
have the disadvantages of being the gentleman while they have all the
advantages of being the cad. There are times when this may be so but
not now.
7. I quite agree that it may be several weeks or even months before I
shall
ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let us do
it one
hundred per cent. In the meanwhile, I want the matter studied in cold
blood
by sensible people and not by that particular set of psalm-singing
uniformed
defeatists which one runs across now here now there. Pray address
yourself
to this. It is a big thing and can only be discarded for a big reason.
I shall of
course have to square Uncle Joe and the President; but you need not
bring
this into your calculations at the present time. Just try to find out
what it is
like on its merits.
> > These men had of course not solely the say in how the air war in
> > Germany was to be conducted.
>
> They actually did until the start of 1943, and effectively for most
> of 1943, given the overall strength of the 8th Air Force at the time
> and the troubles it was having.
The original poster was questioning about Harris being replaced by the
end
of 1943, so obviously 1944 and 45 was the focus of my answer to him.
Any
way, what they could and could not do in 43 and later was also a
matter
of public opinion, the press, the church and the House Of Commons.
That's
why we do not find things like 'killing workers' in the official
documents
but only in internal memos.
>> Eisenhower made the final decisions. He listened more to the
> > British air commanders who preferred the bombing of transportation
> > targets.
> Actually the Combined Chiefs of Staff had the final say in setting overall
> objectives, given it was a combined offensive.
I am not sure what these Combined Chiefs of Staff directives were
worth in
reality. It seemed more a matter of, uhm, 'adhering to the spirit 'of
them.
The directives for example included both city bombing and specific
targets but when it came to the implementation....
Harris wrt the Casablanca directive:
'The subject of morale had been dropped, and I was now required to
proceed with a joint Anglo-American bombing offensive for the general
disorganization of German industry ...which gave me a wide range of
choice and allowed me to attack pretty well any German industrial
city
of 100 000 inhabitants and above ... the new instructions therefore
made no difference.'
Harris, Bomber Offensive
Or Spaatz:
All proposals aimed at breaking the morale of the German people met
the
consistent opposition of General Spaatz, who repeatedly raised the
moral
issue involved, and American air force headquarters in Washington
supported
him on the grounds that such operations were contrary to air force
policy and
national ideals.
Max Hastings, Bomber Command
> Actually there were people in the USAAF advocating the same plan,
Like who? Brereton?
> > After the success of the 'Transportation Plan' in France, Portal began to
> > view these kind of attacks more favourably than before, but still
> > believed in city bombing as the war-winning strategy.
>
> This would be rather contradicting his correspondence with Harris
> asking for a more concentrated effort on specific target classes.
As I said, Portal was beginning to appreciate these kind of attacks.
Harris wasn't.
> > On the other hand, the RAF 'Oil- and
> > Transportation-lobby' (Tedder, Leigh-Mallory,
> > Bottomley) who had invented this very successful plan became less
> > influential after the invasion.
>
> No actually, the oil plan was carried out, the transport plan was put
> into proper service against Germany.
I didn't say the oil- and transportation bombings were not carried
out.
I gave figures showing they were. I said Tedder, Leigh-Mallory
and Bottomley lost influence (well, actually, Leigh-Mallory died in
Nov 44, but he and Tedder had lost influence by then anyway).
> Leigh-Mallory was not very influential, he seems to upset most people.
During the invasion he was quite influential. At that time he was
head of the allied tactical air forces, that was essentially
everything
flying over France except the heavies. And the Transportation Plan
was mainly his (will say his staff's) invention.
> > And Churchill became first after the bombing of Dresden in March 45 an
> > opponent to area bombing.
>
> Dresden was in February 1945,
But Churchill's note was from the 28th of march.
> > While Bomber Command in 1943 had devoted 80% of its bombs to area
> > bombing and almost 0% on communications and oil,
>
> Which is not surprising given the problems in finding those targets
> in Germany at night in 1943.
What about the 20% that were not area attacks? No way these could be
increased? RAF Bomber Command in 1943 was able to hit precision
targets deep inside Germany like Peenem�nde, the Ruhr dams, the Zeis
optical works in Jena, the harbour in Wilhelmshaven and the Dortmund-
Ems canal, What about increasing sea mining and anti-uboat missions?
Close support in North Africa or Sicily? City busting was not the only
option.
> Please note, bombing cities did plenty
> of damage to the transport infrastructure there, they were simply
> called area attacks, not transport strikes.
You may call city bombing transportation- or economical attacks, but
if you had
really studied the subject you should know better. The consensus
nowadays
among historians, Brittish included, is that the RAF area attacks were
aimed
at civilians.
> Given the majority of the 1945 campaign was fought in winter
> and early spring, and the winter had been a bad one, it is not
> surprising area bombing was used.
Given that the weather was that bad it is rather surprising that
65% of RAF Bomber Command's bombs were *not* used in area
bombing. Any way, darkness and bad weather was rather
unimportant by 1945 because a) since mid Jan the British were
able to fly heavy bomber missions in broad daylight because the
Luftwaffe resistance was negligible and b) the Brittish had better
bombing accuracy at night/in bad weather than even the USAAF
in daylight, due to the advanced radio/radar/beam technology used
and their crews' education/experience in them.
> In 1944 Bomber Command dropped 48,034 tons of bombs on
> oil targets,
Since you like to nitpick on numbers: 47 510 tons, according to
Harris's
own 'Despatch on war operations'.
> By the way, given the casualties in the Blitz why exactly does everything
> start with the British? The Germans used sea mines with parachutes,
> and also fragmentation bombs.
Definitely, and I can't say this with more emphasis, the Germans and
the
Japanese were the worst when it came to the *intention* of killing
civilians
by military means. But the allies did a much better job in this area
and killed
far more than the axis in the end. This is not what one would expect
of the
defenders of freedom and democracy. The Germans killed (or better,
murdered) 10 times more civilians using industrial and logistical
methods,
and this should always be remembered and taken in relation when
talking
about atrocities committed by the allies - these were quite minor in
comparision.
But they should still be reckognized as atrocities. Which a lot of
people here
seem to have a problem with.
> There are plenty of villages destroyed because they had an important
> bridge, or rail station etc.
Collateral damage is acceptable if people in a village are
killed because the bridge/railway station is shelled/bombed. It is
another
matter the village is destroyed because people are living in it..
> > Yes, Harris disobeyed orders to attack 'panacea-targets' from time
> > to time
>
> This seems to be a refrain based on his words, rather than a specific
> action.
What? That he disobeyed orders? You self referred to the Portal
controversy
he had early 45, then there was the one with Bottomley during the
Berlin raids
in late 44. Or do you mean the 'panacea' word?
> Perhaps fewer assumptions and more looking at the targets chosen
> might be in order. Start with the weather.
Regarding the weather see above.
> > Would a change in RAF bombing strategy have made a difference? There
> > was no revolution in Germany, so obviously Portal's and Harris's plan
> > failed and most of the men and material spent on this plan was used
> > in vain.
>
> So since Britain did not surrender in 1940 the German attack on France
> and the Low Countries was also in vain?
In the end? Yes. What good had Germany of the attack on France,
Begium,
the Netherlands and Luxemburg in 1946?
> What a criteria, the enemy has to surrender otherwise the campaign is
> useless.
Well, wrt Harris and Co, I assume a seize-fire agreement would not
have been
sufficient.
> That things like the Atlantic Wall would have been tougher if the
> construction assets working in Germany were released?
The Atlantic wall would have been tougher, more 88s would have
been deployed on the easternj front and more repair workers
would have been enlisted or working in the industry if *no*
bombing would have occured. If vital areas of the German
war machine, like syntheyhic oil production, bridges, railyards.
viaducts, canals, arnament and ball-bearing factories, airfields,
electrical grids and power stations had been attacked more, the
Atlantic wall would have, been weaker, fewer 88s would have been
deployed against the Soviets and more repair workers would have
been allocated.
> I note there is no answer to the what else was possible idea.
See above.
> You are aware of the inefficiencies on the oil campaign, plants would
> be back in production for a few weeks before being attacked again,
> other plants would be attacked before they were back in production?
Then attack them again, around the clock, The resources were there,
but they were used on cities.
> > Almost half of Britain's war industry was allocated to Bomber Command.
> This is simply wrong. You only have to look at the rest of the war
> economy and the size of the army for example.
> The British Bombing Survey Unit, the one with the effects of area
> bombing calculation, decides Bomber Command overall cost 7%
> of the British war effort, but 12% in the final 30 months of the war.
I have only a secondary source for this and grant you that one.
> > It lost 55 500 expensively educated
> > aircrewcrew, each killing about 10 Germans and destoying unvaluable
> > cultural treasures.
>
> Apparently the bombers did not actually damage and destroy factories,
> only art works and civilians.
Good point. I went over my head here...
> > The RAF Bomber offensive bound a lot of German resources, but one can
> > assume that this would have been the
> > case, probably even to a larger extent, if more vital areas of the
> > German war machine had been attacked.
>
> Ah, so if the attack is more successful the Germans are going to have
> more stuff to defend against the attack. Which presumably means things
> like the German army have lots less?
Yes.
> Oh, I see, even if the attack works
> the Germans are granted more defences so the attack does not work.
In 44/45 the synthetic oil plants were the heaviest (air-) defended
places in
Germany. One can wonder why. They were bombed, and eventually
destroyed, Despite the defenses, The attack worked.
Dirk
Michele
news:001484b6-3fc6-45de...@g26g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
> On 22 Dec, 16:38, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "dilore" <dirklo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>
>> Actually the target was the things down there, civilian casualties were
>> expected, but if the civilians were the real targets then armour
>> piercing bombs to hit shelters, fragmentation bombs to hit civilians
>> in the open and targeting the areas people moved to at night would
>> have been done.
>
> Answered with a quote of Harris in another reply. Civilians were the
> main target.
> Some participants here call them economic targets, I call that an
> euphemism.
This only shows you read the quote but did not understand the point.
Pray tell how removing the "workers" does not affect the economy.
SolomonW
> Bomber Command, month, total bomb tonnage dropped / percentage dropped
> on oil,
> Jun-44 64008.7 / 9.25
Please what is your source for these Bomber Command figures. Note I do not
doubt them.
Don Phillipson
news:atlas-bugged-668D...@aries.ka.weretis.net... . . .
> > . . . the breakdown of the morale.
> > The hope that victory could be achieved solely by affecting the enemy's
will
> > to fight. . . .
> Why did Britian feel that the Germans would react differently, morale
wise,
> than the British did? It's my understanding that the bombing of London
> caused higher levels of morale
No evidence suggests German bombing "caused higher levels of morale"
anywhere in Britain. The immediate point (for the government) was that
civilian morale did not crack (as prewar theorists had forecast) so
propaganda could be made (for overseas consumption as well as
in the UK) about the heroism of firemen, night fighter pilots, and
ordinary mothers as well.
More generally, we find no evidence that either German or British
bombing policy (British 1942-45, German 1940-41 and 1944-45,
latterly via V1 and V2 missiles) was ever based on or directed by
predictions of how bombed civilians would react. It appears
neither British nor German high command saw any need for
such a doctrine: correspondingly there seems to be no
evidence that either belligerent tried to measure (or tried to show in
propaganda) that our side's civilians were braver than the
enemy's. British propaganda pointed out (truly) that Germany
had been since the middle 1930s a one-party dictatorship, not a
democracy; German propaganda often featured race theory
(viz. that certain gene pools were ipso facto inferior or anti-German)
that classified British civilians as more or less "Aryan" like German
civilians (although more misled by the Global Jewish Conspiracy:)
this did not forecast differences in behavior under bombing.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On 22 Dec, 16:38, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "dilore" <dirklo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Some deleted text,
">>> Harris had the backing of Churchill and Portal, Portal and Harris
>>> believed Bomber Command could win the war by itself by killing
>>> or harming so many civilians, preferably workers, so that the Hitler
>>> regime would eventually be overthrown by a revolution like in 1918."
>> Actually the target was the things down there, civilian casualties were
>> expected, but if the civilians were the real targets then armour
>> piercing bombs to hit shelters, fragmentation bombs to hit civilians
>> in the open and targeting the areas people moved to at night would
>> have been done.
>
> Answered with a quote of Harris in another reply.
No, and as I noted in the reply to that quote, Harris is on the
record as not wanting to kill women, children and the elderly.
They were a drain to the economy in his terms.
He was quite open about his willingness to kill workers.
If you believe Harris for one quote you need to show why
other quotes are ignored or declared wrong. That is the
problem of history by quote, plenty of quotes that contradict
each other. Therefore evidence is required.
>Civilians were the main target.
No. See the Harris quotes, even the one you used, dead people
do not become refugees. The physical infrastructure is not human.
> Some participants here call them economic targets, I call that an
> euphemism.
Actually people have noted the reality of total war, almost everybody
is contributing to the war effort. So where exactly is the line drawn
about who or what is a legitimate target?
Harris drew it at workers, you are deciding civilians, whatever
that truly means in terms of when civilian casualties are acceptable
and when they are not.
The conventions of the time made it clear civilian casualties were
to be avoided, but it was not absolute. Think of the number of
civilian casualties from ground attack on settlements, from villages
through to cities.
>> > Churchill was, especially after the start of the V-weapon attacks, but
>> > maybe already since the Blitz, thinking much in terms of reprisals.
>>
>> Perhaps it would be best to actually show the evidence Churchill was
>> in this sort of mood.
>
> E. g. from Tedder's 'Without Predudice', pg 581: " I advised strongly
> against the idea of reprisals, with which the Prime Minister was toying."
I like the way "toying" and thinking about something not done is
considered a bad thing.
Also please let us know what constitutes much, presumably more
than just one memo.
> (this
> was in summer 44
> after the flying bombs had began to be launched). More on that below.
Where is the one from the Blitz? That was the one I was after.
>> > Area bombing fitted well into this, but he also considered Anthrax
>> > and poison gas.
>>
>> Perhaps it might be mentioned the anthrax and poison gas plans
>> were all about if the Nazis started using chemical warfare.
>
> No, it had nothing to do with a response to German chemical or
> biological attacks, but partly with V-weapons.
And the other memos about what to do if the Germans launched a
chemical attack are where? Seen the May 1944 ideas on what to
do if the Germans used gas warfare?
And Anthrax appears where? You claim it was part of the V
weapon activity.
> Churchill to Ismay in summer 44:
>
> 1. I want you to think very seriously over this question of poison
> gas. I would not use it unless it could be shown either that (a) it was
> life or death for us, or (b) that it would shorten the war by a year.
The V weapons were not life or death, it would be interesting
to see how it could be proved the war would be shortened by
a year.
> 2. It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used
> it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or
> the Church.
Ah yes, standards change then history is rejudged by the new standards.
> On the other hand, in the last war bombing of open cities was regarded
> as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply
> a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short
> skirts for women.
Actually it is more about capability, they could now do it, and it should
be pointed out the Germans raided English cities in WWI and that was
considered an act of war, not atrocity.
> 3. I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay us to
> use poison gas, by which I mean principally mustard. We will want to gain
> more ground in Normandy so as not to be cooped up in a small area. We
> could probably deliver 20 tons to their 1 and for the sake of the 1 they
> would bring their bomber aircraft into the area against our superiority,
> thus paying a heavy toll.
So far not revenge but what is the price of using chemical warfare.
> 4. Why have the Germans not used it? Not certainly out of moral scruples
> or affection for us. They have not used it because it does not pay them.
> The greatest temptation ever offered to them was the beaches of Normandy.
Which is why a number of plans were drawn up assuming gas attacks.
> This they could have drenched with gas greatly to the hindrance of the
> troops. That they thought about it is certain and that they prepared
> against our use of gas is also certain. But they only reason they have
> not used it against us is that they fear the retaliation. What is to their
> detriment is to our advantage.
So in other words a balance of terror and the Germans appear weaker
than some expected because they did not use gas in Normandy.
> 5. Although one sees how unpleasant it is to receive poison gas attacks,
> from which nearly everyone recovers, it is useless to protest that an
> equal amount of H. E. will not inflict greater casualties and sufferings
> on
> troops and civilians. One really must not be bound within silly
> conventions
> of the mind whether they be those that ruled in the last war or those in
> reverse which rule in this.
In other words mustard gas is no more or less humane than HE and
shrapnel in Churchill's eyes.
> 6. If the bombardment of London became a serious nuisance and great
> rockets with far-reaching and devastating effect fell on many centres
> of Government and labour, I should be prepared to do [underline]
> anything [stop underline] that would hit the enemy in a murderous place.
Actually in essence Churchill is saying why not use chemical weapons
and a strong series of air raids might be a trigger.
>I may certainly
> have to ask you to support me in using poison gas. We could drench the
> cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that
> most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention.
So drop the gas as an irritant, not as a lethal attack.
> We could stop all work at the flying bomb starting points. I do not see
> why we should have the disadvantages of being the gentleman while
> they have all the advantages of being the cad. There are times when
> this may be so but not now.
Mustard gas would not stop the V weapon work.
In this case the cad would be the first user.
> 7. I quite agree that it may be several weeks or even months before I
> shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let
> us do it one hundred per cent. In the meanwhile, I want the matter
> studied in cold blood by sensible people and not by that particular
> set of psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which one runs across now
> here now there. Pray address yourself to this. It is a big thing and can
> only be discarded for a big reason. I shall of course have to square
> Uncle Joe and the President; but you need not bring this into your
> calculations at the present time. Just try to find out what it is
> like on its merits.
So in other words what are the costs and benefits of a gas attack.
Churchill is wanting to see about gas, V weapons look like an excuse.
You add anthrax, "much" and revenge. Quite a memo, considering
Churchill is known to have continually fired off memos like this all war,
questioning what could be done.
>> > These men had of course not solely the say in how the air war in
>> > Germany was to be conducted.
>>
>> They actually did until the start of 1943, and effectively for most
>> of 1943, given the overall strength of the 8th Air Force at the time
>> and the troubles it was having.
>
> The original poster was questioning about Harris being replaced by the
> end of 1943, so obviously 1944 and 45 was the focus of my answer to him.
>
> Any way, what they could and could not do in 43 and later was also a
> matter of public opinion, the press, the church and the House Of Commons.
> That's why we do not find things like 'killing workers' in the official
> documents but only in internal memos.
You quote a letter from Harris to the Under Secretary of State for Air
which has the phrase and now it is a memo, not an official document?
How about "not a public document at the time"?
>>> Eisenhower made the final decisions. He listened more to the
>> > British air commanders who preferred the bombing of transportation
>> > targets.
>
>> Actually the Combined Chiefs of Staff had the final say in setting
>> overall objectives, given it was a combined offensive.
>
> I am not sure what these Combined Chiefs of Staff directives were
> worth in reality.
Like the one about Eisenhower in charge? The directives were the
basic plan, the powers were then delegated to commanders in
theatre.
> It seemed more a matter of, uhm, 'adhering to the spirit 'of them.
> The directives for example included both city bombing and specific
> targets but when it came to the implementation....
>
> Harris wrt the Casablanca directive:
The Casablanca directive was the first attempt, there were later
directives, and then the directives from Joint Chiefs of Staff level.
Using the first example is not much of an example, the USAAF
had barely started to bomb Germany for a start, people were
still working out what to do, particularly ideas like day then
night strikes on the same target (or vice versa). For that matter
the airmen were still over estimating their abilities.
> 'The subject of morale had been dropped, and I was now required to
> proceed with a joint Anglo-American bombing offensive for the general
> disorganization of German industry ...which gave me a wide range of
> choice and allowed me to attack pretty well any German industrial
> city of 100 000 inhabitants and above ... the new instructions therefore
> made no difference.'
> Harris, Bomber Offensive
In other words the directive was simply too general. Something that
was understood during the war. Things were later tightened up.
Note by the way if civilians were the target Harris would have said
any German settlement.
> Or Spaatz:
> All proposals aimed at breaking the morale of the German people met
> the consistent opposition of General Spaatz, who repeatedly raised the
> moral issue involved, and American air force headquarters in Washington
> supported him on the grounds that such operations were contrary to air
> force policy and national ideals.
> Max Hastings, Bomber Command
Oh good, Max Hastings is one of those who consistently comes up
when people want to go with advertising rather than substance.
If Spaatz was really going to do what he said then he should have
banned H2X strikes, the early ones were worse than the 1942
night bombers.
Instead H2X grew to be a major way the 8th Air Force dropped
bombs.
You have seen the raid orders for one early USAAF marshalling yard
attack, that explicitly stated the workers were also legitimate targets?
Heard of the post war clean up of the files regarding what were the
official targets?
>> Actually there were people in the USAAF advocating the same plan,
>
> Like who? Brereton?
Read the book Pre Invasion Bombing Strategy by Rostow?
You do understand the transport plan in France was all about cutting
German army communications, and the fighter bombers and medium
bombers did the most in accomplishing that objective. The heavy
bomber commanders were sceptical about what they could do and
they were largely right in terms of the effects they had on German
military communications. Even though Harris was largely wrong
about bombing accuracy.
The transport plan against Germany was all about crippling the
economy plus military mobility and the heavy bombers where the
major achievers, but it took the medium bombers and fighter
bombers as well.
Same labels, but aiming for some additional results.
It comes down to marshalling yards, for military trains made up in
Germany and routed to and from France a lack of marshalling
yards is largely irrelevant (though the associated repair facilities
are useful), for an economy marshalling yards are where bulk
shipments are broken down for shipment to individual customers.
You can make a good case much of the damage done to French
marshalling yards did little to aid the invasion, mainly the loss of
repair facilities, the Germans cared little for the French economy,
but the attacks did much to prove the concept for use against
Germany. Given their military effect in 1944 and loss of civilian
lives in the attacks does this make them justified?
You see the area attacks on Germany provided the evidence to
enable more accurate attacks later, the size of the attacks provided
justification for resources to improve those attacks.
No area attacks and the bomber offensive is largely halted at night
and significantly reduced by day. The radio and radar aids were
developed for the night bombers and adopted by the day ones.
The USAAF made a major miscalculation on how much good
weather was going to be available.
In the end though the weather still dictated what sort of attack
could be done, area attacks in bad weather or no attack at all.
And yes, area attacks were done in reasonable weather in 1945.
Perhaps you can let people know when the heavy bombers should
have ceased attacks. The US Army took 41,000 casualties in April
1945, around 8,000 dead.
Also with regards to the 55,000 Bomber Command dead, the US
army had around 122,000 dead in Europe June 1944 to May 1945,
plus another 344,000 wounded. You can see why the air commanders
were really interested in ending the war without large scale ground
combat. (Note it could be in the figures I have US Army includes
USAAF)
>> > After the success of the 'Transportation Plan' in France, Portal began
>> > to view these kind of attacks more favourably than before, but still
>> > believed in city bombing as the war-winning strategy.
>>
>> This would be rather contradicting his correspondence with Harris
>> asking for a more concentrated effort on specific target classes.
>
> As I said, Portal was beginning to appreciate these kind of attacks.
> Harris wasn't.
Actually what you said was Portal was still area bombing first. That
contradicts his efforts to prod Harris on target selection.
You claim to know Portal's mind but do not show how.
>> > On the other hand, the RAF 'Oil- and
>> > Transportation-lobby' (Tedder, Leigh-Mallory,
>> > Bottomley) who had invented this very successful plan became less
>> > influential after the invasion.
>>
>> No actually, the oil plan was carried out, the transport plan was put
>> into proper service against Germany.
>
> I didn't say the oil- and transportation bombings were not carried
> out. I gave figures showing they were.
And the transport plan against Germany from late 1944 onwards
was carried out.
> I said Tedder, Leigh-Mallory
> and Bottomley lost influence (well, actually, Leigh-Mallory died in
> Nov 44, but he and Tedder had lost influence by then anyway).
And you would be wrong, the transport plan, the thing Tedder
really thought was the right way to attack the German economy,
went into service. Tedder was a driving force behind the
decision since it needed the heavy bombers. Leigh-Mallory was
always in trouble, he continually upset people and was not part
of the original Mediterranean command, which made him
something of an outsider. The post he was appointed to
appeared superfluous, in particular as the ex Mediterranean
people tended to deal direct with each other.
Eisenhower was officially informed Leigh-Mallory was heading
to the Far East on 22 August 1944.
Bottomley and Tedder retained their posts.
By the way how can Bottomley and Tedder lose influence if
Harris is supposed to be ignoring them all along?
The first transport plan lapsed when France was over run, the various
air commands then reverted to more autonomy, which resulted in
divergences. Tedder was instrumental in creating another combined
plan, the transport plan against Germany.
>> Leigh-Mallory was not very influential, he seems to upset most people.
>
> During the invasion he was quite influential. At that time he was
> head of the allied tactical air forces, that was essentially
> everything flying over France except the heavies. And the
> Transportation Plan was mainly his (will say his staff's) invention.
In short no, the ideas came from the Mediterranean, his staff would
be significantly involved in the day to day targeting, since the overall
plan needed the heavies it was laid out at a higher level.
Think Tedder. He had been part of the plan in Italy, and the bomber
barons were not interested in taking orders from Leigh-Mallory
>> > And Churchill became first after the bombing of Dresden in March 45 an
>> > opponent to area bombing.
>>
>> Dresden was in February 1945,
>
> But Churchill's note was from the 28th of march.
So the date is the memo date, which of course is so close to the end
of the war, all western allied armies across the Rhine and rapidly
advancing, the question of what to bomb was rather pertinent.
>> > While Bomber Command in 1943 had devoted 80% of its bombs to area
>> > bombing and almost 0% on communications and oil,
>>
>> Which is not surprising given the problems in finding those targets
>> in Germany at night in 1943.
>
> What about the 20% that were not area attacks?
Mainly on non German/Italian targets. At least in official terms.
157,457 long tons dropped.
136,433 on Germany 86.65% of tonnage
5,988 tons on Italy.
131,464 on towns. 83.49% of tonnage.
Bomber Command did not officially area bomb non German or
Italian targets, but in fact did so to some French ports. City and
U-Boat target classification, in early 1943, a direct order to Harris.
By the way Harris complained long and loud about orders to
attack U-boat harbours. He still carried out the attacks, in this
case he was right.
About 2% of the bombs were on oil and transport, 2.5% on
armaments (including a series of Oboe marked raids on Krupps),
1.5% on chemical plants, Peenemunde rates at 1.25% of effort.
With these low percentages you could certainly officially lift the
effort by some changes in labels, whether there would be any
sort of real change is another matter.
Oboe began to be used for raids on targets in the Ruhr, the
trouble being making sure the Oboe aircraft arrived on time
with operating equipment, then since there were only a few
Oboe aircraft the marking had to be properly backed up by
non Oboe aircraft. There also had to be not too much cloud.
When things worked the results were accurate, though Essen
took significant damage from the raids aimed at Krupps.
A raid on Duisburg caused significant destruction to the port
area, four steel mills as well as the centre of town, carried as
an area raid. As are almost all the Oboe guided raids by
the main force in 1943
At Bochum decoy markers seem to have lured the bombs away.
At Barmen (Wuppertal) 80% of the built up area was destroyed
by fire, 5 of the 6 largest factories, 211 industrial premises and
4,000 houses destroyed, a further 71 industrial buildings an 1,800
houses were classified as severely damaged. About 3,400 people
killed. This was the first heavy raid against the target and as was
common in first heavy raids the air raid and damage control system
was found wanting.
At Eberfeld (Wuppertal) 94% of the city destroyed, 171 industrial
premises and 3,000 houses destroyed, 53 industrial premises and
2,500 houses severely damaged, around 1,800 people killed.
The 11 June Dusseldorf raid killed 1,292 people and made 140,000
homeless, a list of destroyed or seriously damaged industrial and public
buildings runs to 4 pages. 42 war industries completely shut down,
35 suffered partial shut downs, 8 ships sunk. Carried as an area raid.
The 3 July raid on Cologne, aiming at the industrial east of the city
is carried as an area raid, 20 industrial premises and 2,200 houses
destroyed, 588 people killed, 72,000 made homeless.
In roughly the first week in July some 350,000 Germans were made
homeless by raids on the Ruhr, mainly using Oboe lead marking.
And so on, the Hamburg firestorm raid used H2S to aim the markers.
See the Bomber Command War Diaries by Middlebrook and Everitt?
They try to include the German raid report as part of the diary entry.
> No way these could be increased?
On Germany, no, based on the average bombing accuracy achieved.
You certainly could change the name of the raid type.
Like the thousand bomber raid on Cologne, the aiming points were
basically on the main transport links through the city. Classified as
an area attack.
> RAF Bomber Command in 1943 was able to hit precision
> targets deep inside Germany like Peenem�nde,
German coast. H2S always worked best when there was a
strong water/land contrast.
596 sorties, 571 credited with attacking, 40 lost, most from the
last wave, of some 170 or so bombers, when the German night
fighter force finally sent some fighters, the Germans involved had
no idea why the RAF would be bombing the area. Surely the real
target was Berlin?
Moonlight night, by this stage Bomber Command was standing
the main force down on nights near the full moon, as the casualties
were simply too great. It took a special target to change that.
One of the first things even a relatively weak night defence does
is deny the moonlight nights, the casualties become too much.
> the Ruhr dams,
German border area. Moonlight night.
19 sorties, 8 lost.
> the Zeis optical works in Jena,
Low level day Mosquitoes, the UK production system was having
trouble keeping two squadrons at full strength at the time.
14 sorties, 3 lost, 21.4% casualties on 27 May 1943.
Actually for the Zeiss works it was 3 effective sorties 1 lost, 3 short
tons of bombs.
Schott was 3 effective sorties 2 lost, 3 short tons on bombs
Jena city was 2 effective sorties, none lost, 2 short tons of bombs.
> the harbour in Wilhelmshaven
German coast. Lots of raids, however most by small forces.
A series of 4 strong raids in February 1943, some 741 sorties
credited with attacking, 18 lost. No further large raids until
October 1944.
What exactly was in the harbour at Wilhelmshaven that was
so vital?
The 11 February raid was considered the first major H2S
marking success. The 18, 19 and 24 February raids were
failures, largely missing the town.
> and the Dortmund- Ems canal,
German border area. Moonlight night.
Raid of 15 September 1943, low level, 8 sorties, 5 lost, canal
not hit.
The result combined with the dams raid made it clear low level
attacks against Germany by heavy bombers at night were non
viable.
So far the precision plans amount to heavy losses without
compensating gains. Any commander consistently returning
these results would find themselves out of a job.
Also none of them go deep into Germany, where things like the
main synthetic oil plants were.
> What about increasing sea mining and anti-uboat missions?
Anti U-boat was Coastal Command. If more were required
it was time to increase Coastal Command. Or is the idea
to bulk up the attacks on Germany Coastal Command should
be used for that?
Minelaying hardly destroys a specific part of the German economy.
Mines laid in 1943 13,834, in 1944 17,500. By the way the use
of larger aircraft meant the 1943 effort was 5,319 sorties, 128
failed to return, and 1944 5,271 sorties, 74 failed to return.
Harris is on record as an enthusiastic supporter of minelaying
and did the job diligently, the RN had no major complaints. He
also demanded the mines be modified to drop from higher altitudes
and speeds as losses in 1943 spiked. This was done.
The Navy were the people giving minelaying targets.
> Close support in North Africa or Sicily?
Neither bases, supplies nor doctrine were available.
There is a reason Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force stayed
in the UK, even their fighters, and that was supply. In the end bulk
fuel pipelines were used.
As an example, a British armoured division required 1,000 British
gallons per mile, so a 25 mile movement is 25,000 gallons. You
could put 2,154 gallons into a Lancaster, so 25 miles on the ground
is the same as launching 12 Lancasters with full fuel. A 1,000
Lancaster raid uses say 2,000,000 gallons or 2,000 armoured
division miles, say 50 miles for 40 armoured divisions.
Put it another way the disposable load of a Lancaster was
around 14 short tons, so let us say 12 short tons of load used
in a raid, times 1,000 sorties is 12,000 tons. In mid September
1944 12th Army Group wanted 550 tons per day per divisional
slice, that is all assets, including air, divided by the number of
divisions present. So 12,000 tons is almost 22 divisions or
most of the front line strength of the Army Group (including
corps and army assets) and the 9th Air Force.
> City busting was not the only option.
Against Germany at night in 1943 the answer is effectively the
only option.
Essentially you want the allied command to devote considerable
resources to attacks on peripheral targets in the hope the radio
aids being developed will enable a major, precise heavy bomber
attack on Germany in 1944. To your definition of precise and
presumably not in bad weather.
Now if those radio aids fail the strategy is a massive waste.
If those heavy bombers are not bombing Germany they are not
going to be built except in small numbers, and therefore not be
available in 1944 for the great precision attack. It takes years
to build up the system. The allies had plenty of other fronts
asking for resources, few allied commands thought they had
enough aircraft during 1942 and 1943.
>> Please note, bombing cities did plenty
>> of damage to the transport infrastructure there, they were simply
>> called area attacks, not transport strikes.
>
> You may call city bombing transportation- or economical attacks, but
> if you had really studied the subject you should know better.
No, I note how people stick to the announced target without looking at
what damage was done and what sort of damage could be expected,
then attack Harris because he was honest about the expected results.
The USSBS notes the area attacks on the Ruhr knocked out a number
of the smaller oil plants.
Heavy bombers going after targets in cities will largely hit the city,
not the target, in the conditions over Germany in WWII.
The raid on Huls (22 June 1943, 224 B-17s despatched plus 11
YB40s, 183 attacked 15 B-17s and 1 YB-40 lost). After the raid
the bomb craters were found over an area of 12 square miles, 20%
of the bombs dropped hit the 541 acre (0.84 square miles) site. If
the site were a square then each side fence would be 4650 feet long.
This was done in good weather and was one of the more successful
strikes.
So it was officially a strike on the rubber plant, in reality 80% of
the effort was on something else.
So is this an acceptable strike? Because if it is not then you need
to move to a ban the bomber stance.
> The consensus nowadays
> among historians, Brittish included, is that the RAF area attacks were
> aimed at civilians.
No, though I do note as the gap between what was possible in 1944
and what was possible now widens more people think the bombing
could have been done better.
The attacks were aimed at cities and the economic value they generated.
Again if you are going after civilians use AP to bust shelters,
fragmentation bombs to hit people in the open and bomb the smaller
settlements and where people are evacuated to.
No place in Germany safe sort of idea.
>> Given the majority of the 1945 campaign was fought in winter
>> and early spring, and the winter had been a bad one, it is not
>> surprising area bombing was used.
>
> Given that the weather was that bad it is rather surprising that
> 65% of RAF Bomber Command's bombs were *not* used in area
> bombing.
Ah yes, it is good to see your fixed point of view on display. I note
the weather is not mentioned as a factor, or wished away.
> Any way, darkness and bad weather was rather
> unimportant by 1945
What a total joke. Bad weather matters even today.
> because a) since mid Jan the British were
> able to fly heavy bomber missions in broad daylight because the
> Luftwaffe resistance was negligible
Bad weather is a day and night problem.
Actually the Luftwaffe fighter force never went away, in numeric
terms the 8th Air Force lost as many heavy bombers to enemy
fighters in 1945 as they had in the bad times in 1943. The
numeric strength of the day defences of Germany about doubled
during 1944. Fortunately for the allies the pilot quality dropped
dramatically.
The bombers needed fighter escort, since the 8th Air Force
escorts were committed that meant the largely shorter ranged
RAF fighters, something of a limit on what targets could be
bombed. Effectively the Ruhr or targets in the border areas.
So in 1945 some 44,289 night sorties, 1.4% lost, and 18,545
day sorties, 0.5% lost.
Note the loss figures were also lower for the day operations
carried out from August to December 1944, 1.1% at night,
0.7% by day.
Consider from the loss rates that Bomber Command would
have flown its missions by day if it could. Also consider the
amount of daylight available in January in Europe.
The first daylight bombing raid on Germany by Bomber Command
heavies after D-Day was on 27 August 1944, the Homberg oil
plant.
The RAF did have Mustang units, some were in use, others on
the anti shipping strikes off Norway.
The B-17 and B-24 could not fight off enemy fighter attacks,
no one was expecting Lancasters to even do that well. Even
poorly trained Luftwaffe fighter pilots could be expected to
score against unescorted Lancasters.
> and b) the Brittish had better
> bombing accuracy at night/in bad weather than even the USAAF
> in daylight, due to the advanced radio/radar/beam technology used
> and their crews' education/experience in them.
In short no. Accuracy went up, but visual bombing remained
the most accurate way, once you moved beyond a small strike.
Like a series of Oboe Mosquitoes.
You have seen the USSBS report on accuracy on key oil targets?
The USSBS analysis of all the raids on Leuna, Zeitz and
Ludwigshafen, 509,000 USAAF bombs at an average weight
of 338 pounds, 264,000 RAF bombs at an average weight of
660 pounds, 27,000 tons of bombs, 3,376 tons landed within
the installation fences, of this 3,376 tons 473 tons (14%) failed
to explode, 2,093 tons (62%) did little damage and 810 tons
(24%) did vital damage. As the sites were hundreds of acres
in size it can be seen calling this sort of bombing precision is
an exercise in marketing, not reality.
The final USSBS note is the bombing accuracy for these raids.
8th Air Force, visual bombing 26.8%
8th Air Force part visual/part instrument 12.4%
8th Air Force full instrument 5.4%
Bomber Command at night 15.8%
Weighted average (by bombs dropped) 12.6%
It turns out Bomber Command, on average, over a number of raids in
late 1944 and early 1945, put more of its bombs on these targets than
the 8th. Visual bombing was still the best, when it could be done.
Can it be explained for example why the attack on Bohlen, 60 miles
from Dresden, on the same night, was a total failure? Icing clouds is
the RAF explanation, apparently they never bothered to do a post
raid reconnaissance, it was considered such a failure.
By the way since the USAAF failed to adopt these more accurate
methods can we claim much of the late war USAAF effort was
against civilians?
>> In 1944 Bomber Command dropped 48,034 tons of bombs on
>> oil targets,
>
> Since you like to nitpick on numbers: 47 510 tons, according to
> Harris's own 'Despatch on war operations'.
Try the 47,510 tons is the 1945 figure.
I note the deletion of the incorrect figures for Bomber Command
targets, apparently correcting them is nitpicking.
also some deleted text, firstly completing my paragraph above.
"this compares with 157,457 tons of bombs dropped
for all of 1943, of which 136,433 tons were dropped on Germany.
Simply no oil campaign was going to work in 1943, the bomb
lift was not enough, the reduced set of targets would have really
helped the defences as well.
There was no possibility of a concentrated attack on a key sector
of the German economy without something approaching air
superiority. Also the accuracy the night bombers needed meant
it was not until 1944 they could really start such a campaign.
When it came to bombs dropped on Germany the mid point of
the Bomber Command campaign was the end of September 1944.
One day the weather will be mentioned, instead of this assumption
it was all a free choice. The emphasis had switched to more
specific plans, with area attacks the bad weather option. There
is at least one large attack on a oil plant classified as an area
attack because of bad weather. Similar for a series of trial
attacks using the new GH bombing aid."
>> By the way, given the casualties in the Blitz why exactly does everything
>> start with the British? The Germans used sea mines with parachutes,
>> and also fragmentation bombs.
>
> Definitely, and I can't say this with more emphasis, the Germans and
> the Japanese were the worst when it came to the *intention* of killing
> civilians by military means. But the allies did a much better job in this
> area and killed far more than the axis in the end.
You do know the latest reports from the USSR indicate it lost about
the same number of people in air raids as Germany? The series of
raids on Stalingrad before the Germans arrived, where there were
lots of people trying to flee the Germans, comes in at Hamburg or
Dresden levels of human lives lost.
By the way, per ton of bombs dropped the Germans did a lot better
as did the Japanese, the civilian defence systems were not as good
in the areas they attacked.
And given the number of deaths in China, and 7 years of war, how
sure are you the Japanese air force killed fewer civilians there than
the USAAF did in Japan?
> This is not what one would expect of the
> defenders of freedom and democracy.
Good to know the allies are judged at a higher level of behaviour.
> The Germans killed (or better,
> murdered) 10 times more civilians using industrial and logistical
> methods,
The 10 times would put the killing program against Jews alone at
under 6 million.
Then there are all those malnutrition and maybe starvation cases in
the east.
The Red Army prisoners that died. Being Jewish was the reason
for about half the Nazi killings.
> and this should always be remembered and taken in relation when
> talking about atrocities committed by the allies - these were quite
> minor in comparision.
> But they should still be reckognized as atrocities. Which a lot of
> people here seem to have a problem with.
It is really simple, you have largely decided air raids on areas with
civilians are atrocities. However as long as someone sticks a label
on the raid, like attacking factory X, they are considered acceptable.
Anybody admitting the real accuracy is condemned.
You have decided people making the weapons are not allowed to
be targets.
>> There are plenty of villages destroyed because they had an important
>> bridge, or rail station etc.
>
> Collateral damage is acceptable if people in a village are
> killed because the bridge/railway station is shelled/bombed.
So as long as the raid says trying for X, it is acceptable, regardless
of the known precision of free fall bombs. Even if say a majority
of the people there die?
So if someone works there way through the Bomber Command
raids and reclassifies then according to their aiming points, which
will drop the area attack category down, then those raids now
become acceptable I gather.
> It is
> another matter the village is destroyed because people are living in it..
The cities were destroyed because of their economic production.
>> > Yes, Harris disobeyed orders to attack 'panacea-targets' from time
>> > to time
>>
>> This seems to be a refrain based on his words, rather than a specific
>> action.
>
> What? That he disobeyed orders?
So all you need to do is provide actual evidence, go on, it would be
easy according to you, not his objections to the policy, but clear
evidence of raids diverted. In the exchange over oil targets Harris
challenged Portal to find evidence, pointing out Harris was doing
the strikes because when they failed he was not going to let the
planners claim it was Bomber Command's fault.
I have done things like compare the 8th Air Force and Bomber
Command efforts and noted how hard it is to accuse Harris
of doing the wrong thing without accusing the 8th of the same
wrong doing..
So far we have not seen anything about the 8th Air Force from you,
beyond a quote that ignores reality.
> You self referred to the Portal
> controversy he had early 45, then there was the one with Bottomley
> during the Berlin raids in late 44. Or do you mean the 'panacea' word?
There were no Berlin raids in late 1944. Try during the Battle of
Berlin Bottomley raised how much Harris was actually following
the Casablanca directive and point-blank targets.
As for the point-blank targets, the Bottomley letter, Harris could point
out the 8th Air Force was not doing very well either when it came
to such attacks.
It was one thing to issue a directive it was another thing to beat down
the defences and improve the bombing to enable the directive to be
implemented in full. In the 1943/44 period Bomber Command was
being forced away from its targets by the defences.
>> Perhaps fewer assumptions and more looking at the targets chosen
>> might be in order. Start with the weather.
>
> Regarding the weather see above.
Yes, you give the 1945 RAF all weather capabilities the modern USAF
would really want. After deleting the real wartime figures.
More deleted text,
"Perhaps fewer assumptions and more looking at the targets chosen
might be in order. Start with the weather.
For example, when the 8th Air force expected under 5/10 cloud at
the target they found this correct 155 times, found 5 to 7/10 cloud
42 times and 8/10 or more cloud 39 times.
When expecting 5 to 7/10 cloud the figures were under 5/10 cloud
31 times, correct 68 times, more cloud 83 times.
When expecting 8/10 or more cloud, the figures were 9, 16 and 81
respectively.
Overall from 524 raids, 203 faced 8/10 or more cloud."
>> > Would a change in RAF bombing strategy have made a difference? There
>> > was no revolution in Germany, so obviously Portal's and Harris's plan
>> > failed and most of the men and material spent on this plan was used
>> > in vain.
>>
>> So since Britain did not surrender in 1940 the German attack on France
>> and the Low Countries was also in vain?
>
> In the end? Yes. What good had Germany of the attack on France,
> Begium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg in 1946?
So Normandy was in vain as well and so on. It was all in vain.
>> What a criteria, the enemy has to surrender otherwise the campaign is
>> useless.
>
> Well, wrt Harris and Co, I assume a seize-fire agreement would not
> have been sufficient.
How nice, you have decided Harris would break a cease fire, it rather
shows the way Harris has been convicted, and it really does not matter
when the evidence does not fit.
How about an example from his career where he actually did such
a major violation? So far all I see is you reading evil into the man
and then justifying this by the way he is so evil.
More deleted text, on the effects of area attacks,
"Are you aware the UK methodology assumed some unbombed German
towns were controls, to be used to figure out production would have
been if other towns had not been attacked? That the more successful
the bombing the more the "control" towns have their production cut
as well, as everything is linked, and so the effects of the bombs are
therefore understated? (Unbombed town fails to increase production,
bombs on other towns therefore did little)
Hence the way as the attacks grew the figures for production loss
stay the same or go backwards? Heard that as the overall damage
grew to so much what were minor repairs were not done for low
priority factories very quickly, forcing extended shut downs? There
were not enough repair crews."
>> That things like the Atlantic Wall would have been tougher if the
>> construction assets working in Germany were released?
>
> The Atlantic wall would have been tougher, more 88s would have
> been deployed on the easternj front and more repair workers
> would have been enlisted or working in the industry if *no*
> bombing would have occured.
Day,
If you want precision, then you go in good weather, that was
around 37% of the time according to the 8th Air Force, you
take much larger losses because the good weather helps the
defences as well, and you drop fewer bombs. Or is it now
acceptable to bomb through total overcast as long as the
target is a specific one?
You run small raids, by day the 1st attacking bomber formation
had an accuracy of 82%, the 5th 30%, thanks to smoke and dust
from the initial bombs. You also go in low, so at its extreme 3
boxes of bombers at 10,000 feet had an expected error of 570 feet,
15 or more boxes at 29,000 feet had an expected error of 1,700 feet.
Small raids means lots of fighter escorts and more casualties, and
smaller weights of bombs on the target as the bombers need
more protection.
At night add plenty of moonlight, with the increase in casualties.
The accuracy of the time meant if you attacked a city at night
damage would generally occur. If you only attack a subset of
the economy then most bombs would miss, also the ground and
air defences of the rest can be wound back to mainly only those
targets.
You reduce the bombing, you reduce the need for defences.
And since the idea is to stop area raids say goodbye to about
80% of the bombs dropped on Germany in 1943.
> If vital areas of the German
> war machine, like syntheyhic oil production, bridges, railyards.
> viaducts, canals, arnament and ball-bearing factories, airfields,
> electrical grids and power stations had been attacked more, the
> Atlantic wall would have, been weaker, fewer 88s would have been
> deployed against the Soviets and more repair workers would have
> been allocated.
No actually, for a start your wish list is bigger than even the
allied bombers tried for in late 1944. Secondly bridges and
viaducts were really targets for the medium and fighter bombers.
The key is to actually hit targets and the area around them. Coventry
showed the infrastructure damage could do more damage to production
than hits on factories (machine tools are quite blast resistant), the
USSBS notes the disruption to water and gas supplies to the oil plants
a significant contributor to loss of production.
Simply in the end the allies concentrated on keeping the oil
plants non operations and then the transport links, that took
most of the combat power, things like, ball bearings and
electricity targets were largely left alone
Secondly the more places you attack the more the enemy has
to provide defences in those areas.
The rule is quite simple, without something like air superiority
a specific target set campaign will not work, the defences gain
too many advantages. The reported accuracy of the night
bombers over Germany in 1943 was another reason such a
campaign would not work then.
>> I note there is no answer to the what else was possible idea.
>
> See above.
I note there is no answer to the what else was possible idea.
>> You are aware of the inefficiencies on the oil campaign, plants would
>> be back in production for a few weeks before being attacked again,
>> other plants would be attacked before they were back in production?
>
> Then attack them again, around the clock, The resources were there,
> but they were used on cities.
You really do not have a clue about this do you? So it is yet again
only Bomber Command that can put the extra tonnage on oil targets,
and it really does not matter what the weather is, and therefore the
most likely bombing accuracy, as long as the attack says oil, not the
city the oil plant is located in.
You attack on a specific sector, with bombing the same targets
regardless of what was going on is a waste of resources.
>> > Almost half of Britain's war industry was allocated to Bomber Command.
>
>> This is simply wrong. You only have to look at the rest of the war
>> economy and the size of the army for example.
>> The British Bombing Survey Unit, the one with the effects of area
>> bombing calculation, decides Bomber Command overall cost 7%
>> of the British war effort, but 12% in the final 30 months of the war.
>
> I have only a secondary source for this and grant you that one.
It would be good to address the other figures.
>> > It lost 55 500 expensively educated
>> > aircrewcrew, each killing about 10 Germans and destoying unvaluable
>> > cultural treasures.
>>
>> Apparently the bombers did not actually damage and destroy factories,
>> only art works and civilians.
>
> Good point. I went over my head here...
The trouble is it shows a state of mind that the barbarians have been
identified and the case closed.
deleted text,
"And the above should be on average 1 Bomber Command crew member
died per 10 Germans killed in an air raid. Of course it appears only
Bomber Command killed German civilians using the 10 to 1 ratio.
The death toll has been put at 410,000 German civilians killed, then
add 23,000 police and civilians working in the military, 32,000 foreign
workers and PoWs plus 128,000 displaced persons, total 593,000.
This total is from the post war investigations of the German Statistical
Office.
Also note the 55,000 aircrew deaths figure includes training accidents."
Is the above figure considered accurate?
Is there any offset for the thousands of German night fighter (and some
day fighter) crew members killed in combat and training? Similar for
the flak crews?
Some 1,400 night fighters were lost in combat in the west during the
war, not all at night of course.
>> > The RAF Bomber offensive bound a lot of German resources, but one can
>> > assume that this would have been the
>> > case, probably even to a larger extent, if more vital areas of the
>> > German war machine had been attacked.
>>
>> Ah, so if the attack is more successful the Germans are going to have
>> more stuff to defend against the attack. Which presumably means things
>> like the German army have lots less?
>
> Yes.
Unfortunately mass production does not change as fast as you seem
to think. The overall German production for 1944 was locked in
during 1943.
>> Oh, I see, even if the attack works
>> the Germans are granted more defences so the attack does not work.
>
> In 44/45 the synthetic oil plants were the heaviest (air-) defended
> places in Germany. One can wonder why. They were bombed, and eventually
> destroyed, Despite the defenses, The attack worked.
Are you aware of the USSBS noting most of the plants were repairable,
for example, Zietz,
"Another attack on 31 March (1945), followed by Allied occupation,
ended the bombing history of this plant. After surveying the plant, Oil
Division personnel concurred in estimate of the plant managers that,
with simple repairs, Zeitz could achieve 100 percent production in 30 days."
Only one or two oil plants were destroyed, that is the Germans gave up
trying to repair them, instead concentrating on other plants. This is
standard for air attacks, as long as the enemy holds the area they can
do repairs.
I like the way worked for oil is defined as reducing but never eliminating
the German fuel supply but for area attacks it is German surrender that
counts.
Try and be consistent. Things like absenteeism hurt German production
for example.
A deleted question,
'Given the emphasis on civilians you are aware the U-boats killed tens of
thousands of civilians? The crews and passengers on the ships attacked?
Do any of say the people building U-boats become legitimate targets?"
And the supplement, given the U-boats killed an average of something
like 10 people for every ship sunk, can we say the real target was the
civilians? After all it takes more to train a sailors than build merchant
ships in WWII.
How about something like 10% of all ships sunk by U-boats were
neutrals? Sweden makes it to the top 10 in terms of merchant shipping
lost in WWII. So indiscriminate as well?
For that matter any sort of anti shipping activity is really an attack on
civilians?
Geoffrey Sinclair
Data from Richard Davis' allied strategic bomber raids, short tons
Spreadsheets of allied heavy bomber raids against the axis in Europe
by Richard Davis.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/catalog/books/Davis_B99.htm
If you click "download" you will be directed to a pdf file of the
book, if you click "CD-ROM" you will have the spreadsheets.
Geoffrey Sinclair
Rich Rostrom
> > 4. Why have the Germans not used it? Not certainly out of moral scruples
> > or affection for us. They have not used it because it does not pay them.
> > The greatest temptation ever offered to them was the beaches of Normandy.
>
> Which is why a number of plans were drawn up assuming gas attacks.
>
> > This they could have drenched with gas greatly to the hindrance of the
> > troops. That they thought about it is certain and that they prepared
> > against our use of gas is also certain. But they only reason they have
> > not used it against us is that they fear the retaliation. What is to their
> > detriment is to our advantage.
>
> So in other words a balance of terror and the Germans appear weaker
> than some expected because they did not use gas in Normandy.
Some sources I have seen state
the German reason for not using
gas weapons in Normandy (or elsewhere)
was the extreme (and irremediable)
vulnerabiility of the largely
horse-drawn German transport system
to Allied gas attacks.
Supposedly, Goering asserted in his
postwar interrogation that had the
Allies used gas the German armies
would have collapsed almost at once
for this reason.
It would interesting to know whether
the 'cold blooded' assessment that
Churchill directed Ismay to obtain
(if it was ever made) addressed this
question. If Goering's claim was
correct, that would certainly meet
Churchill's criterion of ending the
war in less than a year.
>
> > Definitely, and I can't say this with more emphasis, the Germans and
> > the Japanese were the worst when it came to the *intention* of killing
> > civilians by military means. But the allies did a much better job in this
> > area and killed far more than the axis in the end.
>
> You do know the latest reports from the USSR...
ITYM Russia - the USSR ceased to exist a while back.
> indicate it lost about
> the same number of people in air raids as Germany?
That's a bit of a surprise. One hears
relatively little about the air war in
the East in any case. I have seen almost
nothing, even passing references, to
German strategic bombing of the USSR;
certainly nothing suggesting that Germany
made a particular effort in that area.
Also, the Luftwaffe's strategic bombing
capacity was far smaller than that of
the UK and US. The malevolence of the
Nazi regime can hardly be overstated,
but in this area at least, their goals
exceeded their means.
The Luftwaffe had no real heavy bombers
at all, and at its worst could not
deliver a tithe of the bombloads the
Western Allies dropped regularly.
OTOH the USSR was subject to a lot of
tactical or operational-level air
attacks which often struck civilian
areas.
> The series of
> raids on Stalingrad before the Germans arrived, where there were
> lots of people trying to flee the Germans, comes in at Hamburg or
> Dresden levels of human lives lost.
That's a pretty wide range; the Hamburg
firestorm was an order of magnitude
deadlier, AIUI.
> By the way, per ton of bombs dropped the Germans did a lot better
> as did the Japanese, the civilian defence systems were not as good
> in the areas they attacked.
>
> And given the number of deaths in China, and 7 years of war, how
> sure are you the Japanese air force killed fewer civilians there than
> the USAAF did in Japan?
It seems likely to me (and I would
never underestimate the murderousness
of Japanese military in any context).
As with the Germans, the Japanese had
relatively small strategic bombing
abilities, compared with the Allies,
especially the U.S. I was also going
to point out that China was less
urbanized than Japan, but China had
enough large urban complexes to
provide ample civilian targets for
Japan. (Though many of these cities
fell to Japanese occupation and were
thereafter spared Japanese air
attack: Beijing, Guangzhou, Foochow,
Tsingtao.)
Also, though, the China war was on
the backburner after Pearl Harbor;
that is, AFAIK Japan was not devoting
the large effort to bombing China that
the U.S. later put into bombing Japan.
Of course one must consider the civilian
toll from repeated bombings of besieged
cities such as Nanking and Changsha.
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:0df5e6f6-7681-4d6e...@d20g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> On Dec 25, 1:00 pm, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "dilore" <dirklo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
>> > 4. Why have the Germans not used it? Not certainly out of moral
>> > scruples
>> > or affection for us. They have not used it because it does not pay
>> > them.
>> > The greatest temptation ever offered to them was the beaches of
>> > Normandy.
>>
>> Which is why a number of plans were drawn up assuming gas attacks.
>>
>> > This they could have drenched with gas greatly to the hindrance of the
>> > troops. That they thought about it is certain and that they prepared
>> > against our use of gas is also certain. But they only reason they have
>> > not used it against us is that they fear the retaliation. What is to
>> > their
>> > detriment is to our advantage.
>>
>> So in other words a balance of terror and the Germans appear weaker
>> than some expected because they did not use gas in Normandy.
>
> Some sources I have seen state the German reason for not using
> gas weapons in Normandy (or elsewhere) was the extreme (and
> irremediable) vulnerabiility of the largely horse-drawn German
> transport system to Allied gas attacks.
Yes, it is clear the problems with horses is the logical reason why
the Germans stayed away from gas warfare, though this did not
stop the use in WWI. I know the lines were more static in the west
in WWI but not so much in the east. You sort of wonder if any
of the cavalry commanders waiting to exploit the long planned WWI
break through ever considered how quickly gas would stop the horses.
> Supposedly, Goering asserted in his postwar interrogation that had the
> Allies used gas the German armies would have collapsed almost at once
> for this reason.
Not sure about this. In WWII units were much more dispersed, it
was harder to actually hit them. I am always sceptical of stories of
instant collapse.
> It would interesting to know whether the 'cold blooded' assessment that
> Churchill directed Ismay to obtain (if it was ever made) addressed this
> question. If Goering's claim was correct, that would certainly meet
> Churchill's criterion of ending the war in less than a year.
A good point, I have not seen the consideration in the memo or
any other allied discussion about gas warfare in WWII, apart from
the Germans. However gas warfare ideas inhabit the shadows in
WWII since it was never used.
>> > Definitely, and I can't say this with more emphasis, the Germans and
>> > the Japanese were the worst when it came to the *intention* of killing
>> > civilians by military means. But the allies did a much better job in
>> > this
>> > area and killed far more than the axis in the end.
>>
>> You do know the latest reports from the USSR...
>
> ITYM Russia - the USSR ceased to exist a while back.
A point, I was thinking when the casualties were taken.
>> indicate it lost about
>> the same number of people in air raids as Germany?
>
> That's a bit of a surprise. One hears relatively little about the air war
> in
> the East in any case. I have seen almost nothing, even passing
> references,
> to German strategic bombing of the USSR; certainly nothing suggesting
> that Germany made a particular effort in that area.
Very few strategic strikes, but years of bombing of the smaller
population centres gradually builds the toll. The Soviet air raid
warning and protection systems were not as good as in western
Europe.
> Also, the Luftwaffe's strategic bombing capacity was far smaller than that
> of the UK and US. The malevolence of the Nazi regime can hardly be
> overstated, but in this area at least, their goals exceeded their means.
However the Luftwaffe had a better bomb lift capacity than the RAF
for much of the first half of the war. The fact the targets were officially
tactical does not change many of them were within population centres.
The rail station, the bridge, the river port.
> The Luftwaffe had no real heavy bombers at all, and at its worst could not
> deliver a tithe of the bombloads the Western Allies dropped regularly.
Not in the 1939 to 1942 period. If I remember correctly it took until
around the end of 1942 before the RAF dropped as many bombs on
Germany as the Luftwaffe had dropped bombs on the UK.
> OTOH the USSR was subject to a lot of tactical or operational-level air
> attacks which often struck civilian areas.
Yes and many of those areas undoubtedly had no warning or
protection system.
>> The series of
>> raids on Stalingrad before the Germans arrived, where there were
>> lots of people trying to flee the Germans, comes in at Hamburg or
>> Dresden levels of human lives lost.
>
> That's a pretty wide range; the Hamburg firestorm was an order of
> magnitude
> deadlier, AIUI.
No Hamburg is around 50,000 dead over the series of raids, most were
in the firestorm raid.
Dresden is in the 25,000 to 35,000 range, 30,000 to me seems a
reasonable estimate.
>> By the way, per ton of bombs dropped the Germans did a lot better
>> as did the Japanese, the civilian defence systems were not as good
>> in the areas they attacked.
>>
>> And given the number of deaths in China, and 7 years of war, how
>> sure are you the Japanese air force killed fewer civilians there than
>> the USAAF did in Japan?
>
> It seems likely to me (and I would never underestimate the murderousness
> of Japanese military in any context).
Again given the population, the length of the campaign, the lack of
warning and shelter systems even the lack of medical services would
all contribute to a higher death toll per attack.
> As with the Germans, the Japanese had relatively small strategic bombing
> abilities, compared with the Allies,especially the U.S. I was also going
> to point out that China was less urbanized than Japan, but China had
> enough large urban complexes to provide ample civilian targets for
> Japan. (Though many of these cities fell to Japanese occupation and were
> thereafter spared Japanese air attack: Beijing, Guangzhou, Foochow,
> Tsingtao.)
>
> Also, though, the China war was on the backburner after Pearl Harbor;
> that is, AFAIK Japan was not devoting the large effort to bombing China
> that
> the U.S. later put into bombing Japan.
Yes but Pearl Harbor was around half way through the China Japan
war, end 1941 after the war began in mid 1937.
I agree the effort was probably weaker than the USAAF effort against
Japan even though the 20th Air Force was still building up. It dropped
around 171,060 tons of bombs, 9,064 in 1944, 7,430 tons in
January and February 1945, then tonnages took off in March, 15,283
tons. The period June to August saw 97,506 tons dropped, over half.
Lets see now, 1 ton of bombs per sortie would be 171,060 sorties,
8 years is 2,920 days, so say 60 sorties per day. Remembering there
was much higher activity in the 1937 to 1941 period. Things like the
IJN carriers being used.
> Of course one must consider the civilian toll from repeated bombings of
> besieged cities such as Nanking and Changsha.
Exactly.
Louis C
> > The series of
> > raids on Stalingrad before the Germans arrived, where there were
> > lots of people trying to flee the Germans, comes in at Hamburg or
> > Dresden levels of human lives lost.
>
> That's a pretty wide range; the Hamburg
> firestorm was an order of magnitude
> deadlier, AIUI.
Not an order of magnitude. Civilian casualties in major air raids, in
round figures:
Hamburg: 50,000
Dresden: 30,000
Stalingrad: 40,000 in the initial air raids, after which the Soviets
stopped counting.
The Luftwaffe bombed a lot of cities and columns of refugees when the
Germans were advancing, just because Soviet losses weren't as well
reported as western ones in 1940 didn't mean they weren't heavy. A lot
of "communication centers" i.e. technically tactical targets, were in
fact small cities. Soviet air defense was at best rudimentary,
especially in the early part of the war, so the potential for serious
losses was there.
The Luftwaffe made a series of raids against Moscow, where air
defenses were nothing to write home about either.
So as the example of the USAAF against Japan shows, both sides need to
cooperate for a successful air raid: you need a good bombing force,
and a relatively unprotected target. The Luftwaffe could make serious
air raids (though not against serious air defenses after 1940) and
Soviet civilian protection wasn't all that great, plus the Soviets
didn't bother recording all the casualties anyway. Even if the Soviets
had had a good administrative system, some of the casualties couldn't
be properly recorded: think of a small city that would be bombed, and
then occupied by the Wehrmacht with all the officials forced to flee
or shot out of hand.
LC
Rich Rostrom
wrote:
> "Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote in message
> >> You do know the latest reports from [[Russia]]...
> >> indicate it lost about the same number of people in air raids as Germany?
>
> > That's a bit of a surprise...
> > The Luftwaffe had no real heavy bombers at all, and at its worst could not
> > deliver a tithe of the bombloads the Western Allies dropped regularly.
>
> Not in the 1939 to 1942 period. If I remember correctly it took until
> around the end of 1942 before the RAF dropped as many bombs on
> Germany as the Luftwaffe had dropped bombs on the UK.
I can't find a definite statement of the
total bomb load of the Blitz, but one source
gives 5,300 tons for September 1940. The
Blitz continued for roughly 8 1/2 months,
so 50,000 tons seems a decent estimate.
Wikipedia, citing
Humble, Richard (1975). War In The Air 1939-1945
gives these numbers for bombs dropped
on Germany by Bomber Command.
1939 31
1940 13,033
1941 31,504
1942 45,561
This would indicate the British took the
lead by about March 1942. The total dropped
for the war was 964,644 tons by Bomber Command
and 623,418 tons by 8th AF: about 1.6M tons
all up. That would be about _thirty_ _times_
the size of the Blitz.
To be sure, there
were additional German attacks later in the
war, including the V-weapon barrage which
delivered 14,600 tons (V-1s) and 1,500 tons (V-2).
Hmm: the article on V-1s cites a study by a USAF
general who figured 61,000 tons of bombs for
the Blitz. So total German bombing of
Britain was perhaps as much as 100,000 tons:
still only 1/15 the Allied effort. In 1944,
the Allies dropped over 900,000 tons on Germany:
an average of 75,000 tons a month - well over
ten times Germany's peak effort against Britain.
> No Hamburg is around 50,000 dead ...
> Dresden is in the 25,000 to 35,000 range...
OK. I had recalled Hamburg as reaching six figures.
> US 20th Air Force ... dropped around 171,060 tons
> of bombs [on Japan].
> Lets see now, 1 ton of bombs per sortie would be 171,060 sorties,
> 8 years is 2,920 days, so say 60 sorties per day. Remembering there
> was much higher activity in the 1937 to 1941 period. Things like the
> IJN carriers being used.
That shows it is possible, but given Japan's
shortages of fuel (and airplanes) it seems
unlikely that Japan _sustained_ an effort of
that level. And having to bring in carriers
for a few dozen additional sorties strongly
suggests a relatively small effort overall.
In support, though: the many occasions on which
Japanese forces bombed Chinese cities (or
towns or villages) for tactical reasons,
the population density of Chinese cities,
negligible Chinese civil defense resources,
and minimal Chinese medical resources.
It still seems unlikely to me, but definitely
more plausible than at first glance.
Chris
> Army generals deemed ineffective as battlefield commanders
> (e.g. at Anzio) seem to have been replaced fairly fast by
> both US and British high command. Their weaknesses
> seem to have been recognized in a way that naval and air
> warfare did not facilitate.
I don't necessarily think that it's an Army versus navy/air force
thing, so much as a direct combat versus support/meetings guy. A
handful of corps commanders and a decent number of division commanders
were relieved in the Anglo-American forces, but not many of the
support guys: the guys responsible for writing doctrine (both the
British and the Americans had pretty poor parts of their tactical
doctrine and someone must have been to blame, though I don't know the
details), for overseeing weapons procurement (McNair being notable for
the Tank Destroyer concept, though whoever was in charge of tank
design for the British before 1943/4 doesn't deserve any respect), the
guys who oversaw logistics (J.C.H. Lee being the most notorious
example here), etc.
Similarly, a good deal of submarine commanders, some destroyer or
small escort commanders, and even a few task group commanders were
relieved in the USN, or moved ashore and had their careers broken, but
how many of the fairly enormous Navy Ashore were ever called to
account for their decisions?
I think it's just that combat makes obvious whether you're successful
or not, and then the commander can be held responsible, in a way that
many other tasks don't.
Chris Manteuffel
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On Dec 27, 9:45 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote in message
>
>> >> You do know the latest reports from [[Russia]]...
>> >> indicate it lost about the same number of people in air raids as
>> >> Germany?
>>
>> > That's a bit of a surprise...
>
>> > The Luftwaffe had no real heavy bombers at all, and at its worst could
>> > not
>> > deliver a tithe of the bombloads the Western Allies dropped regularly.
>>
>> Not in the 1939 to 1942 period. If I remember correctly it took until
>> around the end of 1942 before the RAF dropped as many bombs on
>> Germany as the Luftwaffe had dropped bombs on the UK.
>
> I can't find a definite statement of the
> total bomb load of the Blitz, but one source
> gives 5,300 tons for September 1940. The
> Blitz continued for roughly 8 1/2 months,
> so 50,000 tons seems a decent estimate.
E R Hooton in Eagle in Flames says 45,000 tons of bombs dropped
in the Blitz. Then add the tonnage in the day raids in the July to
October 1940 period, plus another 4,000 tons of HE, plus an
undefined tonnage of incendiaries in attacks between July and
December 1941. Then there were the series of raids in 1942.
> Wikipedia, citing
>
> Humble, Richard (1975). War In The Air 1939-1945
>
> gives these numbers for bombs dropped
> on Germany by Bomber Command.
>
> 1939 31
> 1940 13,033
> 1941 31,504
> 1942 45,561
The Harris figures are 31,714 long tons to the end of February 1942,
67,221 long tons to the end of 1942, bombs on Germany. Richard
Humble's figures total to 90,129 tons. This compares to the Harris
figure of 90,329 long tons of bombs dropped on all targets by the end
of 1942 (the RAF official history says 90,578 long tons (31, 13,032,
31,704 and 45,811 long tone in the years 1939 to 1942 respectively)
Given the figures for Luftwaffe bombs on England and all the other
Luftwaffe operations I am reasonably confident the Luftwaffe
dropped more bombs to the end of 1942 than the RAF.
Things would rapidly change in 1943 and beyond.
> This would indicate the British took the
> lead by about March 1942. The total dropped
> for the war was 964,644 tons by Bomber Command
> and 623,418 tons by 8th AF: about 1.6M tons
> all up. That would be about _thirty_ _times_
> the size of the Blitz.
Please note I said bombs on UK by the Luftwaffe and bombs on
Germany by the RAF. Not total tonnage.
Bomber Command dropped some 657,674 long tons of bombs on
Germany. The 8th Air force some 521,729 short tons (so divide by
1.12 for long tons or multiply the Bomber Command figure by 1.12
for short tons). All up the USAAF says it dropped 641,201 short
tons of bombs on Germany. The 2nd TAF would have also dropped
bombs on Germany, maybe around 30,000 long tons.
> To be sure, there
> were additional German attacks later in the
> war, including the V-weapon barrage which
> delivered 14,600 tons (V-1s) and 1,500 tons (V-2).
> Hmm: the article on V-1s cites a study by a USAF
> general who figured 61,000 tons of bombs for
> the Blitz.
Be careful, this could be short tons, not long tons per RAF
figures or metric tons per Luftwaffe figures.
Also the V-1 figures from the RAF are 10,492 launches of
which 3,531 evaded the defences, so I would presume a
bomb tonnage in the region of 3,600 tons depending on
how many of the non evaders exploded on impact after
being shot down. Some 1,054 V-2 strikes were recorded,
so another 1,000 to 1,100 tons.
> So total German bombing of
> Britain was perhaps as much as 100,000 tons:
I would put it the figure closer to 75,000 tons but that is a rough
estimate, after you put together the conventional attacks to mid
1944 and then the V weapon attacks.
> still only 1/15 the Allied effort. In 1944,
> the Allies dropped over 900,000 tons on Germany:
> an average of 75,000 tons a month - well over
> ten times Germany's peak effort against Britain.
In short no.
In 1944 Bomber Command dropped some 275,559 long tons of
bombs on Germany, late in the year the 2nd TAF would also attack
targets in Germany. The USAAF Statistical Digest says some
320,688 short tons of USAAF bombs were dropped on Germany.
The 900,000 ton figure seems to be more like the total bombs
dropped for the year.
>> US 20th Air Force ... dropped around 171,060 tons
>> of bombs [on Japan].
>
>> Lets see now, 1 ton of bombs per sortie would be 171,060 sorties,
>> 8 years is 2,920 days, so say 60 sorties per day. Remembering there
>> was much higher activity in the 1937 to 1941 period. Things like the
>> IJN carriers being used.
>
> That shows it is possible, but given Japan's shortages of fuel (and
> airplanes) it seems unlikely that Japan _sustained_ an effort of
> that level. And having to bring in carriers for a few dozen additional
> sorties strongly suggests a relatively small effort overall.
The carriers were a target range and prestige issue.
The Japanese had no shortage of aviation fuel before the embargo
in 1941. The Japanese air force to 1941 was small by later WWII
standards but it was bigger than Bomber Command numerically, but
probably, by the end of 1941, not in terms of theoretical bomb lift.
In China it had little opposition, after some initial shocks, making it
easier to plan and carry out operations.
> In support, though: the many occasions on which
> Japanese forces bombed Chinese cities (or
> towns or villages) for tactical reasons,
> the population density of Chinese cities,
> negligible Chinese civil defense resources,
> and minimal Chinese medical resources.
>
> It still seems unlikely to me, but definitely
> more plausible than at first glance.
Remember we are not talking bomb tonnage, but civilian casualties.
My calculation was all about an idea of how much effort the
Japanese would have to make to match the 20th Air Force bomb
tonnage, since clearly the number of bombs dropped is connected
to the number of casualties taken, along with factors like civil defence,
warnings, targets and so on.
Rich Rostrom
> > Wikipedia, citing
> > Humble, Richard (1975). War In The Air 1939-1945
> Things would rapidly change in 1943 and beyond.
>
> > The total dropped for the war was 964,644 tons by Bomber Command
> > and 623,418 tons by 8th AF: about 1.6M tons all up.
>
> Please note I said bombs on UK by the Luftwaffe and bombs on
> Germany by the RAF. Not total tonnage.
I was not clear - the figures cited were from a table of
"RAF & USAAF Bomb Tonnages on Germany 1939-45"
I have not verified the citation from Humble.
> Bomber Command dropped some 657,674 long tons of bombs on
> Germany. The 8th Air force some 521,729 short tons...
There is a clash between sources here...
> > In 1944, the Allies dropped over 900,000 tons on Germany:
> > an average of 75,000 tons a month - well over
> > ten times Germany's peak effort against Britain.
>
> In short no.
>
> In 1944 Bomber Command dropped some 275,559 long tons of bombs on Germany...
> The USAAF Statistical Digest says 320,688 short tons of USAAF bombs...
The values given in the table cited
(with the header as noted) were
RAF 8th AF
1944 525,518 389,119
However,
275,559 long tons
+
320,688 short tons
=
629,314 (short) tons
which is over 50,000 tons/month, which is
still 10 times German peak effort against
Britain during the Blitz.
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<fd0ba1f1-bd85-45f0...@v25g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>,
cman...@gmail.com (Chris) wrote:
> though whoever was in charge of tank
> design for the British before 1943/4 doesn't deserve any respect)
This is discussed at length in "The Great Tank Scandal" by IIRC
Fletcher. There were several problems starting with nobody actually
being in overall control, a committee drew up specifications and left it
to companies to prepare their own designs. In the early thirties
shortage of money was a real problem hence the concentration on light
tanks and tankettes. What money available for medium tank development
ended up being spent on the Independent which turned out to be a dead
end. When rearmament got into it's stride from 36 onwards tank
development was competing with the introduction of new artillery and
infantry arms.
Another problem was that as Britain came out of recession firms that
had modernised had full order books and orders had to be placed with
firms that still used traditional methods like riveting. Treasury rule
did not help either, all money allotted had to be spent in the same
financial year and could not be carried over which meant that existing
designs had to be ordered. The change in doctrine in the late thirties
with the split into infantry and cruiser tanks did not help either.
Ken Young
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On Dec 29, 10:10 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote in message
>
>> > Wikipedia, citing
>> > Humble, Richard (1975). War In The Air 1939-1945
>
>> Things would rapidly change in 1943 and beyond.
>>
>> > The total dropped for the war was 964,644 tons by Bomber Command
>> > and 623,418 tons by 8th AF: about 1.6M tons all up.
>>
>> Please note I said bombs on UK by the Luftwaffe and bombs on
>> Germany by the RAF. Not total tonnage.
>
> I was not clear - the figures cited were from a table of
> "RAF & USAAF Bomb Tonnages on Germany 1939-45"
>
> I have not verified the citation from Humble.
As noted the reference seems to be confusing total tonnages
with tonnage on Germany.
>> Bomber Command dropped some 657,674 long tons of bombs on
>> Germany. The 8th Air force some 521,729 short tons...
>
> There is a clash between sources here...
The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany by Webster and Frankland.
Harris Despatch on War Operations.
British Bombing Survey Unit
USAAF Statistical Digest
Richard Davis Spreadsheets of allied heavy bomber raids (including all
Bomber Command and RAF 205 group raids)
They do not agree exactly but they are all consistent and indicate the
Humble figures being total bomb tonnages, in long tons.
>> > In 1944, the Allies dropped over 900,000 tons on Germany:
>> > an average of 75,000 tons a month - well over
>> > ten times Germany's peak effort against Britain.
>>
>> In short no.
>>
>> In 1944 Bomber Command dropped some 275,559 long tons of bombs
>> on Germany...
>> The USAAF Statistical Digest says 320,688 short tons of USAAF bombs...
>
> The values given in the table cited
> (with the header as noted) were
>
> RAF 8th AF
> 1944 525,518 389,119
Harris despatch, Bomber Command total bombs dropped for year
525,518 long tons, Official History, 526,118 long tons, the difference
is 600 tons in January 1944.
USAAF statistical digest, ETO heavy bombers, bomb tonnage on
Germany in 1944, 295,470 short tons out of 446,165 short tons
dropped over the year (or 398,362 long tons). Humble appears
to be using long tons.
Given things like whether aircraft bombed before being shot down
the bomb tonnages will never exactly agree. For example Richard
Davis thinks the 8th Air Force bomb tonnage for 1944 is
429,065.3 short tons. (383,094 long tons), of this 294,967 short
tons were dropped on Germany.
> However,
>
> 275,559 long tons + 320,688 short tons = 629,314 (short) tons
>
> which is over 50,000 tons/month, which is
> still 10 times German peak effort against
> Britain during the Blitz.
Except the German tonnages are in metric tons. So take about 10%
off the short ton figure, which drops things to around 47,800 metric
tons per month. I note the Blitz figures are night bombing only and
there was plenty of day bombing in September and October 1940.
The peak month maybe October 1940 given the day and night raids.
And what exactly has this to do with the point about early war bombing
capabilities? No one is disputing the allies ended up dropping more
bombs than the Luftwaffe. However in the 1939 to 1942 period it
looks like the Luftwaffe dropped more bombs.
In February 1942 Harris noted he had, on average 55 light, 275 medium
and 44 heavy bombers with crews. In December 1942 it was 46 light
111 medium, 262 heavy.
In December 1944 it was 148 light and 1,381 heavy.
Rich Rostrom
wrote:
> As noted the reference seems to be confusing
> total tonnages with tonnage on Germany.
I will try to get hold of the Humble book
and fix the errononeous citation in Wiki.
> And what exactly has this to do with the point about early war bombing
> capabilities? No one is disputing the allies ended up dropping more
> bombs than the Luftwaffe.
Well, there was an assertion upthread
that the USSR had as many casualties
from German bombing as Germany did
from Allied bombing; both figures
being for the whole war.
That seems unlikely to me, because
the Allied bombing effort was so much
greater - at least ten times the effort
Germany put into bombing Britain,
which AFAIK was Germany's only
significant strategic bombing effort.
Of course, as I have noted before,
there isn't much available on the
air war in the east.
Geoffrey Sinclair
>> And what exactly has this to do with the point about early war bombing
>> capabilities? No one is disputing the allies ended up dropping more
>> bombs than the Luftwaffe.
>
> Well, there was an assertion upthread
> that the USSR had as many casualties
> from German bombing as Germany did
> from Allied bombing; both figures
> being for the whole war.
Yes from me, via Fredrick Taylor, the expert witness who helped
show how bad David Irving is.
Louis added they stopped counting the dead from air raids on Stalingrad,
before 6th Army arrived, when it hit about 40,000.
> That seems unlikely to me, because the Allied bombing effort was so
> much greater - at least ten times the effort Germany put into bombing
> Britain, which AFAIK was Germany's only
> significant strategic bombing effort.
Tactical bombing killed many civilians, bridges, rail sidings, road
junctions and so on tend to be in population centres. The Luftwaffe
bombed plenty of Soviet settlements.
You are ignoring the Germans had much better air raid warning and
civil defence systems than the USSR.
Assuming my estimate of 75,000 tons of bombs including V1 and
V2 strikes on the UK is correct then,
About 70,000 tons of conventional bombing killed 51,509 civilians
in the UK, 1 death per 1.4 tons.
About 3,600 tons of V1s killed 6,184 people, 1 death per 0.6 tons
About 1,100 tons of V2s killed 2,754 people, 1 death per 0.4 tons.
So the V2 was over 3 times more lethal, the V1 over twice as lethal.
The lack of warnings was a reason, bombers gave more warning than
V1s, and they in turn gave more warning than V2s. The V2s and V1s
were also not some massed strike that could be waited out, people had
to take more chances.
The western allies dropped some 1,260,000 long tons of bombs on
Germany, the Red Air Force would probably up that to around
1.3 million tons and the bombs killed around 600,000 people, or 1
death per 2.2 tons of bombs. Note the gap with the UK figures.
German bombs were about 50% more lethal.
The 5th April 1943 strike on Antwerp, 104 B-17s of which 82 were
rated as effective, dropping 383 1,000 pound bombs on the Antwerp
industrial area, as the primary target, 936 civilians killed. That is
around
5.5 deaths per long ton of bombs, way above the long term average.
There are two factors in play here,
1) There is a good chance many civilians presumed the bombers
were going somewhere else and so did not take cover, this would
push the death toll up. As far as I can tell this was what happened.
2) The USAAF was under strict instructions to only attack clearly
identified targets in the low countries, which meant attacking in
the best weather. This would push the death toll down.
The Hamburg firestorm raid dropped around 2,326 long tons of
bombs, assuming 40,000 deaths that would be 17 deaths per
ton of bombs. Dresden would be around 11 deaths per ton of
bombs (assuming 30,000 dead). Pforzheim lost 17,600 dead
from 1,825 tons of bombs, around 9.6 death per ton of bombs.
All the above were firestorms.
If you assume the USSR air defences were say around 25% as
effective as England's, then there would be on average 3 deaths
per ton of bombs, so around 200,000 long tons of bombs to
create 600,000 deaths, in around say 3 years of war given the
Germans were largely pushed out of the USSR by the third
quarter of 1944.
If you go with the Antwerp raid level of civilian exposure then
600,000 deaths would require 110,000 long tons of bombs.
In the allied bombing of France over the course of the war it seems
civilian deaths per ton of bombs were around a quarter of the attacks
on Germany.
> Of course, as I have noted before,
> there isn't much available on the
> air war in the east.
However things like civilian casualties are becoming more known.
Rich Rostrom
wrote:
> > that the USSR had as many casualties
> > from German bombing as Germany did
> > from Allied bombing; both figures
> > being for the whole war.
>
> Yes from me, via Fredrick Taylor, the expert witness who helped
> show how bad David Irving is.
>
> > That seems unlikely to me, because the Allied bombing effort was so
> > much greater - at least ten times the effort Germany put into bombing
> > Britain, which AFAIK was Germany's only
> > significant strategic bombing effort.
>
> Tactical bombing killed many civilians, bridges, rail sidings, road
> junctions and so on tend to be in population centres. The Luftwaffe
> bombed plenty of Soviet settlements.
Did not the Allies also use tactical
bombing against German cities and
towns in 1944-45? And would not this
effort have probably surpassed German
tactical bombing in the USSR? Though
perhaps the Germans tended to use air
strikes where the Soviets used artillery.
> You are ignoring the Germans had much better air raid warning and
> civil defence systems than the USSR.
The quality of Soviet ARW and ARP efforts
is largely unknown to me. One might add
that German defenses were largely broken
down in 1945 - and not relevant to the
"tactical" attacks discussed above.
> So the V2 was over 3 times more lethal, the V1 over twice as lethal.
This is remarkable, considering that
large numbers of V1s and V2s were
misdirected into rural areas by
British disinformation (the deceptive
impact data supplied by the double
agent GARBO).
> The western allies dropped some 1,260,000 long tons of bombs on
> Germany, the Red Air Force would probably up that to around
> 1.3 million tons...
If one is to compare apples to apples,
then tactical bombing of German targets
should be included. While Soviet strategic
bombing of Germany was trivial, I would
think that tactical/operational bombing
was on the usual Soviet scale - lots of,
any time. I would expect that besieged
cities such as Konigsberg, Danzig, and
Breslau got hammered again and again.
Again, this is out in that dark area;
I know of no useful material in English
about such operations.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On Dec 31, 10:32 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote in message
>>
>> > Well, there was an assertion upthread
>> > that the USSR had as many casualties
>> > from German bombing as Germany did
>> > from Allied bombing; both figures
>> > being for the whole war.
>>
>> Yes from me, via Fredrick Taylor, the expert witness who helped
>> show how bad David Irving is.
>> 000.
>>
>> > That seems unlikely to me, because the Allied bombing effort was so
>> > much greater - at least ten times the effort Germany put into bombing
>> > Britain, which AFAIK was Germany's only
>> > significant strategic bombing effort.
>>
>> Tactical bombing killed many civilians, bridges, rail sidings, road
>> junctions and so on tend to be in population centres. The Luftwaffe
>> bombed plenty of Soviet settlements.
>
> Did not the Allies also use tactical bombing against German cities and
> towns in 1944-45?
Yes, which is why I included around 30,000 long tons of 2nd RAF
strikes and noted the total USAAF tonnage on Germany, not just the
tonnage dropped by heavy bombers.
> And would not this effort have probably surpassed German
> tactical bombing in the USSR?
Say 30,000 tons of 2nd TAF, plus 83,558 short tons of USAAF
bombs.
The Luftwaffe was consuming 10 to 25,000 tons per month of HE,
in the 1941 to 1943 period, now double to give weight of bombs,
since even a HE bomb was around 50% HE, the rest casing etc.
Note you need to deduct some for cannon ammunition.
However the direct answer to the question is no, the Luftwaffe
dropped more bombs on the USSR than allied tactical strikes
did on Germany.
> Though perhaps the Germans tended to use air
> strikes where the Soviets used artillery.
After 1941 the Luftwaffe was more and more used as artillery and
close to front line strikes. That included strikes on many settlements.
You might note I assumed 3 years of war bombing the USSR, not 4.
By the looks of things the Luftwaffe went through around 85,000 tons
of HE June to December 1941.
>> You are ignoring the Germans had much better air raid warning and
>> civil defence systems than the USSR.
>
> The quality of Soviet ARW and ARP efforts
> is largely unknown to me.
They were poor, the problem was radars and lack of high speed
communications.
> One might add that German defenses were largely broken
> down in 1945 - and not relevant to the "tactical" attacks discussed above.
Where does this come from? The defences were broken down in
May 1945. They were still working in March 1945, for example
see the Nachtjagd War Diaries by Boiten, which is daily (nightly?)
accounting of the Luftwaffe night fighter defences. It was hard to
track the raids but the warnings were going out.
After years of practice the raid warning system was very
experienced.
The allies stopped major bombing towards the end of April.
>> So the V2 was over 3 times more lethal, the V1 over twice as lethal.
>
> This is remarkable, considering that large numbers of V1s and V2s were
> misdirected into rural areas by British disinformation (the deceptive
> impact data supplied by the double agent GARBO).
This is simply wrong, the misdirection was not that good, it did help
but London was simply too big a target.
>> The western allies dropped some 1,260,000 long tons of bombs on
>> Germany, the Red Air Force would probably up that to around
>> 1.3 million tons...
>
> If one is to compare apples to apples, then tactical bombing of German
> targets should be included.
What do you think 2nd TAF (Tactical Air Force) did in WWII?
Why do you think I included all USAAF bombs on Germany, not
just from the heavy bombers?
> While Soviet strategic bombing of Germany was trivial, I would
> think that tactical/operational bombing was on the usual Soviet scale -
> lots of, any time. I would expect that besieged cities such as
> Konigsberg, Danzig, and Breslau got hammered again and again.
Quite correct, the Red Air Force in 1945 was very large. No one
has yet to publish accurate bomb tonnage figures as far as I know.
I simply estimated a tonnage. Hence the rounding up from 1.26
to 1.3 million tons of bombs.
Why are you asking for information already supplied?
> Again, this is out in that dark area; I know of no useful material in
> English
> about such operations.
The Red Air Force attacks are known, what is not known accurately
is things like bomb tonnages.
Walt
> In 1943, there were major concerns by many in Britain over the emphasis on
> bombing cities and not military targets.
>
> If say after 1943, Bomber Harris would have been replaced as I doubt he
> would have changed the targeting now say the RAF targets was set to a more
> military and economic targeting would it have made much difference to the
> war?
Harris being CG of Bomber Command definitely extended the war. The
Germans could have been run completely out of petroleum products much
earlier but Harris disobeyed orders to concentrate on Oil targets and
focused instead on city busting.
The guy was a disaster.
Walt
Walt
> commanders who were either ineffective or wanted to set policy
> themselves...> Alan
The Americans relieved both their bomber commander, Eaker, and the
fighter commander, Hunter.
Walt
David H Thornley
> Harris being CG of Bomber Command definitely extended the war. The
> Germans could have been run completely out of petroleum products much
> earlier but Harris disobeyed orders to concentrate on Oil targets and
> focused instead on city busting.
>
oil and transportation as the USAAF was. Harris' problem was that
he tried to stick to a strategy that wasn't very useful. The US
problem was that they didn't stick to a strategy.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
William Black
news:a36d7085-f6cd-42e4...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...
Interesting idea.
While Harris had some influence, he didn't actually set the strategy or
select the targets.
Indeed the 'city burning' tactics were decided on before his appointment as
GOC Bomber Command.
--
William Black
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Barbeques on fire by the chalets past the castle headland
I watched the gift shops glitter in the darkness off the Newborough gate
All these moments will be lost in time, like icecream on the beach
Time for tea.
Maxwell's Hammer
wrote:
> SolomonW wrote:
> > In 1943, there were major concerns by many in Britain over the emphasis on
> > bombing cities and not military targets.
>
> > If say after 1943, Bomber Harris would have been replaced as I doubt he
> > would have changed the targeting now say the RAF targets was set to a more
> > military and economic targeting would it have made much difference to the
> > war?
>
>
> If he was replaced the only difference would be one of emphasis by
> whoever got the job next.
>
> --
> William Black
>
> "Any number under six"
>
> The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of
> Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat
> single handed with a quarterstaff.
Randall Hansen's new book "Fire & Fury" is the definitive study of the
Allied bombing campaign against Germany in WW2. He makes very clear
that Harris played the KEY role in directing British bombing against
cities - literally until days before the end of fighting in Europe.
He appeared to have been motivated by a deep hatred of all Germans -
so much so, that after the war, he was the only British commander not
rewarded appropriately: a recognition that this strategy was verging
on a war crime.
William Black
news:d23b1d68-d4d0-4a37...@r19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
Then he's talking balls.
The 'Dehousing Paper' was accepted as government policy (with no input from
Harris) before Harris was appointed.
People do tend to forget this particular fact when writing their diatribes
against him.
The decision to bomb the cities was not military, it was a political
decision, made by politicians and led by civilian advisors.
When the politicians decided that burning German cities may not have been
the best form of public relations, Harris was wheeled out as a scapegoat
for them.
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:d23b1d68-d4d0-4a37...@r19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
> Randall Hansen's new book "Fire & Fury" is the definitive study of the
> Allied bombing campaign against Germany in WW2.
As opposed to people like Richard Davis compiling spreadsheets of
all Bomber Command, RAF 205 Group and USAAF heavy bomber
raids in Europe? Then writing a history?
> He makes very clear
> that Harris played the KEY role in directing British bombing against
> cities - literally until days before the end of fighting in Europe.
So in other words the weather never played a part in allied target
selections? The idea a raid would be launched to keep the pressure
on the defences and German damage repair system even though the
weather was bad?
> He appeared to have been motivated by a deep hatred of all Germans -
This seems to be the usual selection of quotes, ignoring his remarks that
he did not feel anger except when he made his reap the whirlwind remarks.
Anger is rather bad in a commander, it makes them irrational. The
one thing about Harris to 1944 was he had the most realistic bomber
doctrine, that changed in 1944 when he misunderstood the effects
of the massive increase in allied bomber power, in terms of numbers,
experience and reduced losses.
> so much so, that after the war, he was the only British commander not
> rewarded appropriately: a recognition that this strategy was verging
> on a war crime.
Ah I see, actually Bomber Command was not given recognition and
as a result Harris refused offers of awards.
Now to Fire and Fury, apparently 60 cities had been obliterated, Harris
has an acreage destroyed target that lists 69 locations, claiming 49% of
their built up area was destroyed. The pre war population of the cities
was around 23 million people.
It seems the idea is to note the correspondence between Harris and
Portal, where Harris expressed his disagreement with the oil campaign.
Therefore it is supposed to follow Harris did not do enough against
oil and transport targets. It seems to ignore where Harris stated he
was doing the attacks as ordered because when they failed Harris
was not going to let the planners say it was a lack of effort on the
part of Bomber Command that caused the failure.
When it came to supporting the armies Eisenhower rated Harris a
better partner than Spaatz, with Harris attending the weekly meeting
even when SHAEF was on the continent, Spaatz did not usually
attend.
The book thinks 25% of German air raid deaths were due to the USAAF
and 75% to the RAF. So roughly 150,000 due to the USAAF and
450,000 to the RAF. The big three firestorms killed around 90,000
people, Hamburg 40,000, Dresden 30,000, Pforzheim 17,600, with
under 10,000 tons of bombs. They were the exceptional raids.
Now the USAAF dropped some 641,201 short tons of bombs on
Germany, the RAF some 770,000 short tons. However if you subscribe
to the idea "tactical" bombing kills few civilians then the totals are RAF
heavy bombers 736,595 tons USAAF heavy bombers 557,643 tons.
And yes, the 1.3 million short tons of bombs is well below the roughly
2.2 million short tons the allied "strategic" bombers dropped in WWII
against the axis in Europe.
So ratio RAF to USAAF total bombs on Germany, 1.2 to 1,
"strategic bombs" 1.3 to 1, deaths, 3 to 1, non firestorm deaths
2.4 to 1. The RAF was certainly more dangerous, a major reason
being the dropping of a higher percentage of incendiaries, which
also usually meant a higher degree of damage to the buildings. On
another track what do you think risks more casualties in the course
of the campaign, raids that are more destructive or raids that have
to be repeated because they were not destructive enough?
Next comes the reliance on quotes from Speer that says if the RAF had
followed up USAAF strikes the Germans might have collapsed, with
several opportunities for this. It immediately has the question, why would
an extra USAAF strike not have worked?
Then we have the idea the bombing could be justified if Germany
surrendered to the bombing, and Hamburg is a failure because it
the loss of German production was too low. I suppose operation
Cobra was a failure since it really failed to cause Germany to
surrender and it only killed a minor percentage of the German army.
The May 1943 Dams raid is considered proof Bomber Command
could have gone over to the Hansen definition of precision attacks
in mid 1943 (if you are claiming to do a precision attack civilian
deaths are acceptable, if area bombing they are unacceptable, the
fact the 8th Air Force dropped so many bombs through total
overcast with bad accuracy is therefore acceptable because they
were officially on a valid target. The idea the bomber commanders
knew the target chosen was in the middle of a city and they knew
the usual accuracy does not count, only the official target).
In effect the Bomber Command raid on Essen on 5 March 1943 is
acceptable, since the target was Krupps, 130 acres of the city
destroyed (including 3,018 houses), 450 to 490 people killed.
As was the 12 March raid, 500 houses destroyed, around 200 killed.
However the 3 April raid is not acceptable, the aiming point was
in the city, 635 buildings destroyed, around 120 killed.
On 9 November 1944 Bomber Command attacked the oil refinery
at Wanne-Eickel in a daylight raid. The weather was so bad the
master bomber turned it into an area raid, and it is carried as such in
the statistics. However if the original target is used the raid goes
from being an unacceptable area target to an acceptable precision
target.
The fact in the final 4 months of 1944 the 8th Air Force dropped
35% of its bombs through total overcast (39.8% of bombs within
3 miles of the target) and another 15% through 8 or 9/10 cloud,
(67.4% of bombs within 3 miles of the target) is acceptable because
there was an official military target, never mind almost all the bombs
missed. During this period in good visibility 91.5% of the bombs
were within 3 miles of the aiming point, in poor visibility 85%,
using H2X radar bombing in 4 or 5/10 cloud 89.1%, in 6 or 7/10
cloud 84%.
At the same time, in good weather over Germany Bomber Command
was achieving 95, 95 and 91% of bombs within 3 miles of the aiming
point, in the two month blocks August-September, October-November
and December-January respectively, in moderate weather it was 74, 98
and 97%.
Yes in fact it seems the precision bombers at the time were the RAF
ones at night, not by much of course, but remember as long as you
give the right target is acceptable to be less accurate in Hansen's book.
Next comes the Harris refusal to bomb oil targets,
Table is date, 8th Air Force bombs on Germany, tons / % of those bombs
on oil targets // Bomber Command bombs on Germany, tons / % of those
bombs on oil targets.
May-44 19880 / 12.89 // 9479.8 / none
Jun-44 13120.5 / 34.01 // 5443.5 / 83.82
Jul-44 29838.3 / 22.33 // 14670.1 / 26.14
Aug-44 23597.4 / 26.07 // 16119.3 / 11.49
Sep-44 34818.4 / 21.12 // 22955.3 / 19.56
Oct-44 43552.2 / 11.74 // 57679.1 / 7.09
Nov-44 37798.8 / 42.39 // 58870.2 / 24.20
Dec-44 41092.1 / 7.23 // 51132.1 / 14.54
Jan-45 38551.3 / 7.40 // 33218.9 / 27.55
Feb-45 51187.2 / 11.93 // 50891.2 / 28.69
Mar-45 72951.1 / 13.06 // 74969.8 / 28.28
Apr-45 35646.1 / 4.61 // 38103.1 / 14.80
So if Harris is not doing enough against oil targets what happened to the
8th Air Force? In reality in mid 1944 Bomber Command was allocated
the oil targets in the Ruhr, thanks to the strength of the defences, the
length of the night and the persistent haze that made visual bombing so
hard. In November all Bomber Command oil targets were declared
knocked out, the nights were longer, the night defences weaker, so a
reallocation of targets was done but it took about 3 weeks to do so,
partly because Harris was worried about losses in deep penetration
attacks.
As for Overlord, Invasion support transport plan,
8th Air Force / Bomber Command, percentage of bombs dropped
on Germany, 1944
February 71% / 98%
March 69.5% / 71%
April 61% / 42%
May 55% / 23%
June 22.5% / 9%
July 66% / 23%
August 49% / 22%
September 86% / 39%
Finally W R Chorley has been compiling Bomber Command casualties,
the final volume includes a list of all those killed. He quotes the
official
figures, 47,269 KIA or died while prisoners, 8,195 killed in accidents,
37 killed on the ground, total 55,500. His figures go to the end of 1947
as opposed to the official figures which are wartime only, and include
people officially part of Bomber Command even if they died on
detached service, including ground staff, his total is 57,205 killed,
which includes those killed June to December 1945, plus 72 in 1946
and 28 in 1947.
David H Thornley
> "Walt" <Walte...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:a36d7085-f6cd-42e4...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> Germans could have been run completely out of petroleum products much
>> earlier but Harris disobeyed orders to concentrate on Oil targets and
>> focused instead on city busting.
>
> select the targets.
>
Bomber Command be doing? Since he selected the targets, and had a
great deal of discretion in doing so, he had a large part in setting
the strategy that was actually followed.
Heads of major commands usually have a great deal of discretion in how
they carry out their duties, and often in what their duties are to be.
> Indeed the 'city burning' tactics were decided on before his appointment
> as GOC Bomber Command.
>
Ig was, but I don't see that that's relevant.
Harris appears to have fully agreed with the city-busting strategy.
It's not actually important whether he did this before or after
his appointment. What is important is that he was strongly in favor,
and continued city-busting long after it was the best strategy.
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:A5CdnRbZ8aLWRsHW...@posted.visi...
> William Black wrote:
>> "Walt" <Walte...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> news:a36d7085-f6cd-42e4...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...
>>>
>>> Harris being CG of Bomber Command definitely extended the war.
No.
>>> The
>>> Germans could have been run completely out of petroleum products much
>>> earlier but Harris disobeyed orders to concentrate on Oil targets and
>>> focused instead on city busting.
No.
>> While Harris had some influence, he didn't actually set the strategy or
>> select the targets.
>>
> I thought he did select the targets.
He selected the targets for the day/night, within the overall list of
priorities handed to him via the various directives. He certainly
had input into what was considered possible which would be
reflected back in the directives.
> What else would the head of Bomber Command be doing?
Building up the command, improving training and tactics, making
requests for improved equipment, reporting on the good and
bad points of raids and equipment, evaluating intelligence and so on.
Eisenhower was supreme commander he also ended up involved
in what sort of clothing the troops should have and when for
example. Lots of command duties are standard ones.
> Since he selected the targets, and had a
> great deal of discretion in doing so, he had a large part in setting
> the strategy that was actually followed.
Harris had absolute discretion on the target for now (tonight/today,
ignoring a small number of special raids), he had much less discretion
on the set of targets hit over the period of say a month.
> Heads of major commands usually have a great deal of discretion in how
> they carry out their duties, and often in what their duties are to be.
Correct, the long range air war was a learning process so the
commanders had a lot of chances to define some of their duties.
>> Indeed the 'city burning' tactics were decided on before his appointment
>> as GOC Bomber Command.
>>
> Ig was, but I don't see that that's relevant.
Only relevant for those who want to paint Harris as the architect of
the strategy.
> Harris appears to have fully agreed with the city-busting strategy.
Yes.
> It's not actually important whether he did this before or after
> his appointment. What is important is that he was strongly in favor,
> and continued city-busting long after it was the best strategy.
Those 8th Air Force marshalling yard strikes through total or near
total overcast were city busting by another name. Harris certainly
ordered area attacks in better weather post September 1944, but
then again when it came to predicting the weather at the target the
8th Air Force was right 58% of the time, 10.7% of the time the
weather was better, 31.3% of the time it was worse. About 20%
of the 8th Air Force raids were sent out with a weather forecast
of 8/10 or worse clouds, 45% of the time the forecast was for
5/10 or less cloud cover, and the 8th started using radar bombing
in 4/10 cloud or more, switching between visual and radar
depending on whether or not the cloud managed to cover the
target when the bombs were released.
Using the 8th Air Force figures if the forecast was for 8/10 cloud
or worse it was right around 80% of the time. So when evaluating
target selections you need to know what the weather forecast was,
not what it turned out to be.
It was the case it was area attacks or nothing in bad weather
given the aiming methods available at the time.
The contrast between the Dresden raid and the one on Bohlen,
only around 60 miles from Dresden, is striking, on the same night,
one had clear weather, the other thick icing clouds. One was
devastating, the other considered so ineffective no post raid
reconnaissance was done.
If you are losing the air war area bombing helps you lose faster,
as the damage you do is usually to diffuse to compensate for
the losses taken mounting the raids. If you are winning the air
war it helps you win, since the enemy repair crews and raid
systems are overloaded, the extra damage done suddenly has
to wait on priorities and so minor damage can have major long
term effects due to repairs taking so long. You further stretch
the air raid systems as well.
As noted before when it comes to bombs dropped on Germany
Bomber Command reached its mid point at the end of September
1944, the 8th Air Force around 16 November 1944, it was a
very end loaded campaign. The description saturation comes to
mind. Also 1944/45 was a bad winter.
Overall the 8th dropped 52% of its bombs visually but because
the good weather was reserved for any attacks required on non
German targets, where 82.6% of bombs were dropped visually,
when it comes to Germany the percentage drops to 42%.
In the October 1944 to March 1945 period the 8th dropped
98.5% of its bombs on Germany, 30% visually, 48.6% using
H2X, 14.8% using GH and 5.6% using Micro H
The accuracy of the 8th Air Force raids mounted September to
December 1944 were, bombs within 3 miles of the target,
visual bombing in good visibility 91.5%, in poor visibility 85%, using
H2X radar bombing in 4 or 5/10 cloud 89.1%, in 6 or 7/10 cloud 84%,
8 or 9/10 cloud 67.4%, total overcast 39.8%, GH 90%, Micro H 78.2%.
bombs within 1,000 feet of the target,
visual bombing in good visibility 30%, in poor visibility 9.4%, using
H2X radar bombing in 4 or 5/10 cloud 4.4%, in 6 or 7/10 cloud 2%,
8 or 9/10 cloud 1%, total overcast 0.2%, GH 5%, Micro H 5%.
The electronic aids were improving but still had a way to go before
catching visual bombing accuracy.
William Black
>> "Walt" <Walte...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> news:a36d7085-f6cd-42e4...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...
>>>
>>> Harris being CG of Bomber Command definitely extended the war. The
>>> Germans could have been run completely out of petroleum products much
>>> earlier but Harris disobeyed orders to concentrate on Oil targets and
>>> focused instead on city busting.
>>
>> While Harris had some influence, he didn't actually set the strategy or
>> select the targets.
>>
> I thought he did select the targets. What else would the head of
> Bomber Command be doing?
Commanding the bomber force
Target selection was a matter for experts.
Maxwell's Hammer
wrote:
> "Maxwell's Hammer" <s...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
> ...
Agreed, the central point really is "what was the purpose of the air
attack?".
The superior air technology of the US (plus the unstated fact that
many
Americans had German relatives) meant that the US pursued a military/
industrial target strategy. The British had the weaker bomber
technology
but for political reasons (including bad memories of WW1) deliberately
targeted German civilians - this was a war crime & you should not try
to
justify it.
William Black
Well no.
Let's be serious for a moment here shall we.
There is no doubt that, in WWII, strategic bombing works.
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prove that without any doubt at
all.
Now the next step is to decide what level of strategic bombing works.
The evidence available to the British in 1941 seemed to suggest that
conventional bombing of sufficient power would do the job.
This evidence was derived from the bombing of British cities by the Germans.
The reason it was decided it worked was that workers were unable to perform
because they either couldn't get to work or they had to leave the cities
because they had nowhere to live.
At no point did anyone mention the idea of killing enough people by bombing
to deny the factories labour. The idea is absurd. At the time the tactic
was adopted you couldn't kill enough people to do it.
Oh yes, and despite propaganda to the contrary, there no evidence that
USAAF bombing was any more accurate, over time, than the RAF's
It was a legitimate tactic carried out by soldiers on all sides fighting a
war.
Rich Rostrom
> >> So the V2 was over 3 times more lethal, the V1 over twice as lethal.
>
> > This is remarkable, considering that large numbers of V1s and V2s were
> > misdirected into rural areas by British disinformation (the deceptive
> > impact data supplied by the double agent GARBO).
>
> This is simply wrong, the misdirection was not that good, it did help
> but London was simply too big a target.
According to Ewen Montagu in _Beyond Top Secret Ultra_,
the MPI of the V-1s "ended up well outside the London
region". There were still a few impacts in London, but
"large numbers" fell elsewhere.
6,184 Britons were killed by V-1s; 2,754 by V-2s.
8,938 total.
Montagu mentions a study by an expert who calculated
that "many thousands more people would have lost their
lives" if the German weapons had been properly ranged.
This expert did not know about the deception operation.
If "many thousands" means 4,000 to 6,000, then the
deception operation _substantially_ reduced the effect
of the V-weapons; and if they were _still_ more lethal
than conventional bombing, that seems remarkable to me.
Don Phillipson
news:hjkg74$n2k$4...@news.eternal-september.org...
> > I thought he did select the targets. What else would the head of
> > Bomber Command be doing?
>
> Commanding the bomber force
>
> Target selection was a matter for experts.
This is getting silly . . .
1. As an experienced squadron commander before 1939 and bomber
group commander since 1939, Harris was an accepted expert outranking
all others in the RAF (except Portal.) (That was why the senior officers
under him accepted his decisions in the teeth of calamitous losses.)
2. Harris is known to have personally selected target cities in several
cases, e.g. Hamburg (Gomorrah), Cologne (first Thousand Bomber
Raid) etc., guided by the same considerations (range, bombload, weather
etc.) as Saundby and his other staff officers.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Thomas Schneider
> In 1941 bombing worked to an extent that worried the British leaders.
That the German bombing raids worried British leaders is not saying it
had a substantial effect.
To my knowledge the Luftwaffe was never close to winning the Battle of
Britain. And the bomb load delivered was small compared to what German
cities took later in the war. Were there any effects like public unrest
or a serious drop of productivity for a longer period of time caused by
the Luftwaffe raids? As I doubt Joe Average was a coward or without
discipline compared to Otto Normalverbraucher, and the moral effect on
Otto was not very big untill late in the war as far as I know. So the
question is if the British leadership really had a reasonable cause to
expect the succes of moral bombing.
Thomas
j...@cix.compulink.co.uk
thomassc...@gmx.de (Thomas Schneider) wrote:
> So the question is if the British leadership really had a reasonable
> cause to expect the succes of moral bombing.
There seems - as is quite common in war - to have been excessive
extrapolation from a few small examples. The bombing of Guernica during
the Spanish Civil War, and the amazing effect of bombing at the Battle
of Megiddo in Palestine in 1918, provided examples which seemed to
show that bombing was far more effective than it turned out to be.
I doubt the error was confined to the British leadership: it seem to
have been encouraged by all the inter-war theorists of air power.
--
John Dallman, j...@cix.co.uk, HTML mail is treated as probable spam.
William Black
news:4b5e08fd$0$7624$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
> William Black schrieb:
>> In 1941 bombing worked to an extent that worried the British leaders.
>
> That the German bombing raids worried British leaders is not saying it had
> a substantial effect.
>
Not only do we know it had a substantial effect, we know that this
substantial effect was used as justification for the British attacks on
German cities.
I keep posting this and nobody's reading it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehousing_paper
Or do you think they were lying?
Michele
news:2763d4d5-42ae-476f...@v25g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 24, 10:47 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Maxwell's Hammer" <s...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
>> ...
> Agreed, the central point really is "what was the purpose of the air
> attack?".
The purpose of the strategic bombing was to erode the enemy's will to fight.
Cause a morale collapse.
But the means to obtain such an over-arching objective would also be useful
in degrading the enemy's capability to fight; destroy their war production.
So there was redundancy; if the main objective could not be reached, with
the same bombing one would push towards the other.
> The superior air technology of the US
This remark alone shows you need to read more.
The "superior air technology" of the USA boils down to a better bombsight -
that was largely not used due to bad weather. Which meant that the
_daylight_ bombing accuracy of the USA was not singificantly better than the
_nighttime_ bombing accuracy of Britain.
(plus the unstated fact that
> many
> Americans had German relatives) meant that the US pursued a military/
> industrial target strategy.
Yeah, sure. The USAAF tried with the "industrial bottleneck" strategy, the
Schweinfurt raids for instance. They did not work.
So they resorted to bombing rail yards, the "military target" strategy. They
bombed them even with bad weather, by radar aiming. Rail yards were in the
centers of German cities. In short, the British planners called it "area
bombing", the US planners wrote down in their mission orders that the target
was the rail yard. The results were basically the same.
The British had the weaker bomber
> technology
> but for political reasons (including bad memories of WW1) deliberately
> targeted German civilians
No, of course. The British deliberately targeted German _cities_. And they
did so both because of strategic reasons (see above) and for technical
reasons.
- this was a war crime & you should not try
> to
> justify it.
And bombing defended cities was not a war crime. You should not try to claim
that it is, not the least because on this newsgroup this is a recurring,
recurringly debunked attempt.
Michele
news:4b5e08fd$0$7624$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
> William Black schrieb:
>> In 1941 bombing worked to an extent that worried the British leaders.
>
> That the German bombing raids worried British leaders is not saying it had
> a substantial effect.
>
> To my knowledge the Luftwaffe was never close to winning the Battle of
> Britain. And the bomb load delivered was small compared to what German
> cities took later in the war. Were there any effects like public unrest or
> a serious drop of productivity for a longer period of time caused by the
> Luftwaffe raids?
Some.
And it is perfectly human to think that what has worried you would worry
anyone.
Also note what you yourself have written above: the bomb load delivered was
small.
So the British leaders saw that a relatively small tonnage, delivered over a
relatively short time, had caused them worries, had caused some grumbling,
had seen some drop in productivity.
They draw the conclusion that a bigger tonnage, over a long period of time,
would cause the Germans more worries, more unrest, more loss of production.
Add the small detail that at the time the key decisions were taken, Britain
could not a) effectively strike back the enemy other than in peripheral
operations and b) compete on the brute-force cannon-fodder level.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On Jan 24, 10:47 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Maxwell's Hammer" <s...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
>> ...
> Agreed, the central point really is "what was the purpose of the air
> attack?".
So the advertising is believed, the reality of the accuracy is ignored.
> The superior air technology of the US
You do know most of the 8th Air Force bombs were dropped using
copies of RAF bombing aids?
It was one of the big mistakes the USAAF made, assuming the weather
in Europe was better than it actually was. When the need to find ways
to bomb through clouds was realised the USAAF had no choice but to
go with the RAF aids if they wanted something in service in 1944. The
USAAF was not helped by the way their early trials with H2S did not
work as expected.
As well as deploying the aids there needed to be a crash course in
training men to use them. The 8th was so big all this took most of
1944 and in the end the biggest beneficiary of the training program
was the 20th Air Force. It meant the 8th often used men with only
basic training.
The 15th Air Force went a different way, with targets from South
France to Romania it had a much better chance of good weather
over a target. So they converted groups one at a time with a much
longer training program, and ended up twice as accurate as the 8th.
> (plus the unstated fact that many Americans had German relatives)
If it is unstated how come you know it is true?
> meant that the US pursued a military industrial target strategy.
That was the UK plan you know, look at the effort in 1940 and 1941.
Like the RAF the USAAF discovered the problems in trying to do
this, and in the end were area bombing around the same amount as
the RAF was.
> The British had the weaker bomber technology
Actually the heavier bombs, the longer times over target and the
higher incendiary load meant the RAF hits usually did more damage,
by the time the half way point came the night bombers were about
as accurate as the day ones. Indeed for raids on the big oil plants
they were, on average, more accurate.
So tell us all what does weaker bomber technology mean?
> but for political reasons (including bad memories of WW1) deliberately
> targeted German civilians -
Actually no, they targeted the German cities, they wrecked a higher
proportion of the city areas not a higher proportion of the city
populations.
> this was a war crime & you should not try to justify it.
Ah yes, delete all the evidence that contradicts the verdict, announce the
verdict and demand everyone agree. Not one of my words made it into
the non reply.
Can you actually answer any of the evidence I presented or do people
simply assume you cannot?
Thomas Schneider
> "Thomas Schneider" <thomassc...@gmx.de> wrote in message
> news:4b5e08fd$0$7624$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
>> William Black schrieb:
>>> In 1941 bombing worked to an extent that worried the British leaders.
>>
>> That the German bombing raids worried British leaders is not saying it
>> had a substantial effect.
>>
>
> Not only do we know it had a substantial effect, we know that this
> substantial effect was used as justification for the British attacks on
> German cities.
I read in the link you provide: "The loss of production in the worst
month of the Blitz was about equal to that due to the Easter holidays".
That does not sound like a very substantial effect, but numbers could
prove me wrong of course.
> I keep posting this and nobody's reading it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehousing_paper
I read it.
> Or do you think they were lying?
The issue is not if somebody was lying. It is more about assumptions
being wrong, and the facts these assumptions were made. And as I see,
the dehousing paper was discussed very controversial. "On reading the
dehousing paper, Professor Patrick Blackett the chief scientist to the
Royal Navy said that the paper's estimate of what could be achieved was
600% too high." Did the dehousing paper evaluate actions that the
Germans could take to reduce the bombing effects for example?
Thomas
Thomas Schneider
> "Thomas Schneider" <thomassc...@gmx.de> ha scritto nel messaggio
> news:4b5e08fd$0$7624$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
>> William Black schrieb:
>>> In 1941 bombing worked to an extent that worried the British leaders.
>> That the German bombing raids worried British leaders is not saying it had
>> a substantial effect.
>>
>> To my knowledge the Luftwaffe was never close to winning the Battle of
>> Britain. And the bomb load delivered was small compared to what German
>> cities took later in the war. Were there any effects like public unrest or
>> a serious drop of productivity for a longer period of time caused by the
>> Luftwaffe raids?
>
> Some.
>
> And it is perfectly human to think that what has worried you would worry
> anyone.
True, but "worried" is a term that is open to interpretation.
I am worried that I might have to leave the house a bit earlier as usual
if I want to be at work in time if the weather stays as bad as it is
right now. WSC might have been worried he could lose the war if the
blitz goes on for one more month. The truth lies somewhere in between I
guess. My poor understanding of the English language might be the reason
why I question the meaning of the term "worried" though.
> Also note what you yourself have written above: the bomb load delivered was
> small.
And, as far as I know by now, the effect was small too. And if I
multiply a small effect many times, the result might still be small.
And as it seems the dehousing paper found quite a few critics in Great
Britain at the time it was discussed.
> Add the small detail that at the time the key decisions were taken, Britain
> could not a) effectively strike back the enemy other than in peripheral
> operations and b) compete on the brute-force cannon-fodder level.
At the time the decision was made, was bomber producing capacity built
up and could the ressources used for that also be used for building up
producing capacity for other stuff like tanks or artillery?
Somewhere I read the collapse of the Wehrmacht at the east front was
caused by two main reasons:
a) the Red Army had gained experience in a significant way
b) due to the landing of the allied troops in France, all reserves were
stripped of the east front and sent to the west. And as the Soviet
forces made breakthroughs, something they have done before too already
at a number of ocasions, this time there was no reaction force available
to counter that. So there was nothing at hand to stabilize a shaken front.
Maybe a second front in France in '43 would have had the same effect.
Yeah, that is a big what-if.
Thomas
Maxwell's Hammer
wrote:
> "Maxwell's Hammer" <s...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
> ...
> > Agreed, the central point really is "what was the purpose of the air attack?".
>
> copies of RAF bombing aids?
bombing STRATEGY - particularly post-1943. It is obvious that
daylight bombing was always more accurate than night-time bombing -
except when there was complete overcast.
>
> > (plus the unstated fact that many Americans had German relatives)
>
> If it is unstated how come you know it is true?
>
published document? The reality is that there are more Americans of
German stock than descended from English (don't count the Irish as
'British'). Do you need documentation before you will admit that
people care more about their relatives than strangers? You appear to
have a very limited definition of the concept of 'fact'.
>
> > meant that the US pursued a military industrial target strategy.
>
> That was the UK plan you know, look at the effort in 1940 and 1941.
>
significant damage to Germany - all RAF efforts prior to 1943 were
purely PR & politics.
>...
> Like the RAF the USAAF discovered the problems in trying to do
> this, and in the end were area bombing around the same amount as
> the RAF was.
>
>
> > The British had the weaker bomber technology
>
> Actually the heavier bombs, the longer times over target and the
> higher incendiary load meant the RAF hits usually did more damage,
> by the time the half way point came the night bombers were about
> as accurate as the day ones. Indeed for raids on the big oil plants
> they were, on average, more accurate.
>
case in WW2 night bombing - see Dyson, with over 50% falling more than
5 miles off target.)
>
> So tell us all what does weaker bomber technology mean?
>
aircraft guns and, most importantly, being accompanied by adequate
fighter escort (e.g. P51s).
>
> > but for political reasons (including bad memories of WW1) deliberately
>
> Actually no, they targeted the German cities, they wrecked a higher
> proportion of the city areas not a higher proportion of the city
> populations.
>
were killed in these "city area" bombings, even though most of them
were women & children and not factory workers. It is interesting that
with the English history of killing millions of civilians over the
last 1000 years, killing a few more doesn't have to be defended.
Michele
> Michele schrieb:
>> "Thomas Schneider" <thomassc...@gmx.de> ha scritto nel messaggio
>> news:4b5e08fd$0$7624$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
>>> William Black schrieb:
>>>> In 1941 bombing worked to an extent that worried the British leaders.
>>> That the German bombing raids worried British leaders is not saying it
>>> had a substantial effect.
>>>
>>> To my knowledge the Luftwaffe was never close to winning the Battle of
>>> Britain. And the bomb load delivered was small compared to what German
>>> cities took later in the war. Were there any effects like public unrest
>>> or a serious drop of productivity for a longer period of time caused by
>>> the Luftwaffe raids?
>>
>> Some.
>>
>> And it is perfectly human to think that what has worried you would worry
>> anyone.
>
> True, but "worried" is a term that is open to interpretation.
> I am worried that I might have to leave the house a bit earlier as usual
> if I want to be at work in time if the weather stays as bad as it is right
> now. WSC might have been worried he could lose the war if the blitz goes
> on for one more month. The truth lies somewhere in between I guess.
In fact. There is some leeway, also because while the decision-makers might
speak with others and/or write diaries, the amount of "worry" remains
difficult to assess afterwards. Nevertheless those memories can provide at
least some hint. On September 12, 1940, Harold Nicolson, a junior member of
the government, wrote: "everyone is worried [this is why I used this word
myself, BTW] about the feeling in the East End, where there is much
bitterness; it is said that even the King and the Queen were booed the other
day".
>
>> Add the small detail that at the time the key decisions were taken,
>> Britain could not a) effectively strike back the enemy other than in
>> peripheral operations and b) compete on the brute-force cannon-fodder
>> level.
>
> At the time the decision was made, was bomber producing capacity built up
> and could the ressources used for that also be used for building up
> producing capacity for other stuff like tanks or artillery?
>
No, it wasn't built up. The point I was making about not competing with a
land army is about sheer manpower, not just industrial power. You can build
less 4-engined bombers and more artillery, but the artillery is only useful
if you have an army in the millions. The bombers can be used by a relatively
smaller force, manpower-wise.
Michele
news:c3b6d7ac-1bf9-44a1...@a12g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 26, 8:24 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Maxwell's Hammer" <s...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
>> ...
>> > Agreed, the central point really is "what was the purpose of the air
>> > attack?".
>> > The superior air technology of the US
>>
>> You do know MOST of the 8th Air Force bombs were dropped using
>> copies of RAF bombing aids?
> We are not playing numerical games here but discussing the critical
> bombing STRATEGY - particularly post-1943. It is obvious that
> daylight bombing was always more accurate than night-time bombing -
> except when there was complete overcast.
>>
No, of course, it is not obvious. Only somebody who has not read the USSBS
can claim that. The USSBS (a painstakingly detailed scientifical analysis of
the strategic bombing campaign that was written decades before the book you
hold as your bible) went through all the raids on three key targets, Leuna,
Ludwigshafen and Zeitz.
The British Bomber Command, bombing at night, achieved an accuracy of 15.8%.
The 8th Air Force, bombing in daylight with _partial_ cloud cover, achieved
an accuracy of 12.4%.
With perfect visibility, the 8th Air Force was much better (26.8%); but with
"complete overcast" was much worse than night bombing (5.5%).
"Accuracy" in this analysis is defined as dropping the bomb within the
installations' perimeter; which means an immense acreage, the equivalents of
mid-sized towns.
Even so, not only the US bombers were much worse than the British ones in
"complete overcast"; they were worse than the British ones in partial cloud
cover, too. Only with exclusively visual aiming they were better.
You should then consider that the time when the strategic bombing campaign
achieved its maximum results against the German industrial heartland was the
autumn and winter of 1944. Bad or indifferent weather happen more often than
good weather.
In short, what you believed was obvious is simply wrong. Sorry to destroy
your beliefs, but that's what happens when one goes by one book.
>> > (plus the unstated fact that many Americans had German relatives)
>>
>> If it is unstated how come you know it is true?
>>
> This is a cheap debating trick - do you expect me to quote some
> published document?
Well, that would be good. Additionally, you should quote a document that
links this with any policy-making. Otherwise it is perfectly possible that
it's irrelevant.
>> Like the RAF the USAAF discovered the problems in trying to do
>> this, and in the end were area bombing around the same amount as
>> the RAF was.
>>
> Not according to Hansen but then he's only a professional historian.
Newsflash: he's not the first professional historian to write about this.
>>
>> > The British had the weaker bomber technology
>>
>> Actually the heavier bombs, the longer times over target and the
>> higher incendiary load meant the RAF hits usually did more damage,
>> by the time the half way point came the night bombers were about
>> as accurate as the day ones. Indeed for raids on the big oil plants
>> they were, on average, more accurate.
>>
> Heavy bombs are irrelevant if dropped miles from target (the usual
> case in WW2 night bombing - see Dyson, with over 50% falling more than
> 5 miles off target.)
>>
You seem to miss the point the other poster has made at the end: the RAF was
more accurate than the USAAF in the raids on the big oil plants. If you want
the details, well, they are those posted above. The source is the USSBS.
>> So tell us all what does weaker bomber technology mean?
>>
> In WW2, better aiming, more able to withstand damage, more anti-
> aircraft guns and, most importantly, being accompanied by adequate
> fighter escort (e.g. P51s).
>>
>> > but for political reasons (including bad memories of WW1) deliberately
>> > targeted German civilians - this was a war crime & you should not try
>> > to justify it.
>>
>> Actually no, they targeted the German cities, they wrecked a higher
>> proportion of the city areas not a higher proportion of the city
>> populations.
>>
> As an English Imperialist
Do you know as a matter of fact that the other poster is an "English
Imperialist"? Are you seriously putting this forth as an argument in a
debate about history? Are you trying to convince everybody that you just
have an axe to grind and that you are not to be taken seriously?
William Black
> William Black schrieb:
>> "Thomas Schneider" <thomassc...@gmx.de> wrote in message
>> news:4b5e08fd$0$7624$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
>>> William Black schrieb:
>>>> In 1941 bombing worked to an extent that worried the British leaders.
>>>
>>> That the German bombing raids worried British leaders is not saying it
>>> had a substantial effect.
>>>
>>
>> Not only do we know it had a substantial effect, we know that this
>> substantial effect was used as justification for the British attacks on
>> German cities.
>
> I read in the link you provide: "The loss of production in the worst month
> of the Blitz was about equal to that due to the Easter holidays".
> That does not sound like a very substantial effect, but numbers could
> prove me wrong of course.
The Easter Holidays in the UK are a four day break when the shift-working
factories closed.
That's over 1% of available production.
A statistically significant quantity.
>> I keep posting this and nobody's reading it.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehousing_paper
>
> I read it.
>
>
>> Or do you think they were lying?
>
> The issue is not if somebody was lying. It is more about assumptions being
> wrong, and the facts these assumptions were made. And as I see, the
> dehousing paper was discussed very controversial. "On reading the
> dehousing paper, Professor Patrick Blackett the chief scientist to the
> Royal Navy said that the paper's estimate of what could be achieved was
> 600% too high." Did the dehousing paper evaluate actions that the Germans
> could take to reduce the bombing effects for example?
It doesn't matter.
The fact remains that not only did the War Cabinet accept the report, they
carried out attacks based on it.
If they were wrong then it was an honest mistake.
Don Phillipson
> We are . . . discussing the critical
> bombing STRATEGY - particularly post-1943. It is obvious that
> daylight bombing was always more accurate than night-time bombing -
> except when there was complete overcast.
No, this restates the peacetime prewar idea of the "bomber
generals," based on general assumptions and not derived
from practical (with or without numerical analysis.)
1. The RAF discovered in 1939-40 that with current
equipment (e.g. Blenheim, Battle and Hampden aircraft)
daylight attacks were not "more accurate" than night attacks
-- mainly because of AA defences or fighter interception.
That was why Bomber Command re-equipped for night
attacks with new equipment (heavy bombers, Gee, H2S.)
2. USAAC bombers arrived in Britain equipped with the
Norden bombsight, theoretically believed the best in the
world: but found in practice that results could not be
achieved as in theory, mainly because of normal
European weather, besides fighter interception.
The new speciality of Operational Research permitted
reorientation of bombing campaigns by actual results
with actual crews (cf. training) and actual equipment
(aircraft, radar, bombloads.) OR found no simple
confirmation that "daylight bombing was always more accurate."
> The reality is that there are more Americans of
> German stock than descended from English (don't count the Irish as
> 'British'). Do you need documentation before you will admit that
> people care more about their relatives than strangers? You appear to
> have a very limited definition of the concept of 'fact'.
The same criticism applies. Armchair philosophy may indeed
suggest genetic affinities cause a difference in either combat
plans or combat results (or that German blood in the royal
family created an affinity between Britain and Nazi Germany
not found between the Third Reich and the anti-imperial USA):
but we have no reason to weight this assumption heavier than
actual results, viz. how the Allied and Axis leadership actually
behaved.
When we look at actual results, we find plenty of anecdotal
material about US troops and airmen with Italian or German
surnames: but almost none of this suggests that such
individuals perceived themselves as any less American or
personally more sympathetic towards Italian or German
enemies.
> The UK planes, prior to the Lancaster, were quite inadequate to do any
> significant damage to Germany - all RAF efforts prior to 1943 were
> purely PR & politics.
This equates "all RAF efforts prior to 1943" with Bomber Command,
a popular fallacy that ignores:
1. Defensive function of Fighter Command (cf. Battle of Britain.)
2. Coastal Command and the protection of shipping (cf.
urgency of the anti-submarine campaign.)
3. The "Desert Air Force" in North Africa which became the
prototype for tactical air forces (British and US) in the Italian
campaign and later in Northwest Europe.
> As an English Imperialist you probably don't care that 600,000 Germans
> were killed in these "city area" bombings, even though most of them
> were women & children and not factory workers. It is interesting that
> with the English history of killing millions of civilians over the
> last 1000 years, killing a few more doesn't have to be defended.
This slogan conceals two distinct arguments:
1. Numbers count, but only relatively, so that there is a difference
of moral type. We should not condemn the death of 60,000 British
civilians by air attack 1940-43 but we should condemn the death
of 600,000 civilians by air attack 1943-45.
2. National behavior during WW2 followed a long-term pattern
(over "the last 1000 years") which demonstrates a national
difference. We can indeed find plenty of slaughter of civilians
in European history -- but most died at the hands of fellow
countrymen in civil wars (English Wars of the Roses, the
Thirty Years War in Germany.) Most slaughter of foreigners
occurred in imperial crusades, as by Europeans in the
Levant and the German Teutonic Knights in eastern Europe.
History shows no obvious difference between English and
German propensities to kill foreigners.
We can find a difference in national behavior as Occupying
Powers, when Nazi Germany promoted famine in Poland while
the postwar British rationed bread at home in order to
supply food to Germany in 1946. But this does not support
the OP's general proposal that the English were bloodthirsty
in a way Nazi Germans were not.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On Jan 26, 8:24 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Maxwell's Hammer" <s...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
>> ...
>> > Agreed, the central point really is "what was the purpose of the air
>> > attack?".
deleted text,
So the advertising is believed, the reality of the accuracy is ignored.
>> > The superior air technology of the US
>>
>> You do know MOST of the 8th Air Force bombs were dropped using
>> copies of RAF bombing aids?
> We are not playing numerical games here but discussing the critical
> bombing STRATEGY - particularly post-1943.
During 1943 the 8th Air Force adopted the ideas of using bombing
aids rather than only bombing visually. As a result when it came
to Germany a minority of bombs were dropped visually in good
weather. That was a major part of the strategy. Also part of the
strategy was the understanding of how accurate such bombing
was, in other words area bombing.
This is somehow a numeric game.
> It is obvious that
> daylight bombing was always more accurate than night-time bombing -
> except when there was complete overcast.
Actually yes and no, depending on what part of the war is being talked
about, and the visibility, and where the targets were, I have posted the
figures, why not actually look at them and understand the reality of the
results.
One of the reasons Bomber Command did so much invasion support
was because it was more accurate over France than the 8th Air Force
on average, and the 8th was normally bombing France visually.
>> > (plus the unstated fact that many Americans had German relatives)
>>
>> If it is unstated how come you know it is true?
>>
> This is a cheap debating trick - do you expect me to quote some
> published document?
So in other words you cannot actually back up the quote and
want to find a way to ignore the concept of providing evidence.
You just know it is true, no evidence required.
> The reality is that there are more Americans of
> German stock than descended from English (don't count the Irish as
> 'British').
Ah yes, when asked for proof claim it is a trick then simply repeat
the claim.
By the way most of the Irish who emigrated to America were British
citizens when they did so. Do you also separate out the Welsh and
Scots? There were plenty of Irish in the UK armed forces in WWII.
> Do you need documentation before you will admit that
> people care more about their relatives than strangers?
When someone is proving to be so wrong, and other information
indicates the claim is wrong, of course.
As for the idea people care about their relatives more than strangers
that is normal. Now of course you need to show how many of the
German Americans in WWII had such ties. Given many had migrated
in the 19th century.
Next you need to actually show the evidence the Air Force did things
because there were German Americans with ties to Germany.
> You appear to have a very limited definition of the concept of 'fact'.
Ah yes, unable to supply facts, claim others are worse.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Americans>
To quote
"In the 2000 census, 24.5 million Americans reported English ancestry,
8.7% of the total U.S. population. This estimate is probably a serious
undercount by over 30 million given that, in the 1980 census, around
50 million citizens claimed to be of at least partial English
ancestry. In 1980, 23,748,772 Americans claimed wholly English
ancestry and another 25,849,263 claimed English along with another
ethnic ancestry.[15] 80 million people in the 2000 census were listed
under 'other ancestries' and 20 million as 'American.' Thus, the
number of people who could be classified, if they so wish, as English
Americans in the United States is more likely to be at least 60-80
million."
Part of this relates to a so-called 'American' ethnicity, for example
see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_ethnicity>,
"Many United States citizens who can trace their ancestry back to the
American colonial period consider themselves to be ethnically
American.[original research?] Rather than identifying with the ethnic
groups of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (places from which
many of their ancestors came), they prefer to identify simply as
American.[citation needed] Demographers believe this results in an
undercount of several European ancestries in the United States, such
as English, Irish and Scottish. Some United States citizens choose to
identify as ethnically American because of mixed ancestry or a lack of
family history."
>> > meant that the US pursued a military industrial target strategy.
>>
>> That was the UK plan you know, look at the effort in 1940 and 1941.
>>
> The UK planes, prior to the Lancaster, were quite inadequate to do any
> significant damage to Germany - all RAF efforts prior to 1943 were
> purely PR & politics.
This is becoming very funny actually. I note the non reply, rather than
admit what the RAF was doing, just announce the RAF was inadequate.
So no German civilians were killed in air raids before 1 January 1943
I gather, nor any damage done. Nor any effect on Luftwaffe
dispositions, day and night fighter forces, flak defences.
On average the Halifax carried a bigger average bomb load than the
B-17 or B-24 as used by the 8th Air Force. For that matter so did
the Stirling. Two Wellingtons or two Whitleys carried about the
average 8th Air Force heavy bomber bomb load. In July 1942 it
looks like Bomber Command had around 256 Wellingtons, 69
Stirlings, 102 Halifaxes and 107 Lancasters available for operations.
The pre 1943 bombing did things like evaluate tactics and strategy,
resulting in the bombing aids that would be used, like GEE, H2S/X,
GH, window. Also things like could you put large numbers of
bombers over a given target. Then the less obvious support, like
Air Sea Rescue and diversion control for when the weather closed in.
>> Like the RAF the USAAF discovered the problems in trying to do
>> this, and in the end were area bombing around the same amount as
>> the RAF was.
>>
> Not according to Hansen but then he's only a professional historian.
Yes folks, the one book that rules them all. I see the determination to
simply ignore anything that does not fit.
Noted the 35% of the 8th Air Force effort through total overcast
September to December 1944? The 15% through 8 or 9/10
cloud, and compared it to the area strikes Bomber Command did
in the same time period?
Heard of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey? The
British Bombing Survey Unit?
The USSBS Bombing Accuracy report, the Weather factors report?
I can cite lots of material from professional historians to show Hansen
has real problems, as I have been doing.
>> > The British had the weaker bomber technology
>>
>> Actually the heavier bombs, the longer times over target and the
>> higher incendiary load meant the RAF hits usually did more damage,
>> by the time the half way point came the night bombers were about
>> as accurate as the day ones. Indeed for raids on the big oil plants
>> they were, on average, more accurate.
>>
> Heavy bombs are irrelevant if dropped miles from target (the usual
> case in WW2 night bombing - see Dyson, with over 50% falling more than
> 5 miles off target.)
Unable to cope with the real results I see.
The USSBS analysis of all the raids on the oil plants at Leuna, Zeitz
and Ludwigshafen, 509,000 USAAF bombs at an average weight of
338 pounds, 264,000 RAF bombs at an average weight of 660 pounds,
27,000 tons of bombs, 3,376 tons landed within the installation fences,
of this 3,376 tons 473 tons (14%) failed to explode, 2,093 tons (62%)
did little damage and 810 tons (24%) did vital damage. As the sites
were hundreds of acres in size it can be seen calling this sort of
bombing precision is an exercise in marketing, not reality.
The final USSBS note is the bombing accuracy for these raids.
8th Air Force, visual bombing 26.8%
8th Air Force part visual/part instrument 12.4%
8th Air Force full instrument 5.4%
Bomber Command at night 15.8%
Weighted average (by bombs dropped) 12.6%
It turns out Bomber Command, on average, over a number of raids in
late 1944 and early 1945, put more of its bombs on these targets than
the 8th.
The average error for the 210,000 unguided bombs in the first Gulf War
was around 300+ feet.
I like this, it seems the idea is to take the RAF bombing results from
1941 and 1942 and apply them to 1943 and later. Ignore the USSBS
results for example.
The raid on Huls (22 June 1943, 224 B-17s despatched plus 11
YB40s, 183 attacked 15 B-17s and 1 YB-40 lost). After the raid
the bomb craters were found over an area of 12 square miles, 20%
of the bombs dropped hit the 541 acre (0.84 square miles) site. If
the site were a square then each side fence would be 4650 feet long.
In reality bombs only had to miss by tens of feet to be ineffective.
Want another set of figures? Degradation of bombing accuracy
versus order of bombing, first box 82%, second 60%, third 48%,
fourth 47%, 5th etc. 30%. You needed to increase the distance
between bomber boxes, but that gave the defences more chances
to shoot bombers down. Smaller formations meant better bombing
results and less defence against fighters.
How about H2X, used for around 45% of the bombs dropped
on Germany "was not a precision bombing instrument; it was
chiefly valuable as a navigation aid".
You do know when the USSBS came to evaluate its bombing
results they eliminated some errors from the calculations, bombs
dropped outside a given distance from the target? Essentially if
none of the attacking bomber formations managed at least 5% of
their bombs within 1,000 feet of the aiming point the result was
termed a mission failure and not counted for accuracy purposes.
If a bomber formation failed to drop most of its bombs within 3,000
feet of the target they were not counted for accuracy purposes,
a gross error.
These exclusions came to between 20 and 50% of the attacking
bombers depending on the mission. The 20% figure was achieved
towards the end of the war.
The USSBS bombing accuracy report notes, for the period
September 1944 to December 1944 when bombing visually in
good weather the 8th put 7.8% of bombs over 5 miles from the
target. Through total overcast using H2X it was 41.5%. Using
H2X in 4 or 5/10 cloud actually cut the over 5 miles figure to 4%,
using GH cut it to 6%, the other aiming methods and weather
conditions had between 8.6 and 18% of bombs dropped over 5
miles from the target.
These results come from a table in the report that appears to include
all bombs dropped, "tons of bombs aimed at primary target regardless
of where they hit". That is it includes the mission failure and gross error
categories.
>> So tell us all what does weaker bomber technology mean?
>>
> In WW2, better aiming, more able to withstand damage, more anti-
> aircraft guns and, most importantly, being accompanied by adequate
> fighter escort (e.g. P51s).
I presume the idea is more defensive guns, not anti aircraft guns.
In tis case the solution was escorts, from the second half of 1944
onwards guns and even turrets were taken out of the 8th Air
Force bombers for the performance and bomb load benefits.
Lancasters were also bombing Germany by day.
I really like the idea the P-51 could not have escorted Bomber
Command strikes, given P-51s did such missions. I am also
amused given the way the P-51 was the result of a British order
and only taken up slowly by the USAAF. Hence the way the
RAF ended up with so many when the USAAF really wanted
them in late 1943 and early 1944.
The 8th Air force had 3 operational P-47 groups in April 1943,
its first P-51 group was operational in February 1944, the other
P-51s were with the 9th Air Force and were borrowed for
raids, until they were officially transferred. By mid February 1944
the 8th had 9 P-47 and 2 P-38 groups operational. You do know
the 1943 plans were for all the P-51s to go to the 9th Air Force?
It took until July 1944 before the P-51 became the majority of the
8ths fighters. RAF P-51s escorted some 8th Air Force raids and
Spitfires provided entry and withdrawal cover enabling the USAAF
to use its long range fighters as that.
It was more than just the P-51.
The USAAF in England sourced 49% of its supplies from British
sources until July 1943, plus obtained other British supplies through
the Quartermaster system. In the period June 1942 to June 1944
the British supplied to US forces in England 63% of Quartermaster,
58% of engineer, 49% of medical, 25% of Chemical Warfare, 22%
of signal corps and 21% of Air Force supplies, some 6.8 million
measurement tons of supplies January 1942 to June 1944.
Now add reconnaissance, air sea rescue, weather and base protection.
Bothered to read the US histories related to supplies?
Bothered to notice it was the Combined Bomber Offensive and the
USSBS concluded you needed a day and night bomber force as
each had advantages over the other?
The B-17 and B-24 defensive strength was bought at the cost of bomb
load, as used by the 8th Air Force they carried about half the average
bomb load of a Lancaster. So they had to fly twice as many missions,
send twice as many aircraft into action, with associated losses, to
drop the same amount of bombs. Also the B-17 in particular bombed
at a greater height, which decreased accuracy.
These are the trade offs.
>> > but for political reasons (including bad memories of WW1) deliberately
>> > targeted German civilians - this was a war crime & you should not try
>> > to justify it.
>>
>> Actually no, they targeted the German cities, they wrecked a higher
>> proportion of the city areas not a higher proportion of the city
>> populations.
>>
> As an English Imperialist
Yes folks, no ability to provide facts, time for insults.
Try and deal with what happened, instead of sad attempts at insults.
> you probably don't care that 600,000 Germans
> were killed in these "city area" bombings, even though most of them
> were women & children and not factory workers.
Amazing then I published the official German figures complete
with a break down, but hey why look at the facts when considering
what happened. By the way remember the Hansen book says
25% of the deaths were due to the USAAF.
The death toll has been put at 410,000 German civilians killed, then
add 23,000 police and civilians working in the military, 32,000 foreign
workers and PoWs plus 128,000 displaced persons, total 593,000.
This total is from the post war investigations of the German Statistical
Office.
Perhaps you can now provide the break down of adult males,
adult females and children. Also how many were killed in the tactical
bombings and the raids on specific targets, versus those where the
city was declared the target. You see if everyone was killed in area
raids then none of the tactical bombings, the strafings or the specific
target raids killed Germans, by any allied air force.
Next you can tell us how many of the women killed were workers.
Germany counted around 6 million female "helping family members"
in the agricultural sector as workers, as a result there were almost
as many German civilian males in the work force in mid 1943 as
females, 15.5 versus 14.8 million, indeed female employment was
in the 14.1 to 14.9 million band from mid 1939 to end September
1944. Starting at 14.6 million in mid 1939. Male civilian employment
went from 24.5 million in mid 1939 to 13.5 million in September 1944.
The gap was filled by foreigners and prisoners of war 0.3 million in
1939 to 7.54 million in September 1944.
In September 1944 around 2 million of the non German workers
were female.
In September 1944 around 3.6 out of 14.9 million German female
workers were in the "industry, had work and power" sectors, 2.2
million in trade, banking, insurance and transport, with another 1.75
million in administration and services, 1.3 million in Domestic service
and 5.8 million in Agriculture.
Read the histories on the German war economy?
It depends on your definition of factory but it is clear only a minority
of German female workers were in factories so it would be surprising
if a majority of females killed were factory workers.
Using demographics around 22% of those killed would be 14 or under,
14% 60 or older. Some 48% would be male and 52% female. However
this fails to take into account the millions of males aged 18 to 60 who were
in the armed forces and usually not in Germany. The military had 12.4
million personnel in May 1944.
Note the death toll from air raids in the USSR in WWII is comparable
to that of Germany, and it is quite possible the same applies to Chinese
deaths from air raids.
> It is interesting that
> with the English history of killing millions of civilians over the
> last 1000 years, killing a few more doesn't have to be defended.
Yes folks, this is supposed to be a reply. You mean to find lots
of civilians killed by the English you have to go back 1,000 years?
That seems reasonably good compared with many other ethnic
groups. How many million are the English supposed to have killed,
and when, civilians only of course?
Last time I asked,
"Can you actually answer any of the evidence I presented or do people
simply assume you cannot?"
Clearly the answer is cannot answer any of the evidence.
Maxwell's Hammer
wrote:
> ...
Like all technocrats you (& my other respondents) hide behind your
numbers rather than face up to the central MORAL issues. In WW2,
Germany was a totalitarian state that initiated violence against its
own citizens and its neighbours. The Allies were morally justified to
retaliate against the Nazis and their armed forces but when they
attacked civilians they descended to the same abysmal level of
barbarism. Killing German civilians was much more acceptable to the
English than it was to Americans, whether they were in the military or
back in the USA.
Even from a military perspective, bombing civilians was counter-
productive (as it was when the targets were British civilians) - it
just makes the victims more committed to hurting 'the enemy'. The
overall bombing campaign against Germany was also a major strategic
mistake with minimal long-term damage against industrial capability
with major costs (in aircrew as well as materiel).
My respondents are so obsessed with militarism & its minutia that the
discussion with this group is no longer of interest to me - I am sure
they will interpret my departure here as another 'victory'. God help
us.
Michele
> On Jan 27, 8:10 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> ...
> Like all technocrats you (& my other respondents) hide behind your
> numbers rather than face up to the central MORAL issues.
You see, we' re interested in history here, not in philosophy. Completely
failing to understand the technical side of things, as you do, really does
hamper the understanding of history. For instance, if one thinks the Roman
road network was not very much unlike a glorified maze of muddy paths like
any Celtic civilization could use, he'll find it more difficult to
understand why Roman caligae kicked Celtic asses big time.
It is no challenge to moralistic grandstanding, of course.
In WW2,
> Germany was a totalitarian state that initiated violence against its
> own citizens and its neighbours. The Allies were morally justified to
> retaliate against the Nazis and their armed forces but when they
> attacked civilians they descended to the same abysmal level of
> barbarism.
You still have not proved that the Allied strategic bombing campaign
targeted German civilians, you know. It targeted German cities all right -
which was perfectly legitimate at the time.
I'd also like to know when exactly one loses his moral superiority. When he
attacks otherwise legitimate targets and kills... 100 civilians who happen
to be in the area? 10? 1?
Killing German civilians was much more acceptable to the
> English than it was to Americans, whether they were in the military or
> back in the USA.
While killing Japanese civilians was perfectly acceptable to the US
citizens, be they in the military or back in the USA. You do know about the
fire bombings of Tokio and other cities, do you?
> Even from a military perspective, bombing civilians was counter-
> productive (as it was when the targets were British civilians) - it
> just makes the victims more committed to hurting 'the enemy'.
It certainly failed to bring about Germany's surrender through a morale
collapse. That is not to say that it was counterproductive from the point of
view of its effects on war production.
Additionally, there is the Hiroshima-Nagasaki case that rather spoils your
point anyway. Cities were bombed; civilians were killed; the enemy did not
feel more committed to hurting the enemy (no quotes needed, obviously); they
felt like surrendering, instead.
The
> overall bombing campaign against Germany was also a major strategic
> mistake with minimal long-term damage against industrial capability
> with major costs (in aircrew as well as materiel).
You have not read the USSBS. Do read it if you want to know what you are
talking about. Sizable parts of it are available on line.
> My respondents are so obsessed with militarism & its minutia that the
This is a group interested not just in any history - it is interested in
military history. That you find that unsettling and disagreeable is the
surprising thing, given that this interest is proclaimed by the group's
name.
I also find it mildly amusing that after having come forth with claims about
military technology (you are the one who claimed the US bombers were
technologically superior, do you remember), you now find that the only
possible way out from the corner you've painted yourself into is to snub
military technology as "minutia" and the province of "technocrats". Good
job.
> discussion with this group is no longer of interest to me - I am sure
> they will interpret my departure here as another 'victory'.
A pity. You could have learned a lot.
God help
> us.
>
Well, yes. But self-help is at hand, too: start by reading more.
Hans Christian Hoff
> On Jan 27, 8:10 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair"<gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> ...
> Like all technocrats you (& my other respondents) hide behind your
> numbers rather than face up to the central MORAL issues. In WW2,
> Germany was a totalitarian state that initiated violence against its
> own citizens and its neighbours. The Allies were morally justified to
> retaliate against the Nazis and their armed forces but when they
> attacked civilians they descended to the same abysmal level of
> barbarism. Killing German civilians was much more acceptable to the
> English than it was to Americans, whether they were in the military or
> back in the USA.
The moral issue really does not affect the question of bombing or no
bombing. Any government that on moral (ethical?) grounds abstained from
bombing the enemy when the enemy bombed your own country (your prime
responsibility) will stand accused of sacrificing its own citizens.
Every bombing will necessarily kill civilians regardless of target (also
munition workers, railway employees, dockhands and many others employed
at military etablishments are civilians). From where do you have the
information that US personell was more reluctant to kill Germans as were
the English ? The question of morality may be rised in respect of the
area bombing of great cities (Hamburg, Dresden, Tokio, Berlin, Nagasaki,
Hiroshima), but you cannot leave out the consideration that if area
bombing shortened the war, then numerous lives, also of civilians, were
saved.
> Even from a military perspective, bombing civilians was counter-
> productive (as it was when the targets were British civilians) - it
> just makes the victims more committed to hurting 'the enemy'. The
> overall bombing campaign against Germany was also a major strategic
> mistake with minimal long-term damage against industrial capability
> with major costs (in aircrew as well as materiel).
To what purpose that would better serve the allied course should the
resources then be allocated ?
> My respondents are so obsessed with militarism& its minutia that the
> discussion with this group is no longer of interest to me - I am sure
> they will interpret my departure here as another 'victory'. God help
> us.
It is, I believe, not possible to discuss the ethics of war without
taking military matters into account; more often than not the
justification (also ethically) of using a weapon, tactic, or a strategy
will depend upon the effects, which is in turn very much dependent on
what you see as "militarism and its minutia(e)", (even if you are not
very much interested in the technicalities of small arms etc.).
Regards
Hans
Thomas Schneider
[...]
> The moral issue really does not affect the question of bombing or no
> bombing.
IMHO moral issues is the main thing that seperates Nazis (and other
extremists) from normal people.
> Any government that on moral (ethical?) grounds abstained from
> bombing the enemy when the enemy bombed your own country (your prime
> responsibility) will stand accused of sacrificing its own citizens.
I don't get your point. I think any government that has its own
population being bombed is accused of sacrificing its own people if it
does not stop the bombings as soon as possible. The bombing of other
civilians might be a solution or might not be.
> Every bombing will necessarily kill civilians regardless of target (also
> munition workers, railway employees, dockhands and many others employed
> at military etablishments are civilians).
I think there is a difference between bombing civilian workers in a
ammunition factory and bombing kids. YMMV.
[...]
> The question of morality may be rised in respect of the
> area bombing of great cities (Hamburg, Dresden, Tokio, Berlin, Nagasaki,
> Hiroshima), but you cannot leave out the consideration that if area
> bombing shortened the war, then numerous lives, also of civilians, were
> saved.
You also can not leave out the consideration that there might have been
measures taken that would have shortened the war more than bombing
civilians. I wonder how much the attacks on e.g. on Pforzheim or
Paderborn in '45 shortened the war.
> To what purpose that would better serve the allied course should the
> resources then be allocated ?
Manfred Rauh in Die Geschichte des zweiten Weltkriegs claims that the
allied forces could have established a second front in France in 1943.
Thomas
Thomas Schneider
[...]
>>
>> I read in the link you provide: "The loss of production in the worst
>> month of the Blitz was about equal to that due to the Easter holidays".
>> That does not sound like a very substantial effect, but numbers could
>> prove me wrong of course.
>
> The Easter Holidays in the UK are a four day break when the
> shift-working factories closed.
>
> That's over 1% of available production.
>
> A statistically significant quantity.
1% is not significant IMHO, especially as it does not consider possible
actions taken to reduce bombing effects on civilian population and
production.
[...]
> The fact remains that not only did the War Cabinet accept the report,
> they carried out attacks based on it.
>
> If they were wrong then it was an honest mistake.
Honesty can be discussed if War Cabinet members could have known better
on the facts available to them. And these facts were mentioned in the
debate according to the wikipedia link. With hindsight we do know by now
that the moral bombing failed.
Thomas
Thomas Schneider
[...]
>> True, but "worried" is a term that is open to interpretation.
>> I am worried that I might have to leave the house a bit earlier as usual
>> if I want to be at work in time if the weather stays as bad as it is right
>> now. WSC might have been worried he could lose the war if the blitz goes
>> on for one more month. The truth lies somewhere in between I guess.
>
> In fact. There is some leeway, also because while the decision-makers might
> speak with others and/or write diaries, the amount of "worry" remains
> difficult to assess afterwards. Nevertheless those memories can provide at
> least some hint. On September 12, 1940, Harold Nicolson, a junior member of
> the government, wrote: "everyone is worried [this is why I used this word
> myself, BTW] about the feeling in the East End, where there is much
> bitterness; it is said that even the King and the Queen were booed the other
> day".
For me it looks like Harold Nicolson does have little contact to the
East End population and what worried them. He only mentions some
hear-say about a rather irrelevant topic. He probably should have tried
to get more and better information. And the booing of the Royal Family
is hardly threating the war effort as far as I can see. It probably
threatened the interests of aristocratic families of course.
> No, it wasn't built up. The point I was making about not competing with a
> land army is about sheer manpower, not just industrial power. You can build
> less 4-engined bombers and more artillery, but the artillery is only useful
> if you have an army in the millions. The bombers can be used by a relatively
> smaller force, manpower-wise.
I don't have numbers available atm, but I think Great Britain had a
population of about 50 million people on the Home Islands, while Germany
had a population of about 80 million, while engaged in a land war with
the USSR with a much higher population. Germanys resources were mostly
bound while the Wehrmacht lost at Stalingrad in 42/43, and only the last
reserves at hand could turn the tide at the battle of Kharkov. And the
UK combined with the US forces could not pose a threat on the western
front in France in 1943? Why was the use of resources for Bomber Command
discussed within the military leadership in the UK?
Thomas
Gregory E. Garland
>
> I think there is a difference between bombing civilian workers in a
> ammunition factory and bombing kids. YMMV.
>
Please demonstrate how the bomber groups at the time had the
capability to make that distinction. If you can't then you are talking
nonsense.
Thomas Schneider
If they couldn't make the distinction they probably shouldn't have
bombed at all.
Keep in mind:
- The war was won by ground troops. Whermacht collapsed when a second
front in France was opened.
- Moral bombing was a failure.
- On reading the dehousing paper, Professor Patrick Blackett the chief
scientist to the Royal Navy said that the paper's estimate of what could
be achieved was 600% too high (Wikipedia). Obviously even in the UK
military leadership the tactic was disputed.
- Tha air raids in '45 shortly before the war ended, where they aming at
ammunition workers?
Thomas
William Black
> William Black schrieb:
> [...]
>>>
>>> I read in the link you provide: "The loss of production in the worst
>>> month of the Blitz was about equal to that due to the Easter holidays".
>>> That does not sound like a very substantial effect, but numbers could
>>> prove me wrong of course.
>>
>> The Easter Holidays in the UK are a four day break when the shift-working
>> factories closed.
>>
>> That's over 1% of available production.
>>
>> A statistically significant quantity.
>
> 1% is not significant IMHO,
It is horribly significant if your war production is about 15% of GNP.
William Black
. And the booing of the Royal Family
> is hardly threating the war effort as far as I can see. It probably
> threatened the interests of aristocratic families of course.
That statement shows a terrifying lack of understanding about the
relationship between royalty and the British people in WWII.
Michele
news:4b60bf09$0$7625$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
> Hans Christian Hoff schrieb:
> [...]
>> The moral issue really does not affect the question of bombing or no
>> bombing.
>
> IMHO moral issues is the main thing that seperates Nazis (and other
> extremists) from normal people.
>
Morality is subjective. Today, there are guys on this planet who believe not
only that adultery is immoral, but that it is moral to stone an adulterer to
death. My own morality disagrees with his. Who's right?
Likewise, our own morality disagrees with the Nazis', but according to Nazi
morality, the Jews were evil so getting rid of them was good. I can claim
they are wrong, of course - on the basis of my morality. They can claim, on
the basis of theirs, that they are right.
OTOH, laws are objective. There is some scope for interpretation, but no
interpretation will make an order to kill POWs anything but a violation of
international law (Geneva Convention of 1929).
What the Nazis did was not only immoral according to our moral system. More
importantly, it was wrong according to the rules the Nazis themselves had
accepted to follow. _For that_ they had to be punished.
Consider how neo-Nazis today are claiming that being punished for having
violated a rule that they themselves had accepted to follow was unfair. Can
you imagine how they'd be screaming if the Nazis had been punished on the
victors' morality's grounds?
Michele
> Michele schrieb:
> [...]
>>> True, but "worried" is a term that is open to interpretation.
>>> I am worried that I might have to leave the house a bit earlier as usual
>>> if I want to be at work in time if the weather stays as bad as it is
>>> right now. WSC might have been worried he could lose the war if the
>>> blitz goes on for one more month. The truth lies somewhere in between I
>>> guess.
>>
>> In fact. There is some leeway, also because while the decision-makers
>> might speak with others and/or write diaries, the amount of "worry"
>> remains difficult to assess afterwards. Nevertheless those memories can
>> provide at least some hint. On September 12, 1940, Harold Nicolson, a
>> junior member of the government, wrote: "everyone is worried [this is why
>> I used this word myself, BTW] about the feeling in the East End, where
>> there is much bitterness; it is said that even the King and the Queen
>> were booed the other day".
>
> For me it looks like Harold Nicolson does have little contact to the East
> End population and what worried them.
How do you know?
He only mentions some
> hear-say about a rather irrelevant topic. He probably should have tried to
> get more and better information. And the booing of the Royal Family is
> hardly threating the war effort as far as I can see. It probably
> threatened the interests of aristocratic families of course.
>
You fail to see the point. Sure booing the Royal Family did not threaten war
production. But it was a clear show of disaffection and low morale. Given
how much the Royal Family was loved at the time, and how it represented a
short-hand of the British values and Britain itself, criticizing the Royal
Family equated with considering the possibility of resigning from the status
of British subject, so to speak. It is much much more serious than spurning
any other aristocratic family. It's like burning the US flag in front of a
US Army barracks today.
>
>> No, it wasn't built up. The point I was making about not competing with a
>> land army is about sheer manpower, not just industrial power. You can
>> build less 4-engined bombers and more artillery, but the artillery is
>> only useful if you have an army in the millions. The bombers can be used
>> by a relatively smaller force, manpower-wise.
>
> I don't have numbers available atm, but I think Great Britain had a
> population of about 50 million people on the Home Islands, while Germany
> had a population of about 80 million, while engaged in a land war with the
> USSR with a much higher population. Germanys resources were mostly bound
> while the Wehrmacht lost at Stalingrad in 42/43, and only the last
> reserves at hand could turn the tide at the battle of Kharkov.
Remember the chronology, please. When the key decisions were taken for the
building up of a strategic bomber force, Germany was _not_ committed on the
Eastern Front; Britain was fighting alone, not only against Germany but also
against Italy.
That said, it is a proven fact that later in the war the British experienced
a manpower shortage in the ground troops. Shifting personnel from the RAF to
the Army would have provided limited help.
It is also a good idea to look not just at general population figures but at
recruitable manpower. Sure the Soviets had a big population. Recruiting men
from the Siberian tribes would have meant a vast logistical, administrative
and police effort, in order to end up with highly uneducated, not
necessarily reliable personnel. The British in turn, at the end of the war,
had tens of thousands of military age men working in the coal mines. Sure
they could have sent them to the frontlines instead - with that, the Allied
war effort would have crashed due to the lack of coal.
And the
> UK combined with the US forces could not pose a threat on the western
> front in France in 1943? Why was the use of resources for Bomber Command
> discussed within the military leadership in the UK?
>
You do remember that the Allies did land in Europe in 1943, of course.
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:4b60bf0e$0$7625$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
> [...]
>>> True, but "worried" is a term that is open to interpretation.
>>> I am worried that I might have to leave the house a bit earlier as usual
>>> if I want to be at work in time if the weather stays as bad as it is
>>> right now. WSC might have been worried he could lose the war if the
>>> blitz goes on for one more month. The truth lies somewhere in between I
>>> guess.
>>
>> In fact. There is some leeway, also because while the decision-makers
>> might speak with others and/or write diaries, the amount of "worry"
>> remains difficult to assess afterwards. Nevertheless those memories can
>> provide at least some hint. On September 12, 1940, Harold Nicolson, a
>> junior member of the government, wrote: "everyone is worried [this is why
>> I used this word myself, BTW] about the feeling in the East End, where
>> there is much bitterness; it is said that even the King and the Queen
>> were booed the other day".
>
> For me it looks like Harold Nicolson does have little contact to the East
> End population and what worried them. He only mentions some hear-say about
> a rather irrelevant topic. He probably should have tried to get more and
> better information. And the booing of the Royal Family is hardly threating
> the war effort as far as I can see. It probably threatened the interests
> of aristocratic families of course.
Given the Royal Family is supposed to be the pinnacle of the UK
system, and it is supposed to be non political, a unifying force, think
national anthem, the fact members of the family were supposed to be
greeted badly would worry the government. Even more so in wartime.
It really helped the cause when Buckingham Palace was bombed.
>> No, it wasn't built up. The point I was making about not competing with a
>> land army is about sheer manpower, not just industrial power. You can
>> build less 4-engined bombers and more artillery, but the artillery is
>> only useful if you have an army in the millions. The bombers can be used
>> by a relatively smaller force, manpower-wise.
>
> I don't have numbers available atm, but I think Great Britain had a
> population of about 50 million people on the Home Islands, while Germany
> had a population of about 80 million, while engaged in a land war with the
> USSR with a much higher population.
By the end of 1941 the population of the USSR under Stalin's control
was around 130 million, down from 194.1 million, almost exactly 2/3
the pre war figure. Of course manpower calculations are complicated
by the various allies present and where their forces were deployed. Pre
war Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland had a combined population
of around 39 million. Then there was Italy.
The UK population was around 47,762,000 in June 1939. The 80
million figure for Germany would include, as a minimum, pre 1938
Germany, Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia.
In June 1944 the UK armed forces, excluding locally enlisted personnel,
was Army 2,719,000, Navy 851,500, Air Force 1,176,400 This was
the peak for the air force, the Army kept growing until at least June 1945.
> Germanys resources were mostly bound while the Wehrmacht lost at
> Stalingrad in 42/43, and only the last reserves at hand could turn the
> tide at the battle of Kharkov.
You are forgetting Kursk.
> And the UK combined with the US forces could not pose a threat on the
> western front in France in 1943?
Not really.
It would take almost all the invasion shipping built to around mid 1943
for the allies to mount an Overlord style invasion, 197 LSTs completed
by the end of March 1943 and an extra 71 completed by the end of
June 1943. Overlord used around 236 LSTs.
Next comes the way the US Ground forces were still expanding. From 39
divisions in January 1942 (2 Marine), 76 in January 1943 (2 Marine), and
95 in January 1944 (5 Marine). The 1942 expansion left many formations
struggling to be combat ready as trained men were moved to help form new
divisions.
There were 5 Armoured divisions in January 1942, 14 in January 1943.
Next there is no real comparison between the USAAF strength in
England in May 1943 (1,420 aircraft) and May 1944 (10,637 aircraft).
Figures include reserves. In particular first line fighters went from 332
to 3,382.
Next comes the fact the U-boats were doing very well in March 1943,
and an invasion would reduce escort forces as well as increase the
amount of supplies needed in Europe, with attendant increases in
shipping requirements. An invasion demands lots of troop transports
sail as well.
Finally the Germans have the option of holding the air and ground forces
historically used at Kursk and Sicily for action in France.
In short the allies lacked both front line troops and adequate supply
backup. The invasion shipping juggling act would continue until after
Overlord, the merchant shipping juggling act would continue until the
end of the war in the Pacific.
> Why was the use of resources for Bomber Command discussed within the
> military leadership in the UK?
The war situation changed. The results of the raids, good and bad,
were analysed, the costs of creating the force kept going up. The
USAAF arrived, Overlord went from a contingency plan to reality.
Geoffrey Sinclair
As seems normal all my words are deleted, we are left with this non reply.
> Like all technocrats you (& my other respondents) hide behind your
> numbers rather than face up to the central MORAL issues.
I suppose technocrat is a change from imperialist.
The moral issue you wanted to talk about was the USAAF strategic
bombing was acceptable the RAF strategic bombing was not, in
Europe anyway.
So I pointed out the results on the ground from the strategic bombing
raids of both air forces were quite comparable in terms of accuracy,
thereby pointing out either the bombing was right for both or wrong
for both.
The facts are there, the US and UK did significant work during
and post war about what the results were.
In your terms you hide behind moral outrage rather than learn what
actually happened.
> In WW2,
> Germany was a totalitarian state that initiated violence against its
> own citizens and its neighbours. The Allies were morally justified to
> retaliate against the Nazis and their armed forces but when they
> attacked civilians they descended to the same abysmal level of
> barbarism.
By the way I hope you are going to condemn the U-boat campaign,
most of the people killed by submarine attacks were civilian.
The allied bombers targeted the infrastructure. Just like the armies
did when attacking built up areas.
The allies did not run death camps, that was a Nazi Germany method.
> Killing German civilians was much more acceptable to the
> English than it was to Americans, whether they were in the military or
> back in the USA.
Yes I see, asked for proof of this statement none is provided,
the statement is simply repeated.
> Even from a military perspective, bombing civilians was counter-
> productive (as it was when the targets were British civilians) - it
> just makes the victims more committed to hurting 'the enemy'.
Actually the situation was mixed, absenteeism increased dramatically,
while others became more committed to the cause.
> The
> overall bombing campaign against Germany was also a major strategic
> mistake with minimal long-term damage against industrial capability
> with major costs (in aircrew as well as materiel).
Actually the results show something rather different. Start with the
fact the Luftwaffe had to concede the airspace above the battlefield
to allied airpower (shorter ranged allied airpower had something to say
about this as well), go on with the Germans could not keep producing
bombers as well as the fighters needed to counter allied attacks. The
construction industry being diverted to damage repair and then
underground factories and so on.
Add the way the German construction industry was stretched and note
its activity contributed to the economy even though it was fixing damaged
infrastructure. Then go look at the economic effects of the bombing
and the cost of the defences.
> My respondents are so obsessed with militarism & its minutia that the
> discussion with this group is no longer of interest to me - I am sure
> they will interpret my departure here as another 'victory'.
Ah yes, unable to reply sensibly even once, time to announce everyone
else is the problem.
Off you go then, more dragons to slay elsewhere no doubt.
> God help us.
>From those who choose to imagine reality and demand others agree.
Michele
> Gregory E. Garland schrieb:
>> "Thomas Schneider" <thomassc...@gmx.de> wrote in message
>> news:4b60bf09$0$7625$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
>>
>>> I think there is a difference between bombing civilian workers in a
>>> ammunition factory and bombing kids. YMMV.
>>>
>>
>> Please demonstrate how the bomber groups at the time had the
>> capability to make that distinction. If you can't then you are talking
>> nonsense.
>
> If they couldn't make the distinction they probably shouldn't have bombed
> at all.
>
Why? By bombing the cities they also bombed the ammunition factories inside
them, you know.
> Keep in mind:
>
> - The war was won by ground troops.
Which war?
You mean the war against Germany, of course, but then you shouldn't present
your statements in such a form as that they might be understood as
all-encompassing, sweeping generalizations that apply to the whole war.
For instance, when the Italians surrendered, there were enemy ground troops
in Italy but they were very far from having defeated the Axis in ground
combat in Italy. Indeed that ground war went on and on and on, after Italy
had surrendered. So why did Italy surrender? Well, because of a long string
of defeats (one of them by aero-naval power only) and because of the enemy
ground troops in Sicily - and because of the bombings of Rome and Milan.
Then there is the war against Japan. Sure Japanese troops had been defeated
on the ground by enemy ground troops before - but given those defeats, the
Japanese leadership weas determined to fight on. The tipping point was not
brought about by ground troops.
Then there is the final dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. No war there, no;
just threats. And we know, from the accounts of the persons present at the
decisive moment, that the threat of the destruction of Prague from the air
was what finally convinced the Czechs to give up.
So try not to be so sure. The Italian case is particularly interesting. As
Richard Davis mentions (Bombing the European Axis Powers) the bombings gave
a significant, although unquantifiable, contribution to the fall of
Mussolini. We _now_ know the Germans were not going to budge. But in 1943,
the Allies knew that a few days after the bombing of Rome, Mussolini was
ousted. They also gradually came to know there was a circle of plotters in
Germany.
Whermacht collapsed when a second
> front in France was opened.
No, of course. The Wehrmacht (note spelling) did not collapse with the
opening of the French front, and please note that that was not, despite the
Soviet rhetoric, the second front; that had been in existence since Husky.
>
> - Moral bombing was a failure.
>
Can you quantify, exactly, what made Stauffenberg and his pals tick? Can you
state with absolute certainty that the strategic bombing played no role at
all? Because, you see, if Stauffenberg had succeeded, it would have been a
remake of the replacement of Mussolini.
> - On reading the dehousing paper, Professor Patrick Blackett the chief
> scientist to the Royal Navy said that the paper's estimate of what could
> be achieved was 600% too high (Wikipedia). Obviously even in the UK
> military leadership the tactic was disputed.
>
Sure. The Royal Navy wanted more money for ships than for bombers. Nothing
new there. In this specific case their expert was also right, but the top
decision makers may well have weighed that factor in, when assessing his
opinions.
Besides, you should keep in mind that achieving the forecasted results and
achieving a meaningful result are not necessarily the same thing. In this
case, it is true the study overstated its case, but it is also arguable that
the German industrial workers were meaningfully dehoused.
> - Tha air raids in '45 shortly before the war ended, where they aming at
> ammunition workers?
>
Well, yes, in part they were. They were also bombing the rail nodes, which
happened to be in the cities. And they were also still trying to obtain a
surrender. As you will certainly remember, Allied soldiers died by the tens
of thousands in the last month of war; Germany was still fighting back. So
it was, rightly, business as usual for the bombers.
Michele
news:c3b6d7ac-1bf9-44a1...@a12g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
>>
> Not according to Hansen but then he's only a professional historian.
>>
Given that this author has been recently mentioned in the newsgroup, and
that I did not know his name, I thought it might be a good idea to turn up
some stones.
He is a professor, yes, but not a history professor. He teaches political
science. He is involved with Canadian research institutions interested in
immigration governance, international studies, foreign policy. Not history.
He wrote or co-edited a few hefty books, with titles such as:
"Dual Nationality, Social Rights and Federal Citizenship in the U.S. and
Europe: The Reinvention of Citizenship", and:
"Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain: The Institutional Origins
of a Multicultural Nation", and:
"Towards a European Nationality: Citizenship, Immigration, and Nationality
Law in the EU".
Given the thickness, cost and topic, my guess would be that not many copies
of any of these were sold.
Then Professor Hansen decided to write a book about the military history of
WWII, the one we've seen mentioned here, "Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing
of Germany, 1942-1945". This came at decidedly a lower cost, and on a more
popular, happily controversial issue.
Professor Hansen also gained some fame in a controversy with a Canadian
museum; in that controversy he took one side, the veteran Canadian pilots
the other side.
He is also on record with quite a surprising argument about Dresden (yes,
groan, once again). Given that it's become a war-cry, that's not all that
surprising.
For starters, he states that the bombing of Dresden was not justified
"strategically", because the industries were in the suburbs, outside the
main bombed area. Now, one could claim that there were no strategic targets
in the bombed area, provided he had not noticed the rail lines, rail
marshalling yards and railway bridges right there in the centre of the city;
and provided he had not noticed what the Soviets had asked for, chiefly,
that is, the disruption of the rail network right behind the front.
Professor Hansen also states that "today, we would unequivocally describe
such a strategy as a war crime". Yes we would - because of the laws of war
we have today. Which weren't the same at the time. Ah, but that's not a
problem. Because, according to him, at Nuremberg the Allies insisted that "a
war crime is such regardless of whether it was formally legal when it was
committed". Did they? Where? One reads the IMT Charter, and finds: "(b) WAR
CRIMES: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war." Or he reads the
relevant Count of the Indictment and finds: "These methods and crimes
constituted violations of international conventions, of internal penal laws
and of the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal
law of all civilized nations". The defendants that were tried at Nuremberg
under this Count were judged for the violation of the laws of war. Those
that said that bombing a defended city was allowed.
All in all, I do not think I will buy that book.
Oh, and one of the Amazon pages about this book seems to say that people who
bought this book, also bought a book by Bacque. The author obviously can't
help that, but it says something about the readership.
Don Phillipson
> Killing German civilians was much more acceptable to the
> English than it was to Americans, whether they were in the military or
> back in the USA.
What evidence suggests this? What evidence suggests governments'
or commanders' tactics were guided by social attitudes (measured
or guessed) to killing civilians?
> Even from a military perspective, bombing civilians was counter-
> productive (as it was when the targets were British civilians) - it
> just makes the victims more committed to hurting 'the enemy'.
What evidence shows German bombing of Britain was "counter-
productive?" This was not how politicians or ordinary Britons
evaluated the "Blitz" of 1940-41 or the V1 and V2 bombardments
of 1944-45 or the periodical return of the Luftwaffe in between.
William Black
> Gregory E. Garland schrieb:
>> "Thomas Schneider" <thomassc...@gmx.de> wrote in message
>> news:4b60bf09$0$7625$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
>>
>>> I think there is a difference between bombing civilian workers in a
>>> ammunition factory and bombing kids. YMMV.
>>>
>>
>> Please demonstrate how the bomber groups at the time had the
>> capability to make that distinction. If you can't then you are talking
>> nonsense.
>
> If they couldn't make the distinction they probably shouldn't have bombed
> at all.
>
wide open.
It was certainly not a decision made by the officers in command of the
operation.
Gregory E. Garland
> Gregory E. Garland schrieb:
>> "Thomas Schneider" <thomassc...@gmx.de> wrote in message
>> news:4b60bf09$0$7625$9b4e...@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
>>
>>> I think there is a difference between bombing civilian workers in a
>>> ammunition factory and bombing kids. YMMV.
>>>
>>
>> Please demonstrate how the bomber groups at the time had the
>> capability to make that distinction. If you can't then you are talking
>> nonsense.
>
> If they couldn't make the distinction they probably shouldn't have bombed
> at all.
>
Post-war moralizing. Every nation involved built bombers; every nation
intended to use those bombers on enemy cities if it became necessary.
> Keep in mind:
>
> - The war was won by ground troops. Whermacht collapsed when a second
> front in France was opened.
>
When those ground troops smashed their way through the towns and cities the
where the Germans were dug in, they had no idea whether or not a particular
shell or bullet was going to kill just the soldiers or the civilians and
children still
living there. According to your standard they should not have been fighting
at all.
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> What evidence shows German bombing of Britain was "counter-
> productive?" This was not how politicians or ordinary Britons
> evaluated the "Blitz" of 1940-41 or the V1 and V2 bombardments
> of 1944-45 or the periodical return of the Luftwaffe in between.
One thing that never gets mentioned in the discussion about civilian
morale is the effect bombing the enemy can have on one's own civilians.
Prior to Normandy, Britain had very little way available to engage the
Germans, save for the aerial assault. There's likely a certain sense of
"doing something" that's good for local morale.
Mike
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:0bd9a9e6-2664-4ecf...@22g2000yqr.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 1, 10:59 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote in message
>
>> >> So the V2 was over 3 times more lethal, the V1 over twice as lethal.
>>
>> > This is remarkable, considering that large numbers of V1s and V2s were
>> > misdirected into rural areas by British disinformation (the deceptive
>> > impact data supplied by the double agent GARBO).
>>
>> This is simply wrong, the misdirection was not that good, it did help
>> but London was simply too big a target.
>
> According to Ewen Montagu in _Beyond Top Secret Ultra_,
> the MPI of the V-1s "ended up well outside the London
> region". There were still a few impacts in London, but
> "large numbers" fell elsewhere.
If I remember correctly the nominal target was St Paul's Cathedral.
The deception, according to R V Jones, made the nominal target
the Dulwich area. It was more than Garbo sending reports, the
20 committee (or XX in Roman numerals), co-ordinated the
deception, mixing up the locations of impacts and times of impact.
Basically giving the locations of overshoots with the times of
impact of those that fell short.
> 6,184 Britons were killed by V-1s; 2,754 by V-2s.
> 8,938 total.
The official history The defence of the United Kingdom gives the
figures as
Conventional bombing 51,509 killed, 61,423 seriously injured
Flying bombs 6,184 killed, 17,981 seriously injured
Rockets 2,754 killed and 6,523 seriously injured
Cross channel guns 148 killed and 255 seriously injured
Totals 60,595 killed and 86,182 seriously injured.
Of the 146,777 killed or seriously injured 80,397 were in the
London Civil Defence Region.
You can see way air raids were more predictable and therefore
a lower killed to injured ratio. Since the flying bombs and
rockets came at all hours people had to accept the risk, at some
point people have to go about their daily business and so expose
themselves to the danger. So there were more people in vulnerable
positions, also the lower impact speed of the V1 enabled a larger
blast area.
> Montagu mentions a study by an expert who calculated
> that "many thousands more people would have lost their
> lives" if the German weapons had been properly ranged.
> This expert did not know about the deception operation.
>
> If "many thousands" means 4,000 to 6,000, then the
> deception operation _substantially_ reduced the effect
> of the V-weapons; and if they were _still_ more lethal
> than conventional bombing, that seems remarkable to me.
I am always wary when "many" is used, rather than a
figure, when someone claims success.
Essentially the conventional bombing came to around 75,000
tons of bombs, the V1s "eluding defences" were 3,531, there
were 1,054 V2 impacts on the UK. With the V1 and V2
carrying roughly a 1 ton warhead. However a number of
shot down V1s exploded on impact, killing people.
There were some 10,492 V1s launched against the UK, but
the figure of 1,600 launched by aircraft is an estimate. The
deception plan would be mainly for the ground based launches.
The official figures are to 5 September some 9,017 V1s
launched, of which around 400 were from aircraft. Some 6,725
were seen by the defences, 1,241 shot down, 1,693 eluded,
1,241 reached the London Civil Defence area. In the next
phase, 16 September 1944 to 14 January 1945 there were an
estimated 1,200 V1s launched by aircraft, of which 638 were
observed and 403 shot down.
Phase 1, to 15 July, 4,361 V1s launched, 2,934 seen (67%),
1,693 evaded the defences (58%)
Phase 2, 16 July to 5 September 4,656 launched, 3,791 seen
(81%), 1,569 evaded the defences (41%)
Phase 3, 16 September 1944 to 14 January 1945, around 1,200
launched from aircraft, 638 seen (53%), 235 evaded the defences
(37%)
Phase 4, 3 to 29 March 1945, long range ground launched version,
275 launched, 125 seen (45%), 34 evaded the defences (27%).
Note Diver! Diver! Diver! by Cull and Lander come up with a list
of nearly 2,310 V1s shot down by allied aircraft, including 31.5
by USAAF fighters. The official history says fighters shot down
1,846.625, yes five eighths.
Apparently up until 6 September some 5,817 people had been killed
and 17,086 seriously injured (For London it was 5,381 killed and
15,777 seriously injured)
I do not have a good enough map of London to do a complete
analysis of the following data. The map in Cull and Lander makes
clear the concentration in the London area. You can also make
out the corridor over Kent and Sussex centred on Dungeness
where most of the V1s flew to London.
Definitions,
1) the usual definition of incident is a single impact
2) incidents include where the bomb exploded on impact after
being shot down, few in London, but a significant number
around the defensive gun belt and over UK fighter patrol areas,
mainly Kent.
3) The London civil defence area reported 2,420 incidents but
another table gives 2,419 bombs reaching the area.
4) the list by county excludes any impacts that were also within
the London Civil Defence Region.
Boroughs or Districts within the London Civil Defence Region
reporting 30 or more flying bomb incidents
Number Location
140 Croydon
126 Wandsworth
117 Lewisham
82 Camberwell
82 Woolwich
73 Greenwich
71 Beckenham
69 Lambeth
67 Orpington
58 Coulsdon and Purley
57 West Ham
50 Chislehurst and Sidcup
46 Mitcham
39 Barking
38 Hackney
37 Banstead
37 Poplar
36 Beddington and Waddington
36 East Ham
36 Esher
36 Ilford
36 Wimbledon
35 Merton and Morden
34 Battersea
34 Bromley (Kent)
33 Sutton and Cheam
31 Westminster
30 Bermondsey
30 Deptford
30 Stepney
1626 Total, out of 2,420 such incidents
Counties outside of the London Civil Defence Region reporting
10 or more flying bomb incidents.
Number County
1,444 Kent
886 Sussex
412 Essex
295 Surrey
93 Suffolk
82 Hertfordshire
80 Hampshire
27 Buckinghamshire
13 Norfolk
12 Berkshire
10 Bedfordshire
3,354 Total, out of 3,403 such incidents.
If you count the impacts in Kent, Sussex, Essex and Surrey then the mean
point of impact would be well outside of London as Montagu reports.
Many of these impacts were the result of the defences, and I really doubt
many impacts well away from London not due to the defences were due
to a deception plan that moved the nominal target something like 5 miles.
It would be interesting to know, with 2,419 incidents in London,
and 3,403 outside of London, which includes a number of V1s aimed
at other targets, how the mean point of impact ended up well out of
London. Note the total number of incidents is 5,822 versus the claims
of 3,531 the eluded the defences, in other words some 2,291 of the
incidents occurred when the bomb was shot down. The number of
V1s coming down over Kent, Sussex, Essex and Surrey are put at
3,037. Were the impacts caused by shoot downs eliminated from
the Montagu study? Since most of the shoot downs were outside
London it drops the figures to say 2,300 in London and 1,300 outside
of London, including those that were aimed at places like Portsmouth.
Figures vary for the non London V1 targets, maybe around 140 at
Southampton/Portsmouth, 50 at Manchester and 20 at Gloucester.
Rich Rostrom
> > According to Ewen Montagu in _Beyond Top Secret Ultra_,
> > the MPI of the V-1s "ended up well outside the London
> > region". There were still a few impacts in London, but
> > "large numbers" fell elsewhere.
>
> If I remember correctly the nominal target was St Paul's Cathedral.
>
> The deception, according to R V Jones, made the nominal target
> the Dulwich area.
Dulwich may have been where the British first
tried to divert the V-1s; there is a lot
of open space in the area even today (a golf
course and several large parks).
However, Dulwich is SSE of central London.
The deception induced the Germans to shorten
their range, which would move the MPI SSE
in summer 1944, when the launch sites were
in France, but not after September 1944,
when the launch sites were in the Netherlands.
> It was more than Garbo sending reports, the
> 20 committee (or XX in Roman numerals),
More accurately, the XX (for "Double cross")
Committee, often referred to as the "Twenty
Committee" because XX in roman numerals is 20.
> co-ordinated the deception...
XX Committee approved the operation,
but it was carried out by Home Defence
Executive and MI.5.
> mixing up the locations of impacts and times of impact.
> Basically giving the locations of overshoots with the times of
> impact of those that fell short.
The method of mixing impact locations
and times applied to V-2s, not V-1s.
The Germans could calculate the exact
time of a V-2 impact; this was not
possible with a V-1.
> > 6,184 Britons were killed by V-1s; 2,754 by V-2s.
> > 8,938 total.
>
> > Montagu mentions a study by an expert who calculated
> > that "many thousands more people would have lost their
> > lives" if the German weapons had been properly ranged.
> > This expert did not know about the deception operation.
>
> > If "many thousands" means 4,000 to 6,000, then the
> > deception operation _substantially_ reduced the effect
> > of the V-weapons; and if they were _still_ more lethal
> > than conventional bombing, that seems remarkable to me.
>
> I am always wary when "many" is used, rather than a
> figure, when someone claims success.
>
> If you count the impacts in Kent, Sussex, Essex and Surrey then the mean
> point of impact would be well outside of London as Montagu reports.
> Many of these impacts were the result of the defences, and I really doubt
> many impacts well away from London not due to the defences were due
> to a deception plan that moved the nominal target something like 5 miles.
>
> It would be interesting to know, with 2,419 incidents in London,
> and 3,403 outside of London, which includes a number of V1s aimed
> at other targets, how the mean point of impact ended up well out of
> London.
Easy. Montagu was not referring to
the MPI of _all_ V-weapon attacks
from the beginning, but the MPI
of attacks in each succeeding
interval.
If the MPI of V-1s launched in
March 1945 was say 6-7 km south
of Brentwood, the it would be
true that the MPI had moved well
outside of London, regardless of
how many V-1s had landed in London
in 1944.
> Were the impacts caused by shoot downs eliminated from
> the Montagu study?
As to whether V-1 shootdowns were
excluded from the Montagu study:
I'm not sure what you're referring
to here. The estimate of casualties
averted was not made by Montagu,
but by an unnamed expert whom Montagu
wrote was not aware of the deception.
Neither was Montagu responsible for
compiling V-weapon impact data: that
would be done by Home Defense Executive.
ISTM almost certain that the people in
charge of the deception would make sure
that they had a clear record of strikes
as opposed to shoot-downs; only the
former would provide information about
German target settings.
Also, separate counts were made for V-1
and V-2 impacts. V-2 data was handled
differently.
The Allies did not (could not!)
shoot down V-2s.
If the V-2 MPI moved that was
entirely due to deception and not
V-2s being forced down short.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On Jan 31, 9:55 am, "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au>
> wrote:
>> "Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote in message
>>
>> > According to Ewen Montagu in _Beyond Top Secret Ultra_,
>> > the MPI of the V-1s "ended up well outside the London
>> > region". There were still a few impacts in London, but
>> > "large numbers" fell elsewhere.
>>
>> If I remember correctly the nominal target was St Paul's Cathedral.
>>
>> The deception, according to R V Jones, made the nominal target
>> the Dulwich area.
>
> Dulwich may have been where the British first
> tried to divert the V-1s; there is a lot
> of open space in the area even today (a golf
> course and several large parks).
Note above you were talking about V-1s. And R V Jones is quite
explicit the attempt to move the nominal target to Dulwich was an
anti V-1 measure. Dulwich is still well within the London built up
area given the V-1 accuracy.
The V-1s were not diverted to Dulwich, the information given to
the Germans would move the nominal target.
And lots of open spaces on a suburban basis is hardly relevant
given the accuracy of the V-1. Think things like cross or tail
winds for a start. Look at the list of impact areas I provided.
> However, Dulwich is SSE of central London.
> The deception induced the Germans to shorten
> their range, which would move the MPI SSE
> in summer 1944, when the launch sites were
> in France, but not after September 1944,
> when the launch sites were in the Netherlands.
Correct, a move to make the V-2 rockets fall short would require
a shift roughly north east. Similar for the long range V-1 ground
launches. The V-1s launched from aircraft would depend on the
accuracy of the night navigation of the He111s to start with.
>> mixing up the locations of impacts and times of impact.
>> Basically giving the locations of overshoots with the times of
>> impact of those that fell short.
>
> The method of mixing impact locations and times applied to V-2s, not V-1s.
No V-1s as well, it seems to have been considered successful for V-1s
so it was logical to extend it to V-2s. See R V Jones.
> The Germans could calculate the exact time of a V-2 impact; this was
> not possible with a V-1.
They could obtain a better idea of time but of course there were a
steady number of V-2s that simply disappeared. Plus the attempts
to fire salvos. The British used the fact the agents could not be
expected to be carrying stop watches so the times could have
errors in them, nor could agents be expected to see and hear all
impacts. Remember analogue wrist watches can easily gain or lose
minutes a day.
>> > 6,184 Britons were killed by V-1s; 2,754 by V-2s.
>> > 8,938 total.
>>
>> > Montagu mentions a study by an expert who calculated
>> > that "many thousands more people would have lost their
>> > lives" if the German weapons had been properly ranged.
>> > This expert did not know about the deception operation.
>>
>> > If "many thousands" means 4,000 to 6,000, then the
>> > deception operation _substantially_ reduced the effect
>> > of the V-weapons; and if they were _still_ more lethal
>> > than conventional bombing, that seems remarkable to me.
>>
>> I am always wary when "many" is used, rather than a
>> figure, when someone claims success.
And I am still wary.
>> If you count the impacts in Kent, Sussex, Essex and Surrey then the mean
>> point of impact would be well outside of London as Montagu reports.
>> Many of these impacts were the result of the defences, and I really doubt
>> many impacts well away from London not due to the defences were due
>> to a deception plan that moved the nominal target something like 5 miles.
>>
>> It would be interesting to know, with 2,419 incidents in London,
>> and 3,403 outside of London, which includes a number of V1s aimed
>> at other targets, how the mean point of impact ended up well out of
>> London.
>
> Easy. Montagu was not referring to the MPI of _all_ V-weapon attacks
> from the beginning, but the MPI of attacks in each succeeding interval.
So what were the MPIs per interval, what are the phases being used?
What exactly is being measured here? Time wise I mean.
What does an MPI "ended up well outside the London region", mean?
Ten miles, 100 miles?
Next comes, "There were still a few impacts in London, but "large
numbers" fell elsewhere."
A few impacts for V-1s is 2,419 or 41.6% of all impacts, and in the
order of 65% of all V-1 impacts not caused by the defences shooting
the V-1 down.
So how come thousands of impacts becomes a few? It would make
the V-1 impacts not caused by the defences outside of London "very few".
> If the MPI of V-1s launched in March 1945 was say 6-7 km south
> of Brentwood, the it would be true that the MPI had moved well
> outside of London, regardless of how many V-1s had landed in London
> in 1944.
Do you know exactly where the MPI for these V-1s were? How big is
London as you define it, versus the wartime London Civil Defence Area?
This is really over claiming, the V-1s launched in March 1945 were the
new long range types fired from Germany, a much longer journey and
so a decrease in accuracy. Furthermore of the 125 observed by the
defences only 34 evaded them. Basing a "saving" of lives on 34 impacts,
of which 13 reached London does not sound like good statistics. So
is the idea all 21 misses are due to deception, not the problems of longer
range or even damage done by the defences?
Even if all 21 misses are due to deception that does not do much in
terms of thousands of lives saved.
>> Were the impacts caused by shoot downs eliminated from
>> the Montagu study?
>
> As to whether V-1 shootdowns were excluded from the Montagu study:
> I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
Then I will be explicit, it looks like most of the bombs shot down by
the defences exploded when they hit the ground. Those impact points
have nothing to do with deception and everything to do with the
defences. One Spitfire pilot was reduced from triumph to a wreck
when he found out the V-1 he had shot down had killed people.
The impacts from shot down V-1s are a significant part of the number
of V-1 impacts, and as the figures I provided show the defences became
better as the campaign went on.
So how many of the impacts due to the defences were counted in
the MPI calculations?
When you take out the shot down V-1s then basically for every 3
V-1s 2 hit London and 1 missed. Yet the MPI is supposed to have
been moved well outside London, think about how far the average
miss has to be to do that. Think about the idea claiming impacts
miles from London are supposed to be caused by a deception that
moved the nominal target 5 miles. The gross misses would almost
certainly be due to malfunctions or combat damage.
> The estimate of casualties
> averted was not made by Montagu, but by an unnamed expert whom Montagu
> wrote was not aware of the deception.
Irrelevant who made the calculation the question is what data was
used in making it and how it was made.
> Neither was Montagu responsible for compiling V-weapon impact data: that
> would be done by Home Defense Executive.
Irrelevant, what data was used is relevant.
> ISTM almost certain that the people in charge of the deception would
> make sure that they had a clear record of strikes as opposed to
> shoot-downs; only the former would provide information about
> German target settings.
Yes, you would think so, it would be good to confirm it.
> Also, separate counts were made for V-1 and V-2 impacts. V-2 data
> was handled differently.
The concept of the deception remained the same.
> The Allies did not (could not!) shoot down V-2s.
Irrelevant.
> If the V-2 MPI moved that was entirely due to deception and not
> V-2s being forced down short.
Where exactly was the V-2 MPI, according to Montagu versus where
the Germans thought they were aiming for?
By the way the mobile launchers needed to evade allied air power
meant the range was rarely the same for the V-2 launches, unlike
the ground based V-1 launches.
The UK official history estimates 1,403 V-2s were launched against
the UK.
V-2 launches aimed at London, 1,359, plus another 44 aimed at
Ipswich or Norwich. So 1,403 launches, 517 hit London Civil
defence area, 537 other places in the UK, 61 off shore, total
1,115. Of the land impacts, as noted London 517, Essex 378,
Kent 64, Hertfordshire 34, Norfolk 29, Suffolk 13, Surrey 8,
Sussex 4, Bedfordshire 3, Buckinghamshire 2, Cambridgeshire
1, Berkshire 1.
The following is month, September 1944 to March 1945,
percentage of V-2 impacts on UK that were in the London Civil
Defence area
Sep 47%, Oct 35%, Nov 57%, Dec 39%, Jan 52%, Feb 49%,
Mar 53%. Overall 49%. Note the V-2s aimed at Norwich or
Ipswich were launched between 25 September and 12 October,
from these 44 launches 32 V-2s arrived and another 5 exploded
off shore. Total impacts for September are put at 34, for October
91. So the non London aimed V-2s make up just over a quarter of
all impacts in these months. If you take the combined September
and October figures, 125 impacts, 48 in London and remove 32
from the non London impacts you end up with an accuracy figure
for the two months for V-2s aimed at London of 52%.
If there was an effect of the deception it does not show up here.
Particularly if the claim is the MPI was shifted "well outside London".
Put it another way, if 52% is the standard accuracy before deception
and the overall accuracy was 49% then 3% of 517 is 15 to 16 impacts,
which on average V-2 lethality would mean an extra 40 lives, if you
assume all victims of V-2 impacts were killed in London it would be
82 lives.
This leaves the V-1s, on average a V-1 incidents (explosion on impact)
killed 1.06 people, note earlier lethality calculations were for V-1s that
evaded the defences, and this gives a figure of 1.75 deaths per bomb,
the earlier calculation is wrong, the number of incidents, that is V-1s that
exploded, is the correct way to calculate the average lethality, however
see below for the average lethality for hits on London. We have 1,300
to 1,400 non defences caused V-1 incidents outside of London, say
1,350 incidents.
Officially to 6 September 5,381 out of 5,817 people killed by V-1s
were in London, from 2,340 incidents, that means a lethality of 2.3
deaths per incident in London and something like 0.15 deaths per
incident outside of London. So moving 1,350 incidents from
elsewhere in the UK to London would add 2,900 deaths to the toll,
add another 100 for the V-2 and you end up with 3,000. This is
saying the deception is totally responsible for all the V-1 misses.
Now in the initial phase (to 15 July) something like 75% of the V-1s that
eluded the defences made it to London, versus 68% in the 16 July to 5
September period, if the drop in accuracy is totally due to the deception
then the difference is 107 impacts, call it 110 given the uncertainties in
the data (things like other targets making up 1.8% of launches and 4.5%
of launches were from aircraft) times 2.15 deaths per incident would be
around 240 extra deaths.
Remember we are talking about deception moving the nominal target
around 5 miles. So in reality it looks like the calculation Montagu
mentions used the V-1 impacts regardless of cause, which would mean
more impacts outside of London than in it, which would indeed move the
MPI well outside of London, and of course it would then assume double
or more the number of V-1 impacts on London, thousands more incidents
would indeed mean thousands more dead.
If the claims for the deception said many hundreds it would be much more
credible because in reality only the V-1s that missed London by between
0 and 5 miles on a course coming from France should be counted. Similar
for the V-2s, but in a different direction.