daylight strategic bombing -- a failure?

[Joseph Askew]

Brian Blakistone (cbla...@ucsd.edu) wrote:

: >: Daylight bombing destroyed over 18,000 enemy aircraft, and a coresponding
: >: number of aircrews.

Incidentally the total number of B-17s shot down in the War, in both
the European theatre and the Pacific, was about 22,000. That isn't
counting any other types. How many crew members?

: >Aircrew. The fighters that accompanied the bombers usually got single
: >seat fighters if anything. Sometimes more than that but not often.
: >The Germans on the other hand shot down about as many planes, if not
: >more depending on what you count and when. They tended to shoot down
: >multi-crewed planes (if you will forgive that awful expression).
: >Which is why so many Airforce personel died.

: At the risk of being callous, the pilots were the really costly
: losses.

To the Germans or the Allies or both?

: The allies could afford to replace their pilot losses,
: but by the end of the war the Germans were forced to put poorly
: trained men into combat with predictable results. In a strange

Very true. Although it isn't equally true of all the Western
Allies that the Germans couldn't afford to replace their pilots
as well as they could. I would like to see the figures on the
RAF alone.

: sense German fighter pilots were a limited strategic resource,
: while the allies supply was comparatively large. Also fighters

As is true in all areas really. And yet it seems a wasteful sort
of war of attrition to send bombers over Germany where their crews,
if they didn't die, would become prisoners on being shot down.
This is just asking for a much higher rate of attrition than the
Germans suffered. Sure the Allies could replace each pilot they
lost with another 10. They would have to. But it isn't sensible.
There must have been easier ways of doing things.

: deployed in Germany could not be deployed east, during Kursk more
: pilots fell over Germany than over the Soviet Union. It also
: forced a shift away from bomber production to fighters. In the
: east the German's relative imbalance in artillery was in part
: compensated through the use of bombers, their inability to
: replace losses after the shift to fighters exacerbated the
: imbalance.

The Germans were so grossly outproduced in everything I don't
see how it matters. After all if they had built bombers for
CAS work and the Allies had used their planes in a way I would
call sensibly, the German bombers would still have all been
shot down. The Allies just had so many more planes than anyone
else.

: >: 80% of Germany's fuel industry was destroyed.

: >By the end of the war this might have been true. But over all
: >it is not. Speer, who I hate to use and don't trust, claimed
: >that bombing destroyed 9% of German production. Which was made
: >up for by the increased motivation of the German workers.

: This is hard to gage, part of the conventional wisdom in regard
: to the defeat in WWI was a lack of will on the home front, and so
: more production was left producing consumer goods during WWII.

I think that is more typical of the German Generals who, as usual,
blamed someone else for their loss in World War One. Of course in
World War One the German public wasn't just short of consumer goods
it was actually starving. But that's what Speer says. I can take
it or leave it really.

: The fact that the German production went up in later years was in
: part a shift away from consumer goods to a full war footing.

What has always surprised me is the claim that the Germans in WW2
never reached the sorts of production levels seen in the same
territories in WW1. Simply amazing. For all the modern claims
that Monarchies lack popular support it is clear that the WW1
Germans could call on their population to an amazing extent. More
so if you look at the small number of people they executed for
military crimes.

: Also in later years more labor was imported or slave labor, so
: the motivation of German workers would seem to become less
: relevant.

But those workers would never work without German supervision and
I doubt that they ever formed a majority of the German workforce.
Which was about 40 million strong if I remember right (although
it looks too big to me).

: Weinberg in _World at Arms_ argues that the disruption
: of communications wires meant more had to go through radio. More
: transmissions meant more data to the code breakers, which led to
: valuable information.

Well I havedoubts about the value of such information, but
that's another thread in itself. More transmissions might mean
more valuable information but it also meant more trivial facts.
More work to wade through.

: Glantz and House, _When Titans Clashed_, state that the night
: bombing kept French and Italian workers from being willing to
: work night shifts.

Perhaps but then it wouldn't take a lot to de-motivate French
and Eastern European labour. Or Italian if it came to that.

: By the end of the war there were something
: like a million folk trained to man the AAA guns, and while most
: were not army material, they certainly could have been used in
: the factories, not to mention all those AAA assets would have
: been most useful in the Soviet Union.

A lot of those gun crews were either too old or too young to
actually fight. The Germans weren't taking the cream of their
armed forces away from the front to man AA guns. But I agree
that here Speer has half a point. Guns were used for most of
the war against Allied planes. Worse a lot of electronics went
into Radar rather than radios and the like. But I don't really
believe they were worth the cost to the Allies.

: Alternately the production
: capacity used for the guns and ammunition could have been used to
: produce more of something else.

On the other hand if the bombing did not bring the war home and
make the German population associate discontent with treason it
may have been the case that the German public would have turned
against the limited loss of consumer goods they suffered.

: All in all it seems to have
: been a good way to strike at Germany while preparing to engage in
: a larger land war.

I think even at the time it wasn't. A more sensible means would have
been to send Allied fighters after German fighters and if that did
not work then put a few bombs on those fighters and have them bomb,
at low levels, military targets. In blowing up V1 sites it was very
clearly shown that big bombers used a hell of a lot more bombs to
do the same job as smaller planes did.

Joseph

--
"It formed with the rest of the solar system, around five
billion years ago. That's fifteen million human generations"
Kim Stanley Robinson, _Red Mars_, Part Three, The Crucible

[Brian Blakistone]

jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Joseph Askew) wrote:
>Brian Blakistone (cbla...@ucsd.edu) wrote:

>: The allies could afford to replace their pilot losses,
>: but by the end of the war the Germans were forced to put poorly
>: trained men into combat with predictable results. In a strange

>Very true. Although it isn't equally true of all the Western
>Allies that the Germans couldn't afford to replace their pilots
>as well as they could. I would like to see the figures on the
>RAF alone.

The Germans ended up getting pressed on three fronts. I'm also
not sure how germane it is to look at the RAF in isolation, but
its interesting to note that through night bombing they did take
a course that led to less losses. Their bomber forces steadily
increased during the war, so they do seem to have been able to
more than replace their losses.

>And yet it seems a wasteful sort
>of war of attrition to send bombers over Germany where their crews,
>if they didn't die, would become prisoners on being shot down.
>This is just asking for a much higher rate of attrition than the
>Germans suffered. Sure the Allies could replace each pilot they
>lost with another 10. They would have to. But it isn't sensible.
>There must have been easier ways of doing things.

But its much less wasteful than to try it against tanks, much
fewer aircraft, and so fewer total losses. I don't see a
superior alternative, the Western Allies don't seem to have been
ready to stand toe to toe with the Wehrmacht as evidenced by
Dieppe and Kasserine Pass. And while the direct net losses might
have favored the Germans, their losses had huge impact in other
areas. During Stalingrad, the Russians really needed to gain
local air superiority to smash through the weaker satellite
armies guarding the flanks, additional fighters or AA might have
limited or slowed the breakthroughs.

>: In the

>: east the German's relative imbalance in artillery was in part
>: compensated through the use of bombers, their inability to
>: replace losses after the shift to fighters exacerbated the
>: imbalance.

>The Germans were so grossly outproduced in everything I don't
>see how it matters. After all if they had built bombers for
>CAS work and the Allies had used their planes in a way I would
>call sensibly, the German bombers would still have all been
>shot down. The Allies just had so many more planes than anyone
>else.

There is some question about how sensible the Allies would have
been. Stalin was always very touchy about having any of the
Western Allied forces on his soil. I find it entirely credible
that the Germans could have concentrated the Luftwaffe in the
East, with serious consequences for the Soviets. As it played
out the Germans really only enjoyed complete air superiority
during '41, which not coincidentally is also when they made their
greatest gains. JU 87's were quite effective with superiority,
but vulnerable without it. Stalin was also always very unhappy
about the lack of a second front, in some ways the bombing effort
was also a show of good faith. By the time 1943 comes around the
Germans are losing large numbers of fighters on three fronts,
Europe, the Mediterranean and the East.

>: This is hard to gage, part of the conventional wisdom in regard
>: to the defeat in WWI was a lack of will on the home front, and so
>: more production was left producing consumer goods during WWII.

>I think that is more typical of the German Generals who, as usual,
>blamed someone else for their loss in World War One. Of course in
>World War One the German public wasn't just short of consumer goods
>it was actually starving. But that's what Speer says. I can take
>it or leave it really.

I would say that WWI got lost on the battlefield, but the Nazis
ended up as victims of their own propaganda. That combined with
a reluctance to mobilize women into the work force and improved
manufacturing techniques meant that the gains in production in
the latter years might not have been the result of motivation and
could potentially have been far greater in the absence of the
bomber campaign. The campaign did force them to disperse their
aircraft industry, which did disrupt their production.

[...]

>: Also in later years more labor was imported or slave labor, so
>: the motivation of German workers would seem to become less
>: relevant.

>But those workers would never work without German supervision and
>I doubt that they ever formed a majority of the German workforce.
>Which was about 40 million strong if I remember right (although
>it looks too big to me).

I'll settle for 'non trivial portion', my recollection is that by
'44 there were 7-8 million foreign workers and 2-3 million slave
laborers. In part the Germans were hoist by their own petard,
had they been less savage to the Russian prisoners, there were
three million more men right there, not to mention that its hard
to get anyone to surrender when you treat POW's like that.

>: Weinberg in _World at Arms_ argues that the disruption
>: of communications wires meant more had to go through radio. More
>: transmissions meant more data to the code breakers, which led to
>: valuable information.

>Well I havedoubts about the value of such information, but
>that's another thread in itself. More transmissions might mean
>more valuable information but it also meant more trivial facts.
>More work to wade through.

Trivial facts often point to a bigger picture. The war in the
Atlantic used to rise and fall based on who was doing a better
job of reading the other guys mail. In some areas the bombing
campaign could be judged by the communications after.
Undoubtedly best for another thread as you say.

>: Glantz and House, _When Titans Clashed_, state that the night
>: bombing kept French and Italian workers from being willing to
>: work night shifts.

>Perhaps but then it wouldn't take a lot to de-motivate French
>and Eastern European labour. Or Italian if it came to that.

But in the absence of bombing there would have been nothing.
Fighter bombers would not have had the range to reach the
majority of Industrial targets without bases much closer, which
would have required a landing on Europe.

>Guns were used for most of
>the war against Allied planes. Worse a lot of electronics went
>into Radar rather than radios and the like. But I don't really
>believe they were worth the cost to the Allies.

In many ways the electronics contributed to the loss rates of the
night bombers. The Germans problem was that they were so
strapped for fighters they sent some very expensive night
fighters and trained night pilots against the daytime bombers.

>: Alternately the production
>: capacity used for the guns and ammunition could have been used to
>: produce more of something else.

>On the other hand if the bombing did not bring the war home and
>make the German population associate discontent with treason it
>may have been the case that the German public would have turned
>against the limited loss of consumer goods they suffered.

Perhaps, but the nature of German prosecution of the war would
make them extremely uncomfortable with the Allied insistence on
an unconditional surrender. There was also a fair amount of
grumbling, a popular joke was based around Hitler's architectural
plan. He said that if he were given four years, they would no
longer be able to recognize the place.

>: All in all it seems to have
>: been a good way to strike at Germany while preparing to engage in
>: a larger land war.

>I think even at the time it wasn't. A more sensible means would have
>been to send Allied fighters after German fighters and if that did
>not work then put a few bombs on those fighters and have them bomb,
>at low levels, military targets. In blowing up V1 sites it was very
>clearly shown that big bombers used a hell of a lot more bombs to
>do the same job as smaller planes did.

If you aren't protecting anything there is no reason to even
station the fighters there. Low level bombing certainly has its
place, but it was the big raids at Peenemunde that put a real
crimp in the production and development of the rockets. It also
led to the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff blowing his brains out. The
limited range and payloads of strictly fighter-bombers would have
proscribed an enormous number of targets. Certainly the
effectiveness of strategic bombing never approached the dreams of
'Bomber Harris.'

The prosecution was flawed, and Harris seems to have been at
least in part to blame. His insistence on area bombing, even
after technology had improved accuracy was short sighted. The
refusal to target what he called 'panacea' targets undoubtedly
diminished its impact. The US notion that the bombers could
defend themselves was also poorly conceived and there was a
decided lack of coordination between the British and US commands,
for all that it still had some large strategic impacts that made
it worthwhile, IMO.

Brian

[David Brown]

Joseph Askew wrote:
>
> Incidentally the total number of B-17s shot down in the War, in both
> the European theatre and the Pacific, was about 22,000. That isn't
> counting any other types. How many crew members?

22,000 B-17s shot down iw wrong. The total production of B-17s was
about 12,000. 18,000 B-24s were built.

Dave Brown

[Charles K. Scott]

Not sure who wrote this, could have been Joseph Askew but the
attributions were jumbled.

> >And yet it seems a wasteful sort
> >of war of attrition to send bombers over Germany where their crews,
> >if they didn't die, would become prisoners on being shot down.
> >This is just asking for a much higher rate of attrition than the
> >Germans suffered. Sure the Allies could replace each pilot they
> >lost with another 10. They would have to. But it isn't sensible.
> >There must have been easier ways of doing things.

It's just the nature of aerial combat. If you want to take the war to
the enemy it means you must fly to where the enemy is. They didn't
have ICBM's in those days so the Fortresses and Liberators were it.

Tell us what other way there was to project the war to Germany? People
had to use the weapons at hand because that's all there were to use.
They didn't know better because they weren't looking back on things
like you are and thinking there should be a better way. At the time,
they were using the best airplanes and weapons that were available.

Sure it would have been nice if the Air Force had realised that the
long range bombers would definately need a long range escort to protect
them from enemy intercepters and had developed them right from the
beginning but that's not what conventional wisdom of the day
understood. The experts thought the bombers could protect themselves;
that's why they had so many machine guns on board and carried so much
ammunition and armor plating that the bomb load was compromised.

OK, they were wrong. Unescorted bombers could not survive over
Germany. To their credit, the Air Force realised the initial concept
wouldn't work and modified tactics and weapons. They managed to turn a
disaster in to a successfull prosecution of their war aims. Isn't that
good?

People died flying those bombers. Lots of people. War has never been
nice. The bottom line is Germany was defeated. The strategy used to
defeat them worked. The strategy changed over the course of the
conflict but most strategies do if the period of fighting lasts long
enough.

Corky Scott

[Dirk Lorek]

David Brown <David...@uwoadmin.uwo.ca> wrote:

> Joseph Askew wrote:
> >
> > Incidentally the total number of B-17s shot down in the War, in both
> > the European theatre and the Pacific, was about 22,000. That isn't
> > counting any other types. How many crew members?
>

> 22,000 B-17s shot down iw wrong. The total production of B-17s was
> about 12,000. 18,000 B-24s were built.

In the ETO/MTO the USAAF lost about 8 300 heavies, 1 600 mediums,
7 200 fighters and 94 600 crews (died, missing/captured/interned,
wounded and evacuated. It claimed 29 900 enemy aircraft destroyed.

I>irk
______________________________________________________________________
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt, held in cohesion by unresting
cells,which work they know not why, which never halt, myself unwitting
where their Master dwells. - John Masefield -

! My email address has been altered. Sorry for any inconvenience !
! Remove the capital words from dil...@pobox.comREMOVE.THIS.PLEASE !

[Joseph Askew]

Charles K. Scott (Charles...@Dartmouth.EDU) wrote:

: Not sure who wrote this, could have been Joseph Askew but the
: attributions were jumbled.

It was indeed me.

: > >And yet it seems a wasteful sort

: > >of war of attrition to send bombers over Germany where their crews,
: > >if they didn't die, would become prisoners on being shot down.
: > >This is just asking for a much higher rate of attrition than the
: > >Germans suffered. Sure the Allies could replace each pilot they
: > >lost with another 10. They would have to. But it isn't sensible.
: > >There must have been easier ways of doing things.

: It's just the nature of aerial combat. If you want to take the war to
: the enemy it means you must fly to where the enemy is. They didn't
: have ICBM's in those days so the Fortresses and Liberators were it.

There are several things I think are worth saying to this. First is
that there are other ways of flying where the enemy is. They could
have sent the fighters they could have produced to the USSR. Let
Soviet pilots fly against the Luftwaffe. The Soviets loved the few
planes they got. Still would have had enough left over for the RAF
and the USAAF (as it wasn't yet). They could have sent them to the
places where they were desparately needed. Singapore might have been
saved with enough fighters. Probably not though. It would have helped
defend Australia without a doubt. More fighters would have also meant
a swifter end to fighting in North Africa if some were sent there. A
few fighters might have saved Crete. There was no time at which the
engines and airframes used in the Strategic bombing offensives could
not have been put to better use somewhere else. Even if the Allies
were determined to take on the German Lutwaffe over Europe, they had
the option of sending over long range fighters to attack targets in
France and the Low Countries. The Germans had to keep soldiers there
to prevent an Allied landing. Perfect military targets.

: Tell us what other way there was to project the war to Germany? People

: had to use the weapons at hand because that's all there were to use.

I think I have mentioned a few but there is also the real chance of
a Second Front a lot earlier. I think that such a Front was possible
in 1943 (which makes me a minority of one more or less), and if so
many workers and so much material wasn't spent on bombing such an
invasion would have been possible a lot sooner. Which would have
brought the war to an end sooner - the bombing we had or the landing
we didn't?

: They didn't know better because they weren't looking back on things

: like you are and thinking there should be a better way. At the time,

This is true up to a point. Many things about the bombing they knew.
They knew that the damage to London wasn't *anything* like what the
experts had predicted. They knew it wasn't about Spain either. They
knew that British bombers couldn't hit targets worth a damn and that
losses were very high. By the time Strategic bombing took off (so to
speak) in a big way these things were commonplace. Even before the
war many of them were clear to the people who wanted to listen.

: they were using the best airplanes and weapons that were available.

True, but still using them poorly.

: Sure it would have been nice if the Air Force had realised that the

: long range bombers would definately need a long range escort to protect
: them from enemy intercepters and had developed them right from the
: beginning but that's not what conventional wisdom of the day
: understood. The experts thought the bombers could protect themselves;

Which experts? Chennault was loudly saying, from China, that they
couldn't and they needed escorts. The Germans had clearly decided
they couldn't either. The Americans looked at the Battle of Britain
and ignored its lessons. It would have been nicest if the Air Corp
had realised there were better uses for airplanes besides dropping
bombs on women and children.

: that's why they had so many machine guns on board and carried so much

: ammunition and armor plating that the bomb load was compromised.

Which also, no doubt, had a strong influence on the folks at home.

: OK, they were wrong. Unescorted bombers could not survive over
: Germany.

Not even at night. Not even particularly well when escorted. The US
lost a high percentage of its over all casualties in bombing.

: To their credit, the Air Force realised the initial concept

: wouldn't work and modified tactics and weapons. They managed to turn a
: disaster in to a successfull prosecution of their war aims. Isn't that
: good?

If it were true. I agree that they realised the concept wouldn't work.
Although by the time the US Army woke up to the fact the British and h
the Luftwaffe had found that out the hard way some time before. I also
agree that they changed tactics and weapons. Which is good. But I am
not convinced that they ever managed to successfully prosecute their
war aims. I'm not convinced, and have seen nothing to suggest, that
bombing was of the slightest effect before the end of 1944. It may
have been counter-productive.

: People died flying those bombers. Lots of people. War has never been

: nice. The bottom line is Germany was defeated. The strategy used to
: defeat them worked. The strategy changed over the course of the
: conflict but most strategies do if the period of fighting lasts long
: enough.

I have heard this same argument from Trevor Wilson about Haig in WW1.
As a gross implification he says the British won so they must have
been doing something right and criticism is out of place. The Germans
did indeed lose. Which doesn't mean that we can't say the way they
were beaten was less than perfect. Take the Red Army for instance.
They beat the Germans too. Does that mean we have to say that Stalin
did well? That he couldn't have prosecuted the war in a smarter way?
That the Red Army could have, and perhaps should have, avoided some
of the most obvious blunders? It is like saying the Germans lost,
some British aircrew threw bottles out of their windows to deflect
radar, therefore throwing bottles out of windows worked.

What is especiallt galling about the whole thing is (a) they knew
it was morally wrong and illegal even at the time and (b) it took
vital resources away from areas which really counted. Bombing did
not win the war, and probably could not have. But the German UBoats
could have and nearly did. And yet at the height of the struggle
the British are wasting their precious resources bombing civilians.
This is something that just isn't only apparent in hindsight. It is
verging on criminal incompetance in prosecuting the war. Again the
Germans did not win the Battle of Britain and perhaps could not
have invaded if they did. But the risks of losing that battle were
great indeed. Again criminal mismanagement of the actual fighting
and again resources bled away to do something they knew was wrong
and if they had opened their eyes to the evidence around them, did
not work.

[Charles K. Scott]

Brian Blakistone (cbla...@ucsd.edu) wrote:

> : All in all it [strategic bombing] seems to have

> : been a good way to strike at Germany while preparing to engage in
> : a larger land war.

In article <5mpf1t$1a...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Joseph Askew) writes:

> I think even at the time it wasn't. A more sensible means would have
> been to send Allied fighters after German fighters and if that did
> not work then put a few bombs on those fighters and have them bomb,
> at low levels, military targets. In blowing up V1 sites it was very
> clearly shown that big bombers used a hell of a lot more bombs to
> do the same job as smaller planes did.
>
> Joseph

That's the problem Mr. Askew, why in the world would the Germans come
up to fight fighters if there were no bombers bombing Germany? In the
event, they were under specific orders to attack the heavy bombers and
to avoid combat with fighters, if possible.

The Germans were in the same situation the British were in during the
Battle of Britain. Dowding and Park agreed that combat with fighters
was to be avoided if at all possible while attacking the bombers. The
reasoning was very simple, the bombers were the aircraft that were
capable of the most dangerous destruction. They could destroy
communications, airfields, barracks, control stations, factories and
ships. The fighters all by themselves posed zero threat. Fighters
sweeps sent over by the Germans to look for trouble were duly ignored.
Which is exactly what happened with allied fighters sweeps.
Inevitably, they saw nothing because the Germans were sitting on the
ground.

I sympathise with your apparent shock at the casualty figures but that
was the way it was in those days. We can wish that the Mustang was
available sooner, but it wasn't. We can bemoan the fact that oil
wasn't made a priority sooner, but it wasn't. And of course it's too
bad Arnold and company sent the bombers over Germany unescorted for a
year but they didn't realise how effective the German fighters would be
at intercepting them. At least they learned their lessons.

Corky Scott

[Drazen Kramaric]

Joseph Askew wrote:

> I think I have mentioned a few but there is also the real chance of
> a Second Front a lot earlier. I think that such a Front was possible
> in 1943 (which makes me a minority of one more or less), and if so
> many workers and so much material wasn't spent on bombing such an
> invasion would have been possible a lot sooner. Which would have
> brought the war to an end sooner - the bombing we had or the landing
> we didn't?

There is book written by Anthony Cave Brown (I don't know the original
title) where he writes that defense of France in 1943 was much weaker
than in 1944 and that Hitler somehow found out that there would be know
Allied invasion in France in 1943 so he was free to send panzers to
Kursk.

So what would happen if Allied attacked in France instead on Sicily?

Luftwaffe was stronger in 1943 than in 1944 so Allied would have air
superiority but not supremacy. Consequence - more Allied casualties and
prolonged campaign because German reserves could move more freely.

U-boats weren't defeated either, so more Allied shipping would be sunk
either in Channel or somewhere in Atlantic.

German intelligence would find out that something is preparing so we can
conclude that Panzers wouldn't be sent against Soviets and would be kept
in strategic reserve.
Consequences - no Kursk, no big panzer losses, Allies would face Panzer
Group West in strength as they did in 1944.

And finnaly, Allies were less experienced in 1943 than in 1944. Landing
s at Sicily and Salerno showed significant flaws in Allied tacticts so
there was place and time for improvements. In case of invasion in 1943
Allies would pay bloody price for same lesson.

In my opinion any kind of invasion in 1943 would be (Dieppe + Omaha)
squarred.

Drax

[Emmanuel.Gustin]

Joseph Askew (jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au) wrote:

: There are several things I think are worth saying to this. First is

: that there are other ways of flying where the enemy is. They could
: have sent the fighters they could have produced to the USSR.

14982 fighters were sent to the USSR during the war. It's own production
is assumed to be 74740, so it was a significant contribution.

: places where they were desparately needed. Singapore might have been

: saved with enough fighters. Probably not though. It would have helped
: defend Australia without a doubt. More fighters would have also meant
: a swifter end to fighting in North Africa if some were sent there. A
: few fighters might have saved Crete.

All these events were in 1942 or even in 1941. But aircraft production of
the UK and the USA peaked in 1944. In 1941 there was a serious shortage
of fighters --- The RAF still used the Gloster Gladiator biplane fighter!
And while 1942 was better, the situation was certainly not carefree. The
demands exceeded the supply.

Also, in 1941 and 1942 dayfighters were not used that much in the
strategic bombing offensive. The 8th AF flew its first missions in
mid-1942.

: I think I have mentioned a few but there is also the real chance of

: a Second Front a lot earlier. I think that such a Front was possible
: in 1943 (which makes me a minority of one more or less),

Two, because at least George C. Marshall was the same opinion. But Roundup
would have been a *much* smaller operation than Overlord. There was a
shortage of trained troops, and a even more serious shortage of landing
craft. The Germans would also have found it easier to concentrate their
forces against the invasion. It could have become a Dieppe on a larger
scale.

: experts had predicted. They knew it wasn't about Spain either. They

: knew that British bombers couldn't hit targets worth a damn and that
: losses were very high.

However, they alse knew that soon they would have a force of four-engined
bombers (first Lancaster mission in March 1942). And the bombers were
being provided with Gee, Oboe and later H2S. A great increase in
operational effectiveness could be expected.

Emmanuel Gustin

[Detlef Zander]

I believe, daylight and night strategic bombing was a failure.

Look a the german industrial output. It reached it's peak in 1944, well
after the start of allied strategic bombing.
What definitely hurt german war effort was the "tactical" bombing of
railways, bridges and so on. If you can't use trucks, railways and rivers
for transport, you lose. If your foe can't use transport, your ground units
can move forward and attack.
IMHO the destruction of cities didn't help in this.
Germany didn't lost the war because of strategic bombing, the allied ground
forces were able to move forward because of the allied "tactical" airforce.

Detlef Zander

[Joseph Askew]

Charles K. Scott (Charles...@Dartmouth.EDU) wrote:

: > I think even at the time it wasn't. A more sensible means would have

: > been to send Allied fighters after German fighters and if that did
: > not work then put a few bombs on those fighters and have them bomb,
: > at low levels, military targets. In blowing up V1 sites it was very
: > clearly shown that big bombers used a hell of a lot more bombs to
: > do the same job as smaller planes did.

: That's the problem Mr. Askew, why in the world would the Germans come

: up to fight fighters if there were no bombers bombing Germany? In the
: event, they were under specific orders to attack the heavy bombers and
: to avoid combat with fighters, if possible.

Because the Germans had military targets in northern France the
British could have attacked and the Germans would have had to
defend. Their soldiers they keptin France to prevent any sort of
Allied landing for instance.

: The Germans were in the same situation the British were in during the

: Battle of Britain. Dowding and Park agreed that combat with fighters
: was to be avoided if at all possible while attacking the bombers. The
: reasoning was very simple, the bombers were the aircraft that were
: capable of the most dangerous destruction. They could destroy
: communications, airfields, barracks, control stations, factories and
: ships. The fighters all by themselves posed zero threat. Fighters
: sweeps sent over by the Germans to look for trouble were duly ignored.
: Which is exactly what happened with allied fighters sweeps.

Actually the British fighter sweeps over France caused huge casualties
to the pilots sent over. I know it doesn't help my case here but when
the British tried it they lost a lot of men. Fighters were more than
zero threat. They could and did shoot up airbases. The British did
feel the need to take on the German fighters when only German fighters
came over.

: Inevitably, they saw nothing because the Germans were sitting on the
: ground.

Well the British lfew "Rhubarb" missions (fighter sweeps) and "Circus"
missions (a few bombers brought along as bait). By Mid June 1941
they had flown 104 of the former and 11 of the latter. With the loss
of 33 pilots for 26 German planes.

: I sympathise with your apparent shock at the casualty figures but that

: was the way it was in those days. We can wish that the Mustang was
: available sooner, but it wasn't. We can bemoan the fact that oil
: wasn't made a priority sooner, but it wasn't. And of course it's too
: bad Arnold and company sent the bombers over Germany unescorted for a
: year but they didn't realise how effective the German fighters would be
: at intercepting them. At least they learned their lessons.

Well the casualty figures don't bother me that much when you
compare them with Soviet or Chinese losses. It was the way thing
were. Mostly because, in my opinion, failures of leadership. The
Mustang could have been ready sooner if anyone saw the need but
it was in fact rejected by the Air Crop. If the doctrine had been
sensible oil would have been targted sooner. It was just that the
Airforces leaders took one untested idea that killed women and
children rather than another which tried to find industrial sites.
Of course the RAF hardly had any choice in thematter. It is sad
for the USAAF that Arnold did. But then perhaps we can't blame him
for being a little slow on the uptake. At least not too much. The
problem doesn't really come with the conduct of the war although
that was inept, but with the concept altogether. The Allies, in as
far as I can see, the search for a cheap method of making war, came
up with bombing. Rather than trying a fairly well established way
of fighting on the ground they chose an untested way in the air.
This is just silliness. Worse than an attrocity it was a mistake.

(By the way the "Arnold did"refers to the unescorted bombers)

[David Brown]

Joseph Askew wrote:
>
> Incidentally the total number of B-17s shot down in the War, in both
> the European theatre and the Pacific, was about 22,000. That isn't
> counting any other types. How many crew members?

22,000 B-17s shot down iw wrong. The total production of B-17s was

about 12,000. 18,000 B-24s were built.

Dave Brown

[Joseph Askew]

Brian Blakistone (cbla...@ucsd.edu) wrote:

: >And yet it seems a wasteful sort

: >of war of attrition to send bombers over Germany where their crews,
: >if they didn't die, would become prisoners on being shot down.
: >This is just asking for a much higher rate of attrition than the
: >Germans suffered. Sure the Allies could replace each pilot they
: >lost with another 10. They would have to. But it isn't sensible.
: >There must have been easier ways of doing things.

: But its much less wasteful than to try it against tanks, much
: fewer aircraft, and so fewer total losses.

Total American losses in World War Two were about 400,000. The Brits
lost about 250,000. About 100,000 Allied pilots were shot down over
Europe. The stats for the RAf's bomber command show that about half
their crews died in action. Another 9 percent died in accidents. I
just do not see how it could have been more dangerous anywhere else.
The joke about tanks is that it took four Shermans per German tank
and the Germans would get three. That looks a better ratio of losses
to me. The Bomber forces were so dangerous to fly in that they were
the only force I know of in WW2 with a "time served and home" policy.
You make 30 (or whatever) missions and you get sent home. The Army's
tank divsions kept people until the end. They didn't feel the need
to have a "three actions and you get sent home" policy.

: I don't see a

: superior alternative, the Western Allies don't seem to have been
: ready to stand toe to toe with the Wehrmacht as evidenced by
: Dieppe and Kasserine Pass.

I don't think it is true that they weren't ready. Just not willing.
Bombing seemed a way to win on the cheap while punishing the Germans
for being Germans. Which is wasn't (cheap that is). It is true that
Dieppe was a total balls up, but the Allies won in North Africa in
the end.

: And while the direct net losses might

: have favored the Germans, their losses had huge impact in other
: areas. During Stalingrad, the Russians really needed to gain
: local air superiority to smash through the weaker satellite
: armies guarding the flanks, additional fighters or AA might have
: limited or slowed the breakthroughs.

I'm not sure that the effects of the bombing was that noticable
that early but the German had moved Luftwaffe units West. But I
don't see the relevance. The Soviets did not need air superiority
to attack. They did it anyway. Given that they get to chose where
and when their own offensives took place they could concentrate
their airforce in the right place at the right time to achieve
local air superiority if they wanted.

: >The Germans were so grossly outproduced in everything I don't

: >see how it matters. After all if they had built bombers for
: >CAS work and the Allies had used their planes in a way I would
: >call sensibly, the German bombers would still have all been
: >shot down. The Allies just had so many more planes than anyone
: >else.

: There is some question about how sensible the Allies would have
: been. Stalin was always very touchy about having any of the
: Western Allied forces on his soil. I find it entirely credible
: that the Germans could have concentrated the Luftwaffe in the
: East, with serious consequences for the Soviets. As it played
: out the Germans really only enjoyed complete air superiority
: during '41, which not coincidentally is also when they made their
: greatest gains. JU 87's were quite effective with superiority,
: but vulnerable without it. Stalin was also always very unhappy
: about the lack of a second front, in some ways the bombing effort
: was also a show of good faith. By the time 1943 comes around the
: Germans are losing large numbers of fighters on three fronts,
: Europe, the Mediterranean and the East.

Stalin was. But then I think he wanted Allied forces on German soil
ratherr than on Soviet. At least French. I find it fairly credible
too. I'm not so convinced it would have had a big impact on the Red
Army or even materially affected the outcome. It is also true that
the Germans made most of their gains in 1941 when they out-did their
enemies in the *use* of airplanes, not in *numbers*. In fact, without
having checked first, I think that at no time in 1941 did the Germans
have fewer planes than their enemies. Ju-87s were highly vunerable
to everything including AAA. Their losses in Polnd were high due to
AA and even small arms fire. I can see why Stalin was unhappy, but I
don't see how you can call bombing an act of good faith. I think
that Stalin probably saw it as an excuse to leave the real fighting
to the Soviet Union. Not without reason either.

: >I think that is more typical of the German Generals who, as usual,

: >blamed someone else for their loss in World War One. Of course in
: >World War One the German public wasn't just short of consumer goods
: >it was actually starving. But that's what Speer says. I can take
: >it or leave it really.

: I would say that WWI got lost on the battlefield, but the Nazis
: ended up as victims of their own propaganda. That combined with
: a reluctance to mobilize women into the work force and improved
: manufacturing techniques meant that the gains in production in
: the latter years might not have been the result of motivation and
: could potentially have been far greater in the absence of the
: bomber campaign. The campaign did force them to disperse their
: aircraft industry, which did disrupt their production.

Do you mean WW1 or WW2? I am not so sure they ended up as victims
of their own propaganda as victims of their own ideology. Which
is related to the reluctance to send women into the factories, but
alos a lot more. At one point they had the material basis to produce
similar numbers of tanks as the Soviets. They were slow and generally
incompetant. At no time did they mobilise to the same levels of WW1.
They could not mobilise non-Germans to any notable extent. They did
not bother to mobilise their own economy. They blundered into the
War without any obvious plan, then blundered from battle to battle,
until defeat. The British and Americans had a clear view of what
was needed in the civilian economy even if they failed to see it
in the military sphere. The Soviets clearly did see the importance
of production and the "material basis" for war. Which is very odd
as the Nazi "revolution" enabled the German Army to adopt new and
very effective military ideas. The old guard of the German Army
might not have seen the need for tanks or grasped modern warfare,
but Hitler did and he allowed the sort of Generals who saw it to
rise and become important. But his vision, as that of the entire
German Army as far as I can see, did not extend past the battlefield.

: >But those workers would never work without German supervision and

: >I doubt that they ever formed a majority of the German workforce.
: >Which was about 40 million strong if I remember right (although
: >it looks too big to me).

: I'll settle for 'non trivial portion', my recollection is that by
: '44 there were 7-8 million foreign workers and 2-3 million slave
: laborers. In part the Germans were hoist by their own petard,
: had they been less savage to the Russian prisoners, there were
: three million more men right there, not to mention that its hard
: to get anyone to surrender when you treat POW's like that.

How would the Soviet prisoners have known? I doubt the Germans
boasted about it and I suspect that many Soviet citizens had a
healthy if secret cynicism about official claims. The problem
really comes not from the refusal to mobilise in Germany properly
but in the rest of Europe. Which was a problem as it would have
been hard to get French workers to work hard for Germany (although
the Czechs did according to a Uni guy I know who was a Czech
specialist in British intelligence during the war - this is why
they wanted to do Heydrich in).

: >Well I havedoubts about the value of such information, but

: >that's another thread in itself. More transmissions might mean
: >more valuable information but it also meant more trivial facts.
: >More work to wade through.

: Trivial facts often point to a bigger picture. The war in the
: Atlantic used to rise and fall based on who was doing a better
: job of reading the other guys mail. In some areas the bombing
: campaign could be judged by the communications after.

Well I think that in the Battle of the Atlantic the Germans were
doing a better job than anyone else and it didn't seem to do them
much good. Trivial facts often can be highly useful if placed in
a proper context. The problem is that providing such a context is
very demanding on time and resources - you need a lot of brilliant
men spending a lot of time reading a lot of transmissions. It is
much nicer to get a man inside the German High Command as the
Soviet intelligence forces were supposed to have done.

: >Perhaps but then it wouldn't take a lot to de-motivate French

: >and Eastern European labour. Or Italian if it came to that.

: But in the absence of bombing there would have been nothing.
: Fighter bombers would not have had the range to reach the
: majority of Industrial targets without bases much closer, which
: would have required a landing on Europe.

WEll there would still have been a relucance of the forced workers
to work for a German victory. I'm not sure that the Allies would
have lacked any fighter bombers capable of reaching German targets.
Still the real question is what damage did it do to the German
economy. At 9% of production I don't see it as vital. The British
supposedly devoted half of *all* its military production to bombing.

: >On the other hand if the bombing did not bring the war home and

: >make the German population associate discontent with treason it
: >may have been the case that the German public would have turned
: >against the limited loss of consumer goods they suffered.

: Perhaps, but the nature of German prosecution of the war would
: make them extremely uncomfortable with the Allied insistence on
: an unconditional surrender. There was also a fair amount of
: grumbling, a popular joke was based around Hitler's architectural
: plan. He said that if he were given four years, they would no
: longer be able to recognize the place.

In so far as they were aware of the nature of the German prsecution
of the war. There were few overt acts of disobedience in Germany.
No doubt largely caused by bombing. The few that there were were
mostly not civilian but military. Somewhere I have a copy of a US
Army photo which shows German grafitti in some ruined city saying
"Hitler needed twelve years to accomplish this?"

: >I think even at the time it wasn't. A more sensible means would have

: >been to send Allied fighters after German fighters and if that did
: >not work then put a few bombs on those fighters and have them bomb,
: >at low levels, military targets. In blowing up V1 sites it was very
: >clearly shown that big bombers used a hell of a lot more bombs to
: >do the same job as smaller planes did.

: If you aren't protecting anything there is no reason to even
: station the fighters there. Low level bombing certainly has its
: place, but it was the big raids at Peenemunde that put a real
: crimp in the production and development of the rockets. It also
: led to the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff blowing his brains out. The
: limited range and payloads of strictly fighter-bombers would have
: proscribed an enormous number of targets. Certainly the
: effectiveness of strategic bombing never approached the dreams of
: 'Bomber Harris.'

The Germans had to keep some units in France to prevent an Allied
landing. These would have been fine targets. Let the Germans pull
them back, defend them or leave them to suffer. Above all producing
planes is not a good way to prepare for a landing. If you lack landing
craft (which I don't think they did) you produce landing craft. Not
bombers. The entire campaign did little damage to Germany until the
very end while doing a lot of damage to the Allied war effort.

: The prosecution was flawed, and Harris seems to have been at

: least in part to blame. His insistence on area bombing, even
: after technology had improved accuracy was short sighted. The
: refusal to target what he called 'panacea' targets undoubtedly
: diminished its impact. The US notion that the bombers could
: defend themselves was also poorly conceived and there was a
: decided lack of coordination between the British and US commands,
: for all that it still had some large strategic impacts that made
: it worthwhile, IMO.

I agree with much of this. Also the Bombing campaign took planes,
men and vital materials (like H2S and other radar units) from the
vital areas of the War. The Battle of the Atlantic was much more
important and the long range bombers could have been useful in
keeping U-Boats from British shores. Instead radar went to the
bombers which were used over Germany. The Bombing campaign meant
that more bombers were built at a time when Britain needed fighters.
The British out-produced Germany for most of the war anyway, but
if four fighters had been produced for every large bomber the RAF
would not only have been more useful but more effective. The idea
that American bombers could defend themselves seems silly in retro-
spect. Now we know what the losses were. But it is one of those
forgivable mistakes. Unlike Harris' insistence on Area bombing
after his own staff and own studies showed it was ineffective.
The Germans made the same mistake as the Americans with their notion
that their bombers could outrun enemy fighters. Silly now, but at
the time perhaps not so bad.

[John Phillips]

I work in the electric power industry. Apparently toward the end of
the war, the strategic bombing concentration on the German oil
industry slowed down the military.

I have rarely seen any discussion of the value of attacking the power
industry. If I could place 12 non-nuclear bombs in the US, I could
shut down our society for a month. I believe if the bombing had been
focused on electric supply, area bombing would have been unnecessary.

Regards,

John Phillips
NYPA
Buffalo-Niagara Falls

My comments express only
my personal opinions

[Dan Ford]

> The joke about tanks is that it took four Shermans per German tank
> and the Germans would get three. That looks a better ratio of losses
> to me. The Bomber forces were so dangerous to fly in that they were
> the only force I know of in WW2 with a "time served and home" policy.
> You make 30 (or whatever) missions and you get sent home. The Army's
> tank divsions kept people until the end. They didn't feel the need
> to have a "three actions and you get sent home" policy.

The same was true of the infantry, by all odds the most terrible life to
lead, but never 50 assaults and you go home!

I suspect the logic behind the USAAF's 25 or 50 mission policy was a
cold-blooded calculation that the only way to get folks to fly those
missions was to give them a reason to hope for relief, and secondly that
after a certain number of missions an air crewman and especially a pilot
wasn't much good to the air force anyhow.

The returning pilots also served a useful purpose in passing on
battlefield knowledge to the next crop of pilots--though evidently a
rather large proportion of returnees were too emotionally shaken to be
trusted as pilots, and too antisocial to make good instructors.

- Dan / http://www.cris.com/~danford

(To reply to me, remove the ** from my return address)

[Brian Blakistone]

jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Joseph Askew) wrote:
>Brian Blakistone (cbla...@ucsd.edu) wrote:

>: But its much less wasteful than to try it against tanks, much
>: fewer aircraft, and so fewer total losses.

>Total American losses in World War Two were about 400,000. The Brits
>lost about 250,000. About 100,000 Allied pilots were shot down over
>Europe. The stats for the RAf's bomber command show that about half
>their crews died in action. Another 9 percent died in accidents. I
>just do not see how it could have been more dangerous anywhere else.

That is not quite what I meant, if you have to choose between
putting a relative few men at high risk or a great many men at
moderate risk, the first strategy can produce less casualties. So
the Russians would frequently lose more men in a three month
period than the US and Britain lost during the entire war.
Premature opening of a second front would have led to similar
losses for the US and Britain I think.

>: I don't see a
>: superior alternative, the Western Allies don't seem to have been
>: ready to stand toe to toe with the Wehrmacht as evidenced by
>: Dieppe and Kasserine Pass.

>I don't think it is true that they weren't ready. Just not willing.
>Bombing seemed a way to win on the cheap while punishing the Germans
>for being Germans. Which is wasn't (cheap that is). It is true that
>Dieppe was a total balls up, but the Allies won in North Africa in
>the end.

They won, but the Germans were at the end of a very long supply
line and it was very difficult to reinforce. Neither of those
conditions would be true for an early European invasion. Bombing
was not cheap in monetary terms, but the argument that it was
cheaper in terms of Allied lives in the long term is rather
compelling, IMO.

>:During Stalingrad, the Russians really needed to gain

>: local air superiority to smash through the weaker satellite
>: armies guarding the flanks, additional fighters or AA might have
>: limited or slowed the breakthroughs.

>I'm not sure that the effects of the bombing was that noticable
>that early but the German had moved Luftwaffe units West. But I
>don't see the relevance. The Soviets did not need air superiority
>to attack. They did it anyway. Given that they get to chose where
>and when their own offensives took place they could concentrate
>their airforce in the right place at the right time to achieve

>local air superiority if they wanted.[...]

The Germans moved some 200 fighters and 250 bombers to both the
Mediterranean and Western Europe just prior to Stalingrad. The
Soviet plan did call for air superiority, and with all the
withdrawals they were able to achieve it. The Luftwaffe bounced
back in February, gaining air superiority, and not surprisingly
the fortunes of the Wehrmacht also looked up, von Manstein was
able to administer a pretty good beating to the over ambitious
Soviet forces. In every month of 43 the Germans lost more
fighters over Europe than on the Eastern front.

>:Stalin was also always very unhappy

>: about the lack of a second front, in some ways the bombing effort
>: was also a show of good faith. By the time 1943 comes around the
>: Germans are losing large numbers of fighters on three fronts,

>: Europe, the Mediterranean and the East.[...]

>I can see why Stalin was unhappy, but I
>don't see how you can call bombing an act of good faith. I think
>that Stalin probably saw it as an excuse to leave the real fighting
>to the Soviet Union. Not without reason either.

Weinberg in _World at Arms_ specifically mentions Stalin's
enthusiasm for strategic bombing, the shuttle bombing schemes
were one of the few times he allowed Western forces on the
Eastern front. There is no doubt he would have preferred a
second front to strategic bombing.

>[...]Which was a problem as it would have

>been hard to get French workers to work hard for Germany (although
>the Czechs did according to a Uni guy I know who was a Czech
>specialist in British intelligence during the war - this is why
>they wanted to do Heydrich in).

Its hard to say, I have seen several authors point out that after
France's fall, the Vichy French did their fighting against the
allies.

>: Trivial facts often point to a bigger picture. The war in the
>: Atlantic used to rise and fall based on who was doing a better
>: job of reading the other guys mail. In some areas the bombing
>: campaign could be judged by the communications after.

>Well I think that in the Battle of the Atlantic the Germans were
>doing a better job than anyone else and it didn't seem to do them
>much good.

Most of what I have read indicates the Germans were winning that
Battle when they could read British convoy codes, but their kills
fell right off the table when the British switched codes. The
allies also got tipped to their desperate position in regard to
fuel by decrypted messages.
[...]

>Still the real question is what damage did it do to the German
>economy. At 9% of production I don't see it as vital. The British
>supposedly devoted half of *all* its military production to bombing.

I'm not sure where the 9% figure comes from, but that kind of
statistic can be quite misleading. So production of new and
refurbished fighters from June 43-Dec. 43 look like this:

June 1,134
July 1,263
August 1,135
Sept. 1,072
Oct. 1,181
Nov. 985
Dec. 687 (_The Luftwaffe _,Williamson Murray)

The combination of reduced production and high attrition was
lethal. Murray goes on to look at the impact on rail in France.
One line was reduced from about 225 tons/day to less than 20, and
he also provides a correlation of tonnage dropped. Attacks on
German fuel production in May '44 reduced German oil output to
about 50% of capacity, and a look at fuel from August '44 to Feb.
45 shows there was no let up.

% Fuel capacity % Aviation Fuel capacity
produced produced

Aug. 44 46 65
Sept. 44 48 30
Oct. 44 43 37
Nov. 44 60 65
Dec. 44 59 56
Jan. 45 51 33
Feb 45 40 5
Again from _The Luftwaffe_, Murray

Finally you have to look at the poor German response, Flak was
largely ineffective against altitude bombers, the V1 & V2 rockets
were a huge allocation of resources, the retaliatory raids in '42
drew bombers away from the Eastern front, and German training
programs were largely decimated by the constant attrition.

>The Germans had to keep some units in France to prevent an Allied
>landing. These would have been fine targets. Let the Germans pull
>them back, defend them or leave them to suffer.

Until June of 43 fighters were only capable of 175 miles, in
August it went to 230 miles, its not until November '43 that the
P-38's go 520 miles out. The British tried something very like
what you suggest, 'Circus.' The Germans pulled their fighters to
the interior of France and engaged only when combat was in their
favor. Attacking France the Spitfires were at the end of their
range and not particularly effective.

>Above all producing
>planes is not a good way to prepare for a landing. If you lack landing
>craft (which I don't think they did) you produce landing craft. Not
>bombers. The entire campaign did little damage to Germany until the
>very end while doing a lot of damage to the Allied war effort.

The damage to the rail net was done by both fighters and bombers,
and it seriously impeded the Germans abilities to move men and
supplies. With no bombers and only relatively short range
fighters, a European invasion would likely have been in trouble.

> The idea
>that American bombers could defend themselves seems silly in retro-
>spect. Now we know what the losses were. But it is one of those
>forgivable mistakes. Unlike Harris' insistence on Area bombing
>after his own staff and own studies showed it was ineffective.
>The Germans made the same mistake as the Americans with their notion
>that their bombers could outrun enemy fighters. Silly now, but at
>the time perhaps not so bad.

Area bombing had its moments too, particularly the Hamburg raid,
but on the whole I would agree with all this.

Brian

[Drazen Kramaric]

Joseph Askew wrote:

> I'm not sure that the effects of the bombing was that noticable
> that early but the German had moved Luftwaffe units West. But I
> don't see the relevance. The Soviets did not need air superiority
> to attack. They did it anyway. Given that they get to chose where
> and when their own offensives took place they could concentrate
> their airforce in the right place at the right time to achieve
> local air superiority if they wanted.

The lack of Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front was the biggest single thing
which enbled Soviet victory. The first Soviet counteroffensive at Moscow
1941 succeded mostly because Luftwaffe was unable to fight in harsh
Winter. The breakthrough at Stalingrad began during bad weather and
after significant number of Luftwaffe aircraft went to Med. Even battle
at Kursk could have different ending if Luftwaffe could spot the coming
of Soviet 5th Tank Army.

> The Germans had to keep some units in France to prevent an Allied
> landing. These would have been fine targets. Let the Germans pull
> them back, defend them or leave them to suffer. Above all producing
> planes is not a good way to prepare for a landing. If you lack landing
> craft (which I don't think they did) you produce landing craft.

I think that Allies lacked landing craft very much. I think that D-day
was postponed until June to get more LCs. Operation Anvil (landing of
combined US-French forces in Southern France had to be postponed until
after D-day because of lack of LCs. All plans for amphibious assaults on
Balkan Peninsula had to be abandoned among other reasons because of lack
of LCs and I didn't mention the needs of Pacific yet...

> The Germans made the same mistake as the Americans with their notion
> that their bombers could outrun enemy fighters. Silly now, but at
> the time perhaps not so bad.

Before introducing Hurricanes and Spitfires in active service (1937 or
38) German Bomber Do-17 ("Flying Pencil") was FASTER than any RAF
interceptor. Therefore, the doctrine of "SchnellBomber" wasn't so flawed
in Thirties.

Drax

[Guard Cdr]

An area that appears to have been overlooked in this thread is the
allocation of outstanding anti-tank weapons to anti-aircraft duties. The
diversion of ammo, guns and manpower away from the front to guard cities
and factories is another important effect of allied bombing.

[Gavin Bailey]

jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Joseph Askew) wrote:

>Total American losses in World War Two were about 400,000.

I thought around 330,000.

> The Brits
>lost about 250,000.

And I thought around 360,000.

>WEll there would still have been a relucance of the forced workers
>to work for a German victory. I'm not sure that the Allies would
>have lacked any fighter bombers capable of reaching German targets.
>Still the real question is what damage did it do to the German
>economy. At 9% of production I don't see it as vital. The British
>supposedly devoted half of *all* its military production to bombing.

I feel this is an exaggeration - the figures vary from 7% (surely far
too low) up to 33% which is probably too big. The real problem lay in
the differential in effort between the Bomber Offensive and obviously
higher priorities (the land campaign in NW Europe, 1944/5) let alone
the differential between the Bomber offensive and arguably higher
priorities (like the Atlantic).

>I agree with much of this. Also the Bombing campaign took planes,
>men and vital materials (like H2S and other radar units) from the
>vital areas of the War. The Battle of the Atlantic was much more
>important and the long range bombers could have been useful in
>keeping U-Boats from British shores.

I agree with this completely. Even the transfer of obselete types
from Bomber Command to Coastal Command at an earlier juncture might
have made all the difference. In 1940-41 the lack of any other real
alternative forced the massive prosecution Bomber offensive onto the
agenda, and enough fighters were being produced although the
distribution was abysmal - the Far East and Mediterranean could have
made better use of the Hurricanes delivered to Russia or the hordes of
Spitfire V's waiting for the second round of the Battle of Britain in
1941.

Whatever criticisms we make of British strategic direction of the war
(and there are many valid ones), nothing can remove the enormous
handicap that nearly two decades of irresponsible neglect imposed on
the British armed services and war industries between 1919 and 1937.

Gavin Bailey

Gavin Bailey
--
Email address altered to hinder spamming- please delete *

[Alex Milman]

Drazen Kramaric wrote:
>
> Joseph Askew wrote:
>

> The lack of Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front was the biggest single thing
> which enbled Soviet victory. The first Soviet counteroffensive at Moscow
> 1941 succeded mostly because Luftwaffe was unable to fight in harsh
> Winter.

So it was not a lack of Luftwaffe but simply it's inability
to fight in these conditions. Germans still had at least as many
ground forces as Red Army. Couldn't they fight without the air
support?

>The breakthrough at Stalingrad began during bad weather and
> after significant number of Luftwaffe aircraft went to Med.

And somehow Luftwaffe did not notice the huge reserves massed just
behind the front lines. Probably weather was not bad all this time.
After all, they were flying before and after Soviet breakthrough.

>Even battle
> at Kursk could have different ending if Luftwaffe could spot the coming
> of Soviet 5th Tank Army.

Germans, by their own statements (Manstein), had an air superiority
at Kursk. Still they missed a needle in a hay stack, the whole tank
army. And before this army had been brought into the action Luftwaffe
did not demonstrate any miracles either.

Looks pretty much like Luftwaffe as a force was seriously overrated.
They were definitely very good when attacking the infantry or bombing
the cities but each time they face a serious adversary it was either
bad weather or some other excuse for their failure.

[funkraum]

>jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Joseph Askew) wrote:

[...]

>to me. The Bomber forces were so dangerous to fly in that they were
>the only force I know of in WW2 with a "time served and home" policy.
>You make 30 (or whatever) missions and you get sent home. The Army's
>tank divsions kept people until the end. They didn't feel the need
>to have a "three actions and you get sent home" policy.

[...]

RAF Bomber crews suffered the second highest losses, after the
U-Boats.

[Richard H. Miller]

Drazen Kramaric (etk...@neptun.design.etk.ericsson.se) wrote:
: Joseph Askew wrote:

: > The Germans had to keep some units in France to prevent an Allied

: > landing. These would have been fine targets. Let the Germans pull
: > them back, defend them or leave them to suffer. Above all producing
: > planes is not a good way to prepare for a landing. If you lack landing
: > craft (which I don't think they did) you produce landing craft.

: I think that Allies lacked landing craft very much. I think that D-day

: was postponed until June to get more LCs. Operation Anvil (landing of
: combined US-French forces in Southern France had to be postponed until
: after D-day because of lack of LCs. All plans for amphibious assaults on
: Balkan Peninsula had to be abandoned among other reasons because of lack
: of LCs and I didn't mention the needs of Pacific yet...

correct, also they lacked the operational experience required to make
a contested landing until '44. The production of landing craft was raised
to a very high priority in the US and the forces were still short of LC.

Actually, with the exception of the LSTs and (perhaps the LCVPs) there
was not that much common for the initial assault. (The European landings
did not use the LVAs which were a common feature of Pacific landings.)

I have seen at least one reference to the effect that the problems with Omaha
were, in part, due to a lack of application of the lessions the USMC/USN had
learned in the Pacific landings. (Although I am not sure how much could have
been adopted since conditions were so much different except for the fact that
beach was contested. Perhaps the use of the initial wave in LVAs rather than
trying to put the DDs ashore first and following up with the first wave off
of LCVPs)

rick

[Charles K. Scott]

> >jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Joseph Askew) wrote:
>
> [...]
> >to me. The Bomber forces were so dangerous to fly in that they were
> >the only force I know of in WW2 with a "time served and home" policy.
> >You make 30 (or whatever) missions and you get sent home. The Army's
> >tank divsions kept people until the end. They didn't feel the need
> >to have a "three actions and you get sent home" policy.
> [...]

Where do you get your information Mr. Askew? Wherever you do, it is
incorrect. The RAF rotated their crews out of combat after a certain
number of missions as did the US Navy, the Air Corps fighter groups and
the bomber groups.

You first state "You make 30 (or whatever) missions and you get sent
home" but then finish with "three actions and you get sent home".
Which is it or is this just a "hip shot" fired for effect?

The Navy had a regular policy of sending veteran pilots home after
combat duty where they often lectured and trained cadets so that their
experience could be useful to those who had not yet fought. Sometimes
they formed the nucleus of new squadrons which were sent back to the
front. The Army Air Corps had a regular schedule of retirement for
their fighter pilots as well as their bomber crews.

It was understood by physicians that aerial combat placed unique
stresses upon pilot and crew which could and did affect their ability
to perform effectively in combat or in their roles as leaders. Some
pilots and crew were pulled from flight status because they became
incapable of performing their duty because of this stress. This was
called "combat fatigue" by the Americans or "Low Moral Fiber (LMF) by
the British.

So it wasn't just the European daylight heavy bomber forces that had
the combat rotation then home type duty.

Corky Scott

[asp...@curie.dialix.com.au]

On 10 Jun 1997 04:15:17 GMT, Dan Ford <df@**christa.unh.edu> wrote:

>
>> The joke about tanks is that it took four Shermans per German tank
>> and the Germans would get three. That looks a better ratio of losses
>> to me. The Bomber forces were so dangerous to fly in that they were
>> the only force I know of in WW2 with a "time served and home" policy.
>> You make 30 (or whatever) missions and you get sent home. The Army's
>> tank divsions kept people until the end. They didn't feel the need
>> to have a "three actions and you get sent home" policy.
>

>The same was true of the infantry, by all odds the most terrible life to
>lead, but never 50 assaults and you go home!
>
>I suspect the logic behind the USAAF's 25 or 50 mission policy was a
>cold-blooded calculation that the only way to get folks to fly those
>missions was to give them a reason to hope for relief, and secondly that
>after a certain number of missions an air crewman and especially a pilot
>wasn't much good to the air force anyhow.
>
>The returning pilots also served a useful purpose in passing on
>battlefield knowledge to the next crop of pilots--though evidently a
>rather large proportion of returnees were too emotionally shaken to be
>trusted as pilots, and too antisocial to make good instructors.

Firstly, the required number of missions varied according to the type
of aircraft flown --

Heavy Bombers = 30 missons
Medium Bombers = (approximately) 50 missions
Fighters = 300 hours of combat flying.

Statistically speaking, the number of missions were limited for morale
reasons -- the numbers set was based on the crew/pilot involved having
a 50% chance of survival. Infantrymen (and Tankers) had a *much*
better rate of survival.

Worse, when an aircraft went down, the ratio of Dead to Wounded was on
the order of 6:1, while for ground forces it was 1:3 or 4. *Not* good
odds!

Breakdowns of KIA/MIA figures in the first half of 1944 were as
follows --

Heavy Bombers = 71%
Medium Bombers = 48%
Fighters = 24%

Since the guys crewing these aeroplanes were from the best educated
elements of society, they would inevitably and quickly realise that
their chances of survival were not good at all if they had to keep
flying indefinitely. Hence the decision made for morale reasons.

There was another equally important reason -- *training* -- the Allies
withdrew their experienced aircrew and pilots and used them to train
the newbies, giving them the latest "tricks of the trade" and cutting
down on the death rate for the first missions (the real "killer",
normally). The Germans and Russians were unable to do this, and their
aircrew and pilots suffered a *much* higher death rate as a result.
Phil McGregor | Have Game Designer, Will Travel
asp...@curie.dialix.oz.au | Designer, Rigger Black Book; Co-Designer, Space Opera

[Donald Phillipson]

Charles K. Scott (Charles...@Dartmouth.EDU) writes:
>
> It was understood by physicians that aerial combat placed unique
> stresses upon pilot and crew which could and did affect their ability
> to perform effectively in combat or in their roles as leaders. Some
> pilots and crew were pulled from flight status because they became
> incapable of performing their duty because of this stress. This was
> called "combat fatigue" by the Americans or "Low Moral Fiber (LMF) by
> the British.

LMF = "Lack of Moral Fibre," which is a bit more aggressive. What
happened to aircrew thus graded is narrated in Len Deighton's novel Bomber
(reviewed as scrupulously accurate). Aircrew considered LMF were
removed from the squadron immediately (so as not to "contaminate"
the others), lost rank and flying pay, and were assigned to the lowest
types of unskilled work for the rest of the war.

The British government has recently reviewed the numbers of
infantry shot for cowardice in WW1 and probably mostly victims of
"shell shock" or "battle fatigue". Posthumous pardons may
be declared for some hundreds of such individuals. When rankers
were being shot for cowardice, at least some officers with shell shock
were treated by psychiatrist Rivers at specialized hospitals --
narrated in Siegfried Sassoon's book Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
and Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That. (After recovery, SS threatened
mutiny, and RG, a friend in the same battalion, was sent to the
hospital to persuade him to go back to duty, which SS ultimately did.)

--
| Donald Phillipson, 4180 Boundary Road, Carlsbad Springs, |
| Ontario, Canada, K0A 1K0, tel. 613 822 0734 |

[Joseph Askew]

Drazen Kramaric (etk...@neptun.design.etk.ericsson.se) wrote:

: The lack of Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front was the biggest single thing
: which enbled Soviet victory. The first Soviet counteroffensive at Moscow
: 1941 succeded mostly because Luftwaffe was unable to fight in harsh

: Winter. The breakthrough at Stalingrad began during bad weather and
: after significant number of Luftwaffe aircraft went to Med. Even battle

: at Kursk could have different ending if Luftwaffe could spot the coming
: of Soviet 5th Tank Army.

I think this is more the result of a pro-Western bias than anything
else. I totally and flatly reject the idea that the absence of the
Luftwaffe was more important than the production of 100,000 tanks
(and like vehicles) for instance. I think so little of that suggestion
that I am not even willing to argue the point. If you think differently
well we must live on different planets. The Luftwaffe had problems in
the Soviet winters. So did the rest of the German Armed forces. Mostly
because there just weren't enough planes to cover the entire front.
The Soviet counter offensive would have succeeded, most likely, with
the Luftwaffe in the air or not. The Germans were just overstretched.

: > The Germans had to keep some units in France to prevent an Allied
: > landing. These would have been fine targets. Let the Germans pull
: > them back, defend them or leave them to suffer. Above all producing
: > planes is not a good way to prepare for a landing. If you lack landing
: > craft (which I don't think they did) you produce landing craft.

: I think that Allies lacked landing craft very much. I think that D-day
: was postponed until June to get more LCs. Operation Anvil (landing of
: combined US-French forces in Southern France had to be postponed until
: after D-day because of lack of LCs. All plans for amphibious assaults on
: Balkan Peninsula had to be abandoned among other reasons because of lack
: of LCs and I didn't mention the needs of Pacific yet...

And I don't accept this either. The US did not lack the craft, it
just assigned them poorly. In particular they left control over
them to King who refused to let the British have any as far as he
was able. In 1943 alone the US produced 19,482 landing craft of all
sorts (but not counting amphibious vehicles). By June 1944 the US
had 409 (188) LST, 687 (279) LCT, 478 (124) LCI 5,058 (315) LCM,
9,950 (1,382) LCVP. Where the figures in brackets refer to those
allocated to th D-Day landings. Clearly in June 1944 the US had a
wealth of landing craft. This doesn't count the British either.
In any event it is peripheral to my point. Which is that if you
lack LST you produce LST. Not bombers.

: > The Germans made the same mistake as the Americans with their notion

: > that their bombers could outrun enemy fighters. Silly now, but at
: > the time perhaps not so bad.

: Before introducing Hurricanes and Spitfires in active service (1937 or
: 38) German Bomber Do-17 ("Flying Pencil") was FASTER than any RAF
: interceptor. Therefore, the doctrine of "SchnellBomber" wasn't so flawed
: in Thirties.

And yet it should have been perfectly obvious that there is nothing
about carrying bombs that makes you fast. If you can make a fast
bomber, someone else can make an even faster interceptor. As the
opposition stood it wasn't totally flawed. But then they tried it
out in Spain and discovered it didn't work. Because the opposition
did not sit still but went on to build newer and faster planes. In
the same way the Americans should have used their common sense and
learnt from experience.

[Ralph Simpson]

Surely no-one needs reminding that the vast majority of daylight bombing
was carried out by the Americans not the British. The British,
Commonwealth and European allies bombed round the clock for the two and
a half years before the US really got involved. The US aircrews proved
that their navigation at night was pretty awful, the cost in crews and
machines being unacceptable and so resorted to daylight bombing. The US
had the best bombsight in the world - the Norton - but if you can't find
the target, it was just a chunk of scrap. From then on, the daylight
bombing by the British and others was minimal until much nearer the end
of the war. For quite some time the US wouldn't share this valuable tool
with the allies, in case it fell into enemy hands.

The US bombers flew at 20,000 plus feet to get out of the way of the
german fighters. The RAF, RAAF, RCAF and RNZAF flew at night at 10
to 15,000 feet. Yes, their aim was often poor, but remember the crude
navigation aids they had, often flying by dead reckoning. Low altitude,
radar controlled searchlights, radar controlled ME110's and the like
often resulted in them being shot down. Both the US, British and other
allies were very, very brave men, not foolish, just patriotic and brave.
But so were the German Luftwaffe pilots, and let us not forget that too.

As for the bombing of civilians, it is always easy to look back and be
critical. However, you need to have been there and experienced it. I
was there and lived through years of german bombers destroying many,
many british cities, towns and villages - killing hundreds of thousands
of innocent civilians in the process. Then came the flying bombs - the
V1 and V2. Thousands and thousands were sent over bringing greater
havoc to the people of this small island - all of whom had nowhere to
hide. Also, do not let us forget, the USAAF bombed Dresden just before
the end of the war as well!

RAF Bomber Command is the only branch of the British Armed Forces not to
have been recognised for its outstanding contribution during the WW2.
As it became clearer that the end of the war was near, British and US
politicians began to distance themselves from the bombing raids knowing
that civilians were dying, as they had known for the 5 years before but
had urged more and more of the same. They knew it was happening and
agreed to it in public whilst denying their involvement behind the
scenes. The bomber crews were carrying out their orders which had not
changed since the beginning of the war.

All this may seem as if I am anti-german or anti US. Well, I'm not. On
the contrary, I love to visit Germany and the US and have many good
friends there. But this is now. Then was then, and I hated all germans
then as I'm sure they hated us.

The original question -'daylight strategic bombing - a failure?' needs
to be directed at the USAAF not the RAF, RCAF, RAAF and RNZAF.

I will finish with one question. If strategic bombing is not the
answer, then why has every major conflict in recent years used bombing
as the major weapon? 6-day war - Korea - Vietnam - Gulf - Bosnia -
Afghanistan. Gulf war pilots are heroes, feted for their achievements.
Perhaps like their WW2 counterparts, in 30 years from now they will be
regarded as butchers of innocent civilians.
--
RS
.......hindsight is the enemy of history!

[Dan Ford]

> well we must live on different planets. The Luftwaffe had problems in
> the Soviet winters. So did the rest of the German Armed forces. Mostly
> because there just weren't enough planes to cover the entire front.
> The Soviet counter offensive would have succeeded, most likely, with
> the Luftwaffe in the air or not. The Germans were just overstretched.

To read The Luftwaffe War Diaries (Bekker) is to realize that the concept
of air superiority meant something different to the Germans than it later
did to the Americans. Except for 1939 and early 1940, the Germans seldom
had air superiority; they were fighting tooth and nail, in a desperate
attempt to cover all the bases, in a way reminiscent of the American
Pacific air forces in the winter of 1941-42. To hold Tunisia they sent in
insructors(!) as replacement pilots. Meanwhile they'd sent badly needed
squadrons from North Africa to bolster the Russian front. Almost from the
late summer of 1941, it was desperation in motion for the German air
force. I suspect this is one of the reasons that the cult of the Luftwaffe
is so highly developed in the U.S. and Britain. Everyone loves the gallant
loser, even my Yuppie periodontist who spotted the book in my lap.

[Philip Pomerantz]

>
> The lack of Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front was the biggest single thing
> which enbled Soviet victory. The first Soviet counteroffensive at Moscow
> 1941 succeded mostly because Luftwaffe was unable to fight in harsh
> Winter. The breakthrough at Stalingrad began during bad weather and
> after significant number of Luftwaffe aircraft went to Med. Even battle
> at Kursk could have different ending if Luftwaffe could spot the coming
> of Soviet 5th Tank Army.
>
>

> Drax
>
>
>
Perhaps the biggest single factor in the German defeat in front of Moscow
was the Russian Army,
a force that the Germans consistently underestimated. The Germans were
worried that they would lose to the French.
Once they defeated the French, they thought Russia would be a cakewalk.
They have nothing
to blame but their hubris in thinking a bunch of inferior slavs couldn't
stand up to the mighty German Army.
Of course we also have to fault the vaunted German General Staff, rivaled
only by the Italians and Japanese
for lack of intelligent strtegic planning. The Russians were far better in
their grasp of the
strategic side of warfare, but the Geramsn were too arrogant to see that.
It wasn't the winter, it wasn't the weather, it wasn't the lack of air
power, it was the Russians that beat them.

Phil

[Joseph Askew]

Charles K. Scott (Charles...@Dartmouth.EDU) wrote:

: > >to me. The Bomber forces were so dangerous to fly in that they were
: > >the only force I know of in WW2 with a "time served and home" policy.

: > >You make 30 (or whatever) missions and you get sent home. The Army's
: > >tank divsions kept people until the end. They didn't feel the need
: > >to have a "three actions and you get sent home" policy.

: Where do you get your information Mr. Askew? Wherever you do, it is
: incorrect. The RAF rotated their crews out of combat after a certain
: number of missions as did the US Navy, the Air Corps fighter groups and
: the bomber groups.

Well no it isn't. I hate such anal quibbles as a general rule but I
did say "only force I know of". So it isn't incorrect
Dealing with the real world, I said the bomber forces were the only
units I knew of. Who do you think these are if not the RAF, the Air
Corp fighter groups anf the bomber groups? Someone else bombing
Germany perhaps? The only one I see of any relevance is the Navy.
And if the US Navy rotated non-flying crews out after a certain
time it is news to me. So just what did I get wrong?

: You first state "You make 30 (or whatever) missions and you get sent
: home" but then finish with "three actions and you get sent home".

: Which is it or is this just a "hip shot" fired for effect?

"The Army's tank divisions kept people until the end. They didn't feel
the need to have a "three actions and you get sent home" policy." When
I write things I'm old fashioned enough to expect people to read them.
And read them in their proper contexts. It isn't a hip shot fired for
effect. It is a an illustrative analogy pointig out what the rest of
the Army (ie those who did not fly) did not do.

: The Navy had a regular policy of sending veteran pilots home after

: combat duty where they often lectured and trained cadets so that their
: experience could be useful to those who had not yet fought. Sometimes
: they formed the nucleus of new squadrons which were sent back to the
: front. The Army Air Corps had a regular schedule of retirement for
: their fighter pilots as well as their bomber crews.

So flying for the Navy was damned dangerous too. A minor point,
but hardly a crushing indictment of what I said. So we know now
that all sorts of flying was damned dangerous. Except that the
forces involved in bombing in Europe had gross loss rates.

: It was understood by physicians that aerial combat placed unique

: stresses upon pilot and crew which could and did affect their ability
: to perform effectively in combat or in their roles as leaders. Some

It was damned dangerous for a start. Tends to stress most people.
An explanation of their reasons would be nice.

: pilots and crew were pulled from flight status because they became

: incapable of performing their duty because of this stress. This was
: called "combat fatigue" by the Americans or "Low Moral Fiber (LMF) by
: the British.

And seen in many other units too when under fire for too long
and after suffering serious losses. All this shows is that the
air crews knew how dangerous what they were doing was too. Not
a big surprie that.

: So it wasn't just the European daylight heavy bomber forces that had

: the combat rotation then home type duty.

No it was the fighters that went with them and the Navy pilots too.
All reflecting how dangerous it was to fly. Even with air supremacy.
So why do it?

[Charles K. Scott]

In article <5o374v$4...@nina.pagesz.net>
Ralph Simpson <Ra...@ralphs.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Surely no-one needs reminding that the vast majority of daylight bombing
> was carried out by the Americans not the British. The British,
> Commonwealth and European allies bombed round the clock for the two and
> a half years before the US really got involved. The US aircrews proved
> that their navigation at night was pretty awful, the cost in crews and
> machines being unacceptable and so resorted to daylight bombing.

Ralph, when the 8th Air Force sent their absolute very first bombers
over to England they were daylight bombers only. No provision and no
training was undertaken for night missions by the 8th. I've never read
of any mass night missions conducted by the 8th. Where do you come by
this information?

The US
> had the best bombsight in the world - the Norton -

That's actually spelled "Norden". Norton made motorcycles. :-)

but if you can't find
> the target, it was just a chunk of scrap. From then on, the daylight
> bombing by the British and others was minimal until much nearer the end
> of the war. For quite some time the US wouldn't share this valuable tool
> with the allies, in case it fell into enemy hands.

The alledged "pickle barrel" accuracy was largely a myth because the
solution for pinpoint accuracy required more from the bombers,
bombsights and bombardiers than they could manage in those days. There
could be cross winds at heights lower than where the bombers were
flying that differed from those at bombing height. The density of the
air had to be measured, the bombs themselves sometimes had dents or
other machining inaccuracies that could cause errant flight. Being
able to actually see and identify the target was vital and the Germans
knew this and had smoke generators surrounding vital cities and could
and did create considerable cover. But worst of all, the precise speed
and altitude of the bombers was difficult to hold and ascertain. The
airplanes flew by a pressure altimeter which was not as accurate as it
needed to be to make sure that when the bombs were released they would
impact on the intended target.

All of this is way the bombers flew in such huge formations, the more
dropping the better the chance some might hit.

But all the combatants had these same problems. It wasn't until the
advent of steerable bombs that individual accuracy really improved.

Corky Scott

[Dirk Lorek]

Ralph Simpson <Ra...@ralphs.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Surely no-one needs reminding that the vast majority of daylight bombing
> was carried out by the Americans not the British. The British,
> Commonwealth and European allies bombed round the clock for the two and
> a half years before the US really got involved. The US aircrews proved
> that their navigation at night was pretty awful, the cost in crews and
> machines being unacceptable and so resorted to daylight bombing.

The USAAF did not start bombing Germany before 1943. Already in June
42 the first experiments with the American LORAN (Long Range
Navigation) radio navigation system had begun. It was a system like
GEE but with a better range. The USAAF used it mainly in the Pacific.
I figure that if the USAAF had wished so, it could have navigated by
night via LORAN or the British systems, GH and Oboe from 1944 on. That
the USAAF stuck to daylight bombing was IMO rather a matter of
doctrine. When the USAAC arrived in Britain 1942, the RAF leaders
tried in vain to persuade the Americans to take part in their night
bombing campaign. Despite heavy losses, the USAAC stuck to precision
bombing and to the fight of the Luftwaffe, the latter only possible in
daylight operations.
Two minor nitpicks too. When the resistance of the Luftwaffe was
decreasing, also the Bomber Command began to fly fighter-escorted
daylight raids over Germany beginning in Aug 44. Regarding the 'round
the clock bombing', this rarely occurred. I know only of a handful of
instances were the USAAF attacked a target by day and the RAF bombed
it the following night. Cooperation between the two air forces was
very poor.

> The US
> had the best bombsight in the world - the Norton - but if you can't find

> the target, it was just a chunk of scrap. From then on, the daylight
> bombing by the British and others was minimal until much nearer the end
> of the war. For quite some time the US wouldn't share this valuable tool
> with the allies, in case it fell into enemy hands.

I agree. Precision bombing with optical bombsights could only be
accomplished in good weather conditions and these were rare. About 40%
of the US bombs were delivered visually IICI. OTOH, the British
navaids could also be used by the USAAF in overcast. And they were.
The USAAF used both H2X and later (autumn 44) GH in their daylight
raids.
BTW, the Nordon bombsight was known by Germany, a German-born final
inspector in the Carl L. Norden plant had turned the plans over to
Germany in 1938.

> The US bombers flew at 20,000 plus feet to get out of the way of the
> german fighters. The RAF, RAAF, RCAF and RNZAF flew at night at 10
> to 15,000 feet. Yes, their aim was often poor, but remember the crude
> navigation aids they had, often flying by dead reckoning. Low altitude,
> radar controlled searchlights, radar controlled ME110's and the like
> often resulted in them being shot down. Both the US, British and other
> allies were very, very brave men, not foolish, just patriotic and brave.
> But so were the German Luftwaffe pilots, and let us not forget that too.

The Butt Report from 1941 has created a myth about the RAF's poor
accuracy. While poor in 1941, Bomber Command's accuracy increased
steadily over the years with the help of the Pathfinders, better
markers and navigation aids. In 1941, 31% of their bombs were plotted
within 3 miles of the aiming point, 33% in 1942, 51% in 1943, 80% in
1944, 95% in 1945 (the last figure may include RAF daylight bombings).
A 3 mile circle is still quite large (as a comparison the USAAF
achieved on average about 34% of bombs falling within 1 000 ft of the
'preassigned mean point of impact' in 1944), but with say 85% of the
RAF bombs falling within 3 miles, a considerable amount (anyone?) fell
within 1 mile, probably enough to obliterate an industrial or military
site. In mid-44 Bomber Command was able to destroy railway yards in
French towns with minimal civilian casualties, by night of course (and
against poor opposition I might add, however, the accuracy was there).

Given little cloud cover, daylight bombing was superior, but otherwise
I would not be surprised if the RAF had the better accuracy of the two
air forces.

> As for the bombing of civilians, it is always easy to look back and be
> critical. However, you need to have been there and experienced it. I
> was there and lived through years of german bombers destroying many,
> many british cities, towns and villages - killing hundreds of thousands
> of innocent civilians in the process. Then came the flying bombs - the
> V1 and V2. Thousands and thousands were sent over bringing greater
> havoc to the people of this small island - all of whom had nowhere to
> hide. Also, do not let us forget, the USAAF bombed Dresden just before
> the end of the war as well!

The last I want to do is to downplay the role of German terror
bombing, but your figures are a bit too large. The total British
civilian casualties were about 70 000 whereof 9 000 deaths were caused
by V-weapons. German casualties were around 590 000.

> RAF Bomber Command is the only branch of the British Armed Forces not to
> have been recognised for its outstanding contribution during the WW2.
> As it became clearer that the end of the war was near, British and US
> politicians began to distance themselves from the bombing raids knowing
> that civilians were dying, as they had known for the 5 years before but
> had urged more and more of the same. They knew it was happening and
> agreed to it in public whilst denying their involvement behind the
> scenes. The bomber crews were carrying out their orders which had not
> changed since the beginning of the war.

Indeed. The bomber crews didn't pick the targets, the payloads and the
methods. Churchill for instance ordered himself the attack on Dresden,
after the results became known he called the raid an 'act of terror
and wanton destruction'.

[snip]

> I will finish with one question. If strategic bombing is not the
> answer, then why has every major conflict in recent years used bombing
> as the major weapon? 6-day war - Korea - Vietnam - Gulf - Bosnia -
> Afghanistan. Gulf war pilots are heroes, feted for their achievements.
> Perhaps like their WW2 counterparts, in 30 years from now they will be
> regarded as butchers of innocent civilians.

At least in the latest wars the Air Forces took a great pain to avoid
civilian casualties and to hit industrial/military targets instead.
The butchers of WW2 literally worked the other way around.

I>irk
______________________________________________________________________
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt, held in cohesion by unresting
cells,which work they know not why, which never halt, myself unwitting
where their Master dwells. - John Masefield -

! My email address has been altered. Sorry for any inconvenience !
! Remove the capital words from dil...@pobox.comREMOVE.THIS.PLEASE !

[Dirk Lorek]

Dan Ford <df@**christa.unh.edu> wrote:

> To read The Luftwaffe War Diaries (Bekker) is to realize that the concept

> of air superiority meant something different to the Germans...

The Becker 'Luftwaffe War Diaries' are interesting but they should by
no means be confused with *official* Luftwaffe diaries, they are a
product of a journalist with a historical interest (like you Dan).
Unfortunately the Luftwaffe was the German arm whose files were most
destroyed during the war, thus no official diary exists. German
historians like Jacobsen, Hillgruber and Hubatch (editors of the OKW
Diary) found the work of Becker unsuitable for a historic approach.

[Drazen Kramaric]

Philip Pomerantz wrote:

> Perhaps the biggest single factor in the German defeat in front of
> Moscow was the Russian Army,

Stupid decision to continue with Operation Typhoon after Novemeber in my
opinion. Fieldmarshall Kluge ("Wise") proposed defence until Spring and
was overruled. Germans were exhausted, even if they managed to capture
Moscow (street fighting during winter), they would have to face Soviet
reserves on both flanks. If they waited for Spring they could crush
soviets as Summer offensive in 1942 clearly showed.

> a force that the Germans consistently underestimated.

That's correct.

> The Germans were worried that they would lose to the French.

No they weren't. They affraid of stalemate as in 1914.

> Once they defeated the French, they thought Russia would be a
> cakewalk.

Hitler perhaps but even Goering was reluctant and Guderian couldn't see
how it is possible to defeat such large land power.

> They have nothing to blame but their hubris in thinking a bunch of
> inferior slavs couldn't stand up to the mighty German Army.

German army was mighty, regardles of opponents. I don't think that other
western nations had a high opinion about Russians either. At least all
of them thought that they were more civilised than Russians or any other
Eastern European or Balkan nation.

> Of course we also have to fault the vaunted German General Staff,
> rivaled only by the Italians and Japanese for lack of intelligent
> strtegic planning.

Operation Barbarossa was tremendous problem from logistical point of
view. Despite that "lack" of intelligent strategic planning Germans came
at the gate of Moscow, washed their feet in Volga and put their flag at
Mt Elbrus, not bad for unintelligent general staff.

> The Russians were far better in their grasp of the strategic side of
> warfare, but the Geramsn were too arrogant to see that.

Especially when they allowed 600000 soldiers to be trapped in Kiev
pocket or when they went to all-out counteroffensive in Winter-Spring
1942.

> It wasn't the winter, it wasn't the weather, it wasn't the lack of air
> power, it was the Russians that beat them.

It was Allies who beat them. Without Allied strategic daylight bombing
campaign Luftwaffe fighters would be at front line downing allied
aircraft in hundreds. Despite all claims, the side who had an air
superiority usually won the battle or campaign. At least side had to
have air parity to allow other arms such as artillery or armour to won
the day.

Drax

[Drazen Kramaric]

Alex Milman wrote:

> So it was not a lack of Luftwaffe but simply it's inability
> to fight in these conditions. Germans still had at least as many
> ground forces as Red Army. Couldn't they fight without the air
> support?

German ground forces were exhausted and unable to dug in becuase of
severe winter. Soviets deployed many fresh divisions from Siberia.
However with propere winter preparations Luftwaffe could do much damage
to Soviet advance. But basic statement remains: There was a lack of
Luftwaffe during Soviet counterattack at Moscow which enabled or at
least make job easier for Soviets.

> And somehow Luftwaffe did not notice the huge reserves massed just
> behind the front lines. Probably weather was not bad all this time.
> After all, they were flying before and after Soviet breakthrough.

Soviet build up was spotted but ignorred, thanks among others to chief
of Fremdeherre Ost Gen Gehlen who predicted Soviet attack in front of
HeeresGruppe Mitte.

Anyway many aircraft were deployed in Med theatre following El Alamein
and Torch just prior to Soviet counteroffensive at Stalingrad. Many
transport aircraft went to Med for airlift of German troops to Tunis
when they were most needed to supply 6th Armee trapped at Stalingrad.

> Germans, by their own statements (Manstein), had an air superiority
> at Kursk. Still they missed a needle in a hay stack, the whole tank
> army. And before this army had been brought into the action Luftwaffe
> did not demonstrate any miracles either.

Mainstein was ground troops commander not Luftwaffe expert. Luftwaffe
general Greim asked for more preoffensive bombing of Soviet rear areas
to prevent Soviet buildup but was ignorred.

Soviets had more aircraft before battle and were quite capable of
inflicting losses to Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe veterans claimed more kills
than their Soviet counterparts but Soviets were able to replace their
losses while German fighters already went to West in large numbers. By
1944 there were only 400 Luftwaffe fighters on the Eastern Front.

> Looks pretty much like Luftwaffe as a force was seriously overrated.
> They were definitely very good when attacking the infantry or bombing
> the cities but each time they face a serious adversary it was either
> bad weather or some other excuse for their failure.

No, Germany simply lacked both aircraft and trained pilots to replace
losses. Any check at figures of produced aircraft clearly shows that
Allies outproduced Germany by almost 3 to 1. The fact that Luftwaffe
fought without the stop for 6 years clearly shows how formidable force
it was.

Drax

[Scott K. Stafford]

In article <5o76cv$f...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>,
DiL...@pobox.comREMOVE.THIS.PLEASE writes;

> > I will finish with one question. If strategic bombing is not the
> > answer, then why has every major conflict in recent years used bombing
> > as the major weapon? 6-day war - Korea - Vietnam - Gulf - Bosnia -
> > Afghanistan. Gulf war pilots are heroes, feted for their achievements.
> > Perhaps like their WW2 counterparts, in 30 years from now they will be
> > regarded as butchers of innocent civilians.
>
> At least in the latest wars the Air Forces took a great pain to avoid
> civilian casualties and to hit industrial/military targets instead.
> The butchers of WW2 literally worked the other way around.

This is unfair. Had the RAF and USAAF been given laser-guided or
precision optical-guided weaponry (along with IR, radar, and GPS) in
1943, they would have cheerfully used it for the same reasons it is used
today. Not only does it avoid civilian casualties to the best extent
possible (a secondary aim...), but it hits and flattens the target with
great accuracy and regularity (the primary goal...). The 1943 airmen and
their leaders cannot be blamed because their tools approximated a
sledgehammer rather than a scalpel. Hell, if we're going to blame allied
airmen for not hitting targets accurately and avoiding collateral damage,
we might as profitably blame German defenders for forcing the allies into
inaccurate modes of operation like high-altitude or night bombing.

If there is an enemy factory you wish to destroy, in 1943 you send 500 B-
17s and saturate the entire factory area with bombs, hoping that the
factory will go up in smoke along anyone unlucky enough to be within
circular error of the plant. In 1997 you send one or two F-117s armed
with 2,000lb LGBs and blow the factory apart in the middle of the night
with only trivial collateral damage.

But please note that the lesser civilian devastation in later wars is not
due to greater "pains" being taken to avoid civilian casualties;
precision weapons were developed because of their greater military
effectiveness, not out of an altruistic desire to avoid collateral
damage. After all, the most effective weapons (which everyone still
keeps in copious supply) are thermonuclear warheads--which can be
accurately described as "Dresden in a Drum."

--
SKS <sco...@together.net>
*********************************************************
"Argument is an intellectual process, not just the
automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says."
"No it isn't."
"Yes it is!"
*********************************************************

[Rob Davis]

» incorrect. The RAF rotated their crews out of combat after a certain

RAF Bomber Command crews had to complete a first tour of 30 successful
operations, with aborts not being counted. Once 30 ops were done, the crew was
classed as "tour expired" and usually briefly sent to be trained as instructors
before spending 6 months teaching the newcomers.

A second tour was only 20 successful operations. and after that the airman was
not required to fly further operations. Many, however, did so as volunteers.

Path Finder Force doubled these requirements - this sounds callous, but the
reasons were simple. (1) The PFF crews were hand picked and thus expected to be
far better in morale, press-on sprit and general competence than line crews, and
(2) PFF crews were almost always the first aircraft over the target, which was
much safer, as the defences were not alerted.

» called "combat fatigue" by the Americans or "Low Moral Fiber (LMF) by
» the British.

Lack of Moral Fibre or LMF, yes. Any airman - who were after all, volunteers to
a man - could go the CO or MO and decline to fly. Such, however, were rarely
recognised as battle fatigued, and usually stripped of rank (occasionally in
public) and rapidly posted away before their "cowardice" caught on.

A popular posting retained for such men was to be sent to the Aircrew Refresher
Course at Sheffield, where the discipline was extremely harsh, and pointed
questions were asked about empty unfaded patches on uniforms...

Others were posted for 6 months as Duty Pilot to the Orkneys, a salutory
experience. My late father was concerned with AA units at Scapa Flow and
maintained that "For the first year, you talk to yourself, the second year you
talk to the seagulls, and the third year they answer you back."

Rob Davis MSc MIAP r...@rob.foobar.co.uk http://www.foobar.co.uk/dialin/rob/
Leicester, UK. Tel. 0976 379489

[Philip Pomerantz]

Drazen Kramaric <etk...@neptun.design.etk.ericsson.se> wrote in
article <5o8ooq$a...@portal.gmu.edu>...

>
>
>
> It was Allies who beat them. Without Allied strategic daylight
bombing
> campaign Luftwaffe fighters would be at front line downing allied
> aircraft in hundreds. Despite all claims, the side who had an air
> superiority usually won the battle or campaign. At least side had
to
> have air parity to allow other arms such as artillery or armour to
won
> the day.
>
>
> Drax
>

Drax,
You are trying to tell us that the bombing offensive defeated the
Germans!
How many Germans died on the eastern Front?
How many Germans fought on the eastern Front?
Most of the war was fought on the eastern front, and look who lost,
the general Staff that couldn't figure out the Stalin was hiding
millions of men near stalingrad in 1942 and
that got suckered into stripping AGC of armor in June 44.
Could the Normandy Invasion have succeeded in the absense of an
Eastern front?
Wake up and smell the coffee!

Phil

[Brad Meyer]

In message <5ns01i$b...@nina.pagesz.net> - ri...@crick.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu (Richard
H. Miller) writes:
>
(snip)

>
>I have seen at least one reference to the effect that the problems with Omaha
>were, in part, due to a lack of application of the lessions the USMC/USN had
>learned in the Pacific landings. (Although I am not sure how much could have
>been adopted since conditions were so much different except for the fact that
>beach was contested. Perhaps the use of the initial wave in LVAs rather than
>trying to put the DDs ashore first and following up with the first wave off
>of LCVPs)

I think the sigificant difference is that Overloard planners made a
deliberate choice to sacrifice a meaningful pre-landing bombardment in the
interests of surprise. The decision is more nearly justified in the ETO then
it was at Tarawa. None the less I should think that with their air and naval
superiority they could have isolated and pummeled the beaches for days before
the invasion. I find it difficult to credit the Germans with being able to
move (at night only, of course), dig in, and camo any great amout of
reenforcement without sustaining runinous losses in the process.

OTOH, as it was, the invasion was sucessful, and most likely would have been
successful even had Omaha been abandoned.

Brad Meyer

"It is history that teaches us to hope."

-- R E Lee

[Alex Milman]

Drazen Kramaric wrote:
>
> Alex Milman wrote:
>
> > So it was not a lack of Luftwaffe but simply it's inability
> > to fight in these conditions. Germans still had at least as many
> > ground forces as Red Army. Couldn't they fight without the air
> > support?
>
> German ground forces were exhausted and unable to dug in becuase of
> severe winter.

Actually there was a stalemate before winter became really severe.
If they were exhausted why didn't they dug in before winter the
cold weather started? Did they mistake Russia for Africa?

>Soviets deployed many fresh divisions from Siberia.

Not too many and they practically did not have any fresh tank
forces. Germans had a huge advantage in this area.

> However with propere winter preparations Luftwaffe could do much damage
> to Soviet advance.

Your initial statement implied a physical absence of Luftwaffe
or it's inadequate numbers. It's inability to fly during the winter
just tells a lot about the quality of it's commanders.

>But basic statement remains: There was a lack of
> Luftwaffe during Soviet counterattack at Moscow which enabled or at
> least make job easier for Soviets.
>

This statement is so broad that it's always true. You can also
say that the lack of Soviet Aviation made job easier for Germans.
Does not tell anything about the quality of the force.

>
> > And somehow Luftwaffe did not notice the huge reserves massed just
> > behind the front lines. Probably weather was not bad all this time.
> > After all, they were flying before and after Soviet breakthrough.
>
> Soviet build up was spotted but ignorred,

Probably materials were not convincing. They could make more
photos and of a good quality.

>thanks among others to chief
> of Fremdeherre Ost Gen Gehlen who predicted Soviet attack in front of
> HeeresGruppe Mitte.
>
> Anyway many aircraft were deployed in Med theatre following El Alamein
> and Torch just prior to Soviet counteroffensive at Stalingrad.

They did achieve any impressive results before this counteroffensive
started.

>Many
> transport aircraft went to Med for airlift of German troops to Tunis
> when they were most needed to supply 6th Armee trapped at Stalingrad.
>

This would only resulted in the higher German losses before they
capitulated. They could not move out and the ring could not be broken.

> > Germans, by their own statements (Manstein), had an air superiority
> > at Kursk. Still they missed a needle in a hay stack, the whole tank
> > army. And before this army had been brought into the action Luftwaffe
> > did not demonstrate any miracles either.
>
> Mainstein was ground troops commander not Luftwaffe expert. Luftwaffe
> general Greim asked for more preoffensive bombing of Soviet rear areas
> to prevent Soviet buildup but was ignorred.
>

Poor Luftwaffe. It always had been ignored. I'm wondering, why?
Manstein was not a complete idiot even if Kursk was not his best
operation.

> Soviets had more aircraft before battle and were quite capable of
> inflicting losses to Wehrmacht.

So probably Luftwaffe would not be able to accomplish this preoffensive
bombing effectively.

>Luftwaffe veterans claimed more kills

Claimed and accomplished is not the same. Germans were very good
with the numbers of enemy's losses. If you take Manstein seriously
Russians lost at Proshorovka appr. 200% of their tanks engaged
(really amazing success, somehow there was still enough Russian
tanks left to prevent Germans from going any further).
The same, on a smaller scale, applies to German pilots starting
from Rudel.

> than their Soviet counterparts but Soviets were able to replace their
> losses while German fighters already went to West in large numbers. By
> 1944 there were only 400 Luftwaffe fighters on the Eastern Front.

Probably not all of them went to West. Some had be killed.

>
>
> > Looks pretty much like Luftwaffe as a force was seriously overrated.
> > They were definitely very good when attacking the infantry or bombing
> > the cities but each time they face a serious adversary it was either
> > bad weather or some other excuse for their failure.
>
> No, Germany simply lacked both aircraft and trained pilots

In 1941? You wrote that it was a weather.

>to replace
> losses.

Which means that it was overrated. A military branch that can not
compensate for its losses is not efficiently organized. Luftwaffe
included not only pilots but also was responsible for organization
of a production.

> Any check at figures of produced aircraft clearly shows that
> Allies outproduced Germany by almost 3 to 1.

And initially they had a similar advantage.

>The fact that Luftwaffe
> fought without the stop for 6 years clearly shows how formidable force
> it was.

It was practically nonexisting force by the middle of 1944.
There was no opposition from Luftwaffe during D-Day and it did
not play any noticeable role on the East sunce the middle of 1943.

>
> Drax

[efr...@msuvx2.memphis.edu]

Richard H. Miller wrote:
>>I have seen at least one reference to the effect that the problems with Omaha
>>were, in part, due to a lack of application of the lessions the USMC/USN had
>>learned in the Pacific landings. (Although I am not sure how much could have
>>been adopted since conditions were so much different except for the fact that
>>beach was contested. Perhaps the use of the initial wave in LVAs rather than
>>trying to put the DDs ashore first and following up with the first wave off
>>of LCVPs)

I couldn't judge that at this point, but surely the
Army had as much relevant experience-- Torch, Sicily,
Salerno, Anzio... Even their own landings in the SW
Pacific. Or are you making the point that Omaha
had some peculiar resemblence to Navy/MC ops?

Brad Meyer replied:

> I think the sigificant difference is that Overloard planners made a
> deliberate choice to sacrifice a meaningful pre-landing bombardment in the
> interests of surprise. The decision is more nearly justified in the ETO then
> it was at Tarawa. None the less I should think that with their air and naval
> superiority they could have isolated and pummeled the beaches for days before
> the invasion. I find it difficult to credit the Germans with being able to
> move (at night only, of course), dig in, and camo any great amout of
> reenforcement without sustaining runinous losses in the process.

That's an interesting idea: why not go whole hog and
imagine a few-days of sea bombardment integrated into
the Calais deception operation? Imagine the German
reaction... would they have taken the bait and let
themselves be drawn into a killing zone before any
troops landed?

How long did the Overlord beachheads have appreciable
naval firepower available, for that matter? Was the
choice based on supposed danger to the heavy units
in close waters?

> OTOH, as it was, the invasion was sucessful, and most likely would have been
> successful even had Omaha been abandoned.

Seems likely.

Ed Frank

[Joseph Askew]

Drazen Kramaric (etk...@neptun.design.etk.ericsson.se) wrote:

: However with propere winter preparations Luftwaffe could do much damage
: to Soviet advance. But basic statement remains: There was a lack of

: Luftwaffe during Soviet counterattack at Moscow which enabled or at
: least make job easier for Soviets.

Even if I accepted your claims, which I should stress I don't, it
remains that the failure of the Luftwaffe outside Moscow had
absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Allied Bombing of
Germany. You cannot claim this victory for the Red Army on the
British and American bomber forces. For one thing the Americans
were not even at war when the fighting outside Moscow started.
For another the British bombing campaign had hardly started. On
top of which what bombing there was, was at this time totally
useless and ineffective.

The failure of the Luftwaffe was a German failure (of sorts, I
think the Germans were right to concentrate on tanks, it was a
failure to produce tanks that was the big mistake) with no help
from anyone else at all.

[Richard H. Miller]

Brad Meyer (br...@ibm.net) wrote:

: In message <5ns01i$b...@nina.pagesz.net> - ri...@crick.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu (Richard
: H. Miller) writes:
: >
: (snip)
: >
: >I have seen at least one reference to the effect that the problems with Omaha

: >were, in part, due to a lack of application of the lessions the USMC/USN had
: >learned in the Pacific landings. (Although I am not sure how much could have
: >been adopted since conditions were so much different except for the fact that
: >beach was contested. Perhaps the use of the initial wave in LVAs rather than
: >trying to put the DDs ashore first and following up with the first wave off
: >of LCVPs)
:

: I think the sigificant difference is that Overloard planners made a
: deliberate choice to sacrifice a meaningful pre-landing bombardment in the
: interests of surprise. The decision is more nearly justified in the ETO then
: it was at Tarawa. None the less I should think that with their air and naval
: superiority they could have isolated and pummeled the beaches for days before
: the invasion. I find it difficult to credit the Germans with being able to
: move (at night only, of course), dig in, and camo any great amout of
: reenforcement without sustaining runinous losses in the process.

: OTOH, as it was, the invasion was sucessful, and most likely would have been

: successful even had Omaha been abandoned.

And I think this is the key to the differences; most of the wwii pacific
campaigns were fought on ground in which the defenders were isolated from
reinforcement and had no ability to manuver. Thus the pacific assults tended
to be frontal and, after the Tarawa debacle, usually preceeded by days of
intensive bombardment since even if the Japanese knew where the landing
was going to be they could not interfere with it given that during one of
these operations the fast carriers were at a minumum screening the target.

Strategically, these lessions were really not transferrable to the ETO
since, especially for the Normandy invasion, part of the sucess of the
ETO landings was the degree of deception employed to shield the true
location of the landings. (And given the somewhat spotty results that
pre-landing bombardment provided, a PTO style invasion would have
simply telegraphed to the Germans the location of the landing.)

I think that the lessions which could have been applied are in the
tactical problem of landing on a contested beach. As I recall, the
tactic for the US landings was to have an initial wave of DD tanks
combined with US Army Engineers and USN demolitions teams in the first
wave to take out the obstacles followed by the first wave of
Infantry. All of these were landed by the 'special' tanks and
LCVPs. IIRC the USMC doctrine was to place the first waves ashore
using LVAs and utilitizing the guns of the destroyers off-shore for
artillary support until a beach was secured and the followon waves
from LCVPs and LSTs could land.

rick

[Scott K. Stafford]

In article <5oa751$17...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, phi...@enter.net writes;

> You are trying to tell us that the bombing offensive defeated the
> Germans!

You're missing the point. The bombing offensive did not defeat the
Germans all by itself. Nor did the Soviets. Nor did D-Day. Nor did
victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. Nor did North Africa. Nor did
the invasion of Sicily/Italy. Nor did <you fill the blank>.

The point is that the strategic bombing offensive was just one part of an
overall allied campaign against the Germans which eventually resulted in
German defeat. I (and many others...) happen to agree with you that
Soviet operations on the eastern front contributed "the most" to the
German defeat, but this victory did not occur in a vacuum--and it's
debatable whether it would have occurred *at all* had Germany been able
to make war on the Russians unmolested by the western allies.

[Rich Rostrom]

jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Joseph Askew) wrote:

> ... the failure of the Luftwaffe outside Moscow had

> absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Allied Bombing of

> Germany... the British bombing campaign had hardly started.

June 22, 1941, the day BARBAROSSA started, was the middle of 20
consecutive night raids on Germany by the RAF.

On June 12, 1941, Berlin civil defense authorities issued a
special warning reminding the populace to take cover _at_ _once_
when air raid warnings were sounded.

While the 1941 bomber campaign was far smaller than the attacks
later in the war, it was non-trivial, and Germany had to deploy
signficant air interception and anti-aircraft assets against it;
assets that would have been very valuable on the Eastern Front.

--
Rich Rostrom | You could have hit him over the head with it and he
| wouldn't have minded. He never did mind being hit
R-Rostrom@ | with small things like guns and axe handles.
bgu.edu | - Ellis Parker Butler, "That Pup of Murchison's"

[Ralph Simpson]

Reference to various email from : Richard H Miller; Brad Meyer; Ed
Frank concerning the landing at Omaha Beach.

In jis book 'OVERLORD - D-Day and the Battle for Normandy 1944' by Max
Hastings (pub Book Club Associates, 1984) he says :

'....V Corps' plan for Omaha eschewed tactical subleties, the use of
British specialized armour, and any attempt to seize the five vital
beach exits by manoeuvre. This was an act of hubris compounded by the
collapse, amidst rough weather, of all the elaborate timetables for the
landing.'

Further on, he says :

'Under the impact of the waves, the flimsy canvas walls on most of the
amphibious tanks collapsed immediately.......32 were launched 6,000 from
the beach...plunged like a stone to the bottom of the sea.'

He also makes reference to some being transferred to their landing craft
12 miles from the beach instead of the 7 miles the British had decided
upon.

The absence of strategic bombing leading up to D-Day was surely due to
the need to convince the Germans that the landing was going to be in the
Pas-de-Calais area and not Normandy - which in fact proved to be sound
planning.

Omaha suffered more than any other beach. None of them were picnics. I
have visited Omaha Beach on several occasions and will undoubtedly do so
again. When gazing on the beach, which is a lovely stretch of coastline,
it is impossible to imagine the carnage wreaked that day. Before my
first visit to Omaha Beach, a friend said 'I bet you will not see or
hear a bird when walking around the cemetary.' I have never heard or
seen a bird on any of my visits. I'm not superstitious, but.........

--
Ralph S

[funkraum]

>sco...@UNSPAMtogether.net (Scott K. Stafford) wrote:
>>DiL...@pobox.comREMOVE.THIS.PLEASE writes;

>> > I will finish with one question. If strategic bombing is not the
>> > answer, then why has every major conflict in recent years used bombing
>> > as the major weapon? 6-day war - Korea - Vietnam - Gulf - Bosnia -
>> > Afghanistan. Gulf war pilots are heroes, feted for their achievements.
>> > Perhaps like their WW2 counterparts, in 30 years from now they will be
>> > regarded as butchers of innocent civilians.
>>
>> At least in the latest wars the Air Forces took a great pain to avoid
>> civilian casualties and to hit industrial/military targets instead.
>> The butchers of WW2 literally worked the other way around.
>

>This is unfair. Had the RAF and USAAF been given laser-guided or
>precision optical-guided weaponry (along with IR, radar, and GPS) in
>1943, they would have cheerfully used it for the same reasons it is used
>today.

[...]

The above assertion is conjecture.

Furthermore, it makes no difference. If you intentionally use a
weapon whose effects known to you then you are culpable of the
damage caused by that weapon. If your intention is to kill one man
in crowd, but to your knowledge your weapon will kill many people
in the crowd, then you would be guilty of all the murders.

There's no escape: Driving a truck down a crowded shopping mall in
an attempt to kill and individual in the crowd will end with you
facing multiple counts of murder. Too bad if it was the only
weapon handy.

Since those responsible did not record a debate on a hypothetical
situation where they were presented with the option of using
laser-guided bombs, their exact intention is a matter of
conjecture.

There was enough theory being bandied about on the use of terror
bombing (ie the bombing of cities) and its effects on the nation
as a whole that in the above hypothetical discussion, some might
advocate concentration on military and industrial targets and some
might still advocate terror bombing.

> Hell, if we're going to blame allied
>airmen for not hitting targets accurately and avoiding collateral damage,
>we might as profitably blame German defenders for forcing the allies into
>inaccurate modes of operation like high-altitude or night bombing.
>

Ridiculous.

Perhaps you might like to blame the Allies, because they didn`t
surrender. If they had surrendered then the Germans wouldn`t need
to shoot at them.

--

From: funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk <funkraum> :

[Dan Ford]

Obviously not a picnic, but there were only twelve Americans killed in the
landing on Utah Beach. (Excluding the offshore islands, casualties after
1200 hrs, and of course the airborne drops on the Cherbourg Peninsula.) I
believe that some of the credit must go to the fact that only at Utah were
medium bombers (Martin Marauders) used at comparatively low level (perhaps
1,500 feet, though there is considerable argument on this matter).

At Omaha, B-24s and B-17s were used instead. They flew above the clouds
instead of beneath, and they dropped their bombs up to twelve miles inland
in their commendable but ultimately counterproductive effort not to bomb
friendly troops.

- Dan / http://www.cris.com/~danford

Brewster Buffalo / Flying Tigers / Germany at War / Japan at War

[Charles Munger]

In article <5p9d4k$mg6$1...@nina.pagesz.net>, funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk wrote:

> There's no escape: Driving a truck down a crowded shopping mall in
> an attempt to kill and individual in the crowd will end with you
> facing multiple counts of murder. Too bad if it was the only
> weapon handy.

I do not believe that one would, or should, be charged with murder if the
targeted individual is engaged in the killing of scores or hundreds of
people. The Allies were not picking on some random individuals or targets
for destruction on a whim. They were trying to avoid their own
destruction, win the war, and force the Axis powers to surrender.

> Since those responsible did not record a debate on a hypothetical
> situation where they were presented with the option of using
> laser-guided bombs, their exact intention is a matter of
> conjecture.

But their intention might be deduced from the fact that they did put a lot
of effort and expense into building and using the most accurate optical
and radar bomb sights possible.

Charles Munger

[pyotr filipivich]

[Moderator's Note: This thread is straying too far off of World War II. It
needs to be brought back on-topic or moved to another newsgroup. JD]

funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk.ANTISPAM (funkraum) writes:
>>sco...@UNSPAMtogether.net (Scott K. Stafford) wrote:
>>>DiL...@pobox.comREMOVE.THIS.PLEASE writes;

>>> > I will finish with one question. If strategic bombing is not the
>>> > answer, then why has every major conflict in recent years used bombing
>>> > as the major weapon? 6-day war - Korea - Vietnam - Gulf - Bosnia -
>>> > Afghanistan. Gulf war pilots are heroes, feted for their achievements.
>>> > Perhaps like their WW2 counterparts, in 30 years from now they will be
>>> > regarded as butchers of innocent civilians.

There's a slight error here. There is a difference between "strategic"
bombardment - which targets the enemy's war production capacity, and
'tactical' bombardment, which targets the enemy's battle forces on or near the
main line of battle. E.g. Attacking the enemy's aircraft on the airfield is
tactical, attacking his aircraft production capacity is strategic.

There was no strategic attacks in the six day war, in Korea there was
some. Vietnam was aimed at whatever Lyndon thought would send a message, the
Gulf was targeting war fighting capacity (that a lot of
war production etc was also hit ... 'le shrug') - and Bosnia is flat out
tactical - attacking only the equipment that is in the wrong place.

What motivated Daylight Strategic Bombing was the idea that only during
the day could aircraft target effectively the enemy's factories. The
technology wasn't going to allow for more than that. The Brits decided they
couldn't get the results to justify the losses. The Americans were able to
get results to justify their losses. There was also the idea of bombing
"round the clock" to deny the Nazis a chance to recover.
Why target the enemy's factories - for the same reason that Sherman
marched to the sea: destroy the enemy's ability to supply his fighting forces,
and those forces will prove a lot less tenacious in combat.

>>> At least in the latest wars the Air Forces took a great pain to avoid
>>> civilian casualties and to hit industrial/military targets instead.
>>> The butchers of WW2 literally worked the other way around.

>>This is unfair. Had the RAF and USAAF been given laser-guided or
>>precision optical-guided weaponry (along with IR, radar, and GPS) in
>>1943, they would have cheerfully used it for the same reasons it is used
>>today.
>[...]

>The above assertion is conjecture.

The aim of the American bombing raids was the pinpoint destruction of
specific factories deemed essential tot he German ability to wage war. They
invented the Norden bombsight to increase accuracy and minimizing collateral
damage (and wasted bombs). There was a lot of work on guided bombs (radio
controlled vanes) for those hard to hit targets - bridges in the test photos I
saw.

So yeah, I'd say that if the USAAF had been issued laser guided
munitions, they would have cheerfully used them. LGBs provide more bang for
the buck, maximizing damage to war production while minimizing the risk to
aircrews.

>Furthermore, it makes no difference. If you intentionally use a
>weapon whose effects known to you then you are culpable of the
>damage caused by that weapon. If your intention is to kill one man
>in crowd, but to your knowledge your weapon will kill many people
>in the crowd, then you would be guilty of all the murders.

If you intend to murder, then this follows.

In war, the others are called "collateral damage". It is also called
"bad tactical decisions".

>There's no escape: Driving a truck down a crowded shopping mall in
>an attempt to kill and individual in the crowd will end with you
>facing multiple counts of murder. Too bad if it was the only
>weapon handy.

Can you justify the deaths of the innocents by the death of the guilty?
My point is that if you have imminent danger (the evil genius is about set in
motion The Ultimate Deathray) and it's kill him (and others in the crowd) or
lose the entire world - that's one thing. If the Evil Genius is merely about
to light up a cigarette in a no-smoking zone, that is another.

But that doesn't really cover the problems of "collateral damage" in
warfare, and the ideas of a "just war" involving only combatants.

>Since those responsible did not record a debate on a hypothetical
>situation where they were presented with the option of using
>laser-guided bombs, their exact intention is a matter of
>conjecture.

>There was enough theory being bandied about on the use of terror

>bombing (ie the bombing of cities) and its effects on the nation
>as a whole that in the above hypothetical discussion, some might
>advocate concentration on military and industrial targets and some
>might still advocate terror bombing.

Since the late 1790s there has been the concept of the Nation in Arms -
the entire nation being involved in the war effort. It started in
Revolutionary France, and has become part of the democratic tradition of the
West. "We all have a stake in this" is the thinking. Unfortunately, this
removes the distinction of non-combatant civilians from the equation.

Following the results of the war in Europe in 1914-1918, the entire idea
became "If modern war is so terrible for soldiers, how much worse will it be
for untrained civilians?" And the idea/theory grew up that The Next War (tm)
would feature hordes of crazed civilians fleeing the cities in terror. It
didn't happen, and the post WW2 Strategic Bombing Survey discovered that the
Air War against Germany had not been as productive as imagined. It had served
to screw things up for the Germans, but not in an insurmountable manner. What
really cramped German industrial production was the loss of resources due to
invading armies.

>> Hell, if we're going to blame allied
>>airmen for not hitting targets accurately and avoiding collateral damage,
>>we might as profitably blame German defenders for forcing the allies into
>>inaccurate modes of operation like high-altitude or night bombing.

>Ridiculous.

>Perhaps you might like to blame the Allies, because they didn't
>surrender. If they had surrendered then the Germans wouldn't need
>to shoot at them.

Might as well. Both positions are still silly.

tschus
pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich, sometimes owl, Nikolai Petrovich in the SCA.
"Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes."
(If you can read this, you're overeducated.)

[Dan Ford]

You know, I too had swallowed the latter-day belief that the USAAF
couldn't hit much from the altitude it was forced to fly by German flak,
so I was much surprised to read this in _The Luftwaffe War Dairies_ by
Cajus Bekker, not only a German but in sufficient sympathy with the German
air force to merit a warm foreword by "former Luftwaffe General Paul
Deichmann." The translation was published by Doubleday in 1988.

"According to the minister of munitions and war production, Albert Speer,
neither could the effects of the precision bombing of the American
daylight attacks be sustained by Germany. The night bombardment of the
British, despite the devastation caused, did not appreciably affect the
German war potential, whereas the Americans hit the armaments industy
where it hurt by going for the vital factories and exploiting the
bottle-necks of production. Even if they lost many bombers on the way, the
rest were enough to inflict heavy damage." p 318

"Despite the terrible destruction of German cities, despite all the
hardship and death it brought to the civilian population and industrial
wokers--whose ordeal was now often worse than that of the soldiers at the
front--it was not, as we have seen, area bombing by night that struck the
vital blow at German survival.

"This mission was accomplished to a far greater extent by the selective
and precision bombing of the American Eighth Air Force in daylight. By
careful choice of target, this first blocked the bottle-necks of armaments
production, and finally brought the whole German war machine to a
standstill." p. 340

[Scott K. Stafford]

In article <5q0c7c$p...@portal.gmu.edu>, d...@christa.unh.edu writes;

>
> You know, I too had swallowed the latter-day belief that the USAAF

> couldn't hit much [...]

> "This mission was accomplished to a far greater extent by the selective
> and precision bombing of the American Eighth Air Force in daylight. By
> careful choice of target, this first blocked the bottle-necks of armaments
> production, and finally brought the whole German war machine to a
> standstill." p. 340

Well, why should we accept the word of a German journalist, or Albert
Speer, when we have all these armchair internet experts around here
telling us that strategic bombing was a useless waste of time?

<g>

--
Scott K. Stafford <sco...@together.net>
***************************************
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Gojira ga Ginza hoomen e mukatte imasu!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!

[pyotr filipivich]

Dan Ford <d...@christa.unh.edu> writes:
[snip]

>"Despite the terrible destruction of German cities, despite all the
>hardship and death it brought to the civilian population and industrial
>wokers--whose ordeal was now often worse than that of the soldiers at the
>front--it was not, as we have seen, area bombing by night that struck the
>vital blow at German survival.

I recall reading that an unintended effect of the destruction of
Hamburg was a respite in the need for workers in the war industries.
The argument was along these lines: with the center of the city destroyed,
there were, of course, no jobs. But the industrial sections on the edge
of the city were less damaged, and got back into production quickly - and
absorbed the formerly unemployed waiters, department store clerks, etc,
etc into the War machine.
Yes, I know, waiters don't make good machinists. But they will
do for machine tending - line up part A with mark B, and pull lever C.

>"This mission was accomplished to a far greater extent by the selective
>and precision bombing of the American Eighth Air Force in daylight. By
>careful choice of target, this first blocked the bottle-necks of armaments
>production, and finally brought the whole German war machine to a
>standstill." p. 340

It never really brought it to a standstill, but it did cause
difficulties. ANd the synergistic effects brought it all to a halt.

[funkraum]

>py...@halcyon.com (pyotr filipivich) wrote:
>>funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk.ANTISPAM (funkraum) writes:

>[Moderator's Note: This thread is straying too far off of World War II. It
>needs to be brought back on-topic or moved to another newsgroup. JD]

[...]

>>>> At least in the latest wars the Air Forces took a great pain to avoid
>>>> civilian casualties and to hit industrial/military targets instead.
>>>> The butchers of WW2 literally worked the other way around.

>>>This is unfair. Had the RAF and USAAF been given laser-guided or
>>>precision optical-guided weaponry (along with IR, radar, and GPS) in
>>>1943, they would have cheerfully used it for the same reasons it is used
>>>today.
>>[...]
>>The above assertion is conjecture.

> The aim of the American bombing raids was the pinpoint destruction of
>specific factories deemed essential tot he German ability to wage war. They
>invented the Norden bombsight to increase accuracy and minimizing collateral
>damage (and wasted bombs). There was a lot of work on guided bombs (radio
>controlled vanes) for those hard to hit targets - bridges in the test photos I
>saw.
>
> So yeah, I'd say that if the USAAF had been issued laser guided
>munitions, they would have cheerfully used them. LGBs provide more bang for
>the buck, maximizing damage to war production while minimizing the risk to
>aircrews.
>

I was thinking more of the adherants in the RAF of pre-war
theorists' assertions that terror bombing campaigns would bring
about enemy surrender and their intention to create fire-storms,
which cannot be mistaken for anything other than the intention to
target civilians.

If these were the stated aims, intentions, of the USAAF then the
count of intention on the part of the USAAF would fail.

>>Furthermore, it makes no difference. If you intentionally use a
>>weapon whose effects known to you then you are culpable of the
>>damage caused by that weapon. If your intention is to kill one man
>>in crowd, but to your knowledge your weapon will kill many people
>>in the crowd, then you would be guilty of all the murders.
>
> If you intend to murder, then this follows.
>
> In war, the others are called "collateral damage". It is also called
>"bad tactical decisions".
>
>>There's no escape: Driving a truck down a crowded shopping mall in
>>an attempt to kill and individual in the crowd will end with you
>>facing multiple counts of murder. Too bad if it was the only
>>weapon handy.
>
> Can you justify the deaths of the innocents by the death of the guilty?
>My point is that if you have imminent danger (the evil genius is about set in
>motion The Ultimate Deathray) and it's kill him (and others in the crowd) or
>lose the entire world - that's one thing. If the Evil Genius is merely about
>to light up a cigarette in a no-smoking zone, that is another.
>
> But that doesn't really cover the problems of "collateral damage" in
>warfare, and the ideas of a "just war" involving only combatants.

[...]

Nice card. This falls under 'military necessity'. If Fu Man Chu is
about to order Igor to throw the third svitch then it was a case
of military necessity if all you had loaded was a multi-megaton
yield warhead.

But as I have covered in other threads, there's a fair mileage in
considering whether or not and at which points during the war the
intentional targeting of civilians did or did not constitute
military necessity.

--

From: funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk <funkraum> :

[Osika]

funkraum <funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk.antispam> wrote:

>This isn`t really my area of the war but I'd be interested to see
>a tabulation of target/destruction/collateral damage for each raid
>in order to compare actual vs intentional, if such a thing exists.

This would be valid if also accompanied by similar targeting data and
damage assessments for the V1 and V2 weapons used in late 1944 and
1945. Can that information be provided?

Best Regards....
Dion Osika

[funkraum]

>Dan Ford <d...@christa.unh.edu> wrote:

[...]

>"This mission was accomplished to a far greater extent by the selective
>and precision bombing of the American Eighth Air Force in daylight. By
>careful choice of target, this first blocked the bottle-necks of armaments
>production, and finally brought the whole German war machine to a
>standstill." p. 340
>

Yes but this does not assert that

"The USAAF hit the factories and no other damage was inflicted"

it asserts that

"The USAAF hit the factories and thus ..."

This does not preclude collateral damage similar to the raids
which targeted cities (unintentional or otherwise), much as you
can eventually hit a bridge in this manner if you put enough
aircraft over it.

This isn`t really my area of the war but I'd be interested to see
a tabulation of target/destruction/collateral damage for each raid
in order to compare actual vs intentional, if such a thing exists.

--

From: funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk <funkraum> :

[CDB100620]

>> You know, I too had swallowed the latter-day belief that the USAAF
>> couldn't hit much [...]

In the days immediately following the surrender of Germany, the Allies
interrogated numerous high-ranking Germans. All were asked what chief
factor led to their country's defeat. Here is a sampling and summary of
what they said:

Hjalmar Schacht, Finance Minister:
"Your bombers destroyed German production."

Adolf Galland:
"Allied bombing of our oil industries had the greatest effect."

Gen. Jahn, Commander in Lombardy:
"The attacks on the German transportation system."

Generaloberst Heinz Guderian, Inspector General of armored units:
"Lack of German air superiority; the German Air Force was unable to cope
with Allied air power in the West."

Generalmajor Albrect von Massow, Luftwaffe Training Commander:
"The attacks on German oil production."

Generalmajor Herhudt von Rohden, chief of historical section, Luftwaffe
General Staff:
"Strategic bombing. It was the decisive factor in the long run."

Generalmajor Kolb, in charge of technical training, Air Ministry: "The
power of Allied day and night bombing."

General Ingenieur Spies, chief engineer of Luftflotte 10: "Strategic
disruption of communications."

Generaloberst Georg Lindemann, commander of troops in Denmark:
"Allied air superiority."

Gen. Feldmarschall Karl Gerd von Rundstedt, commander in chief in the
West:
"Three factors: the superiority of your air force, which made all
movement in daylight impossible; lack of motor fuel so that panzers were
unable to move; and the systematic destruction of all railway
communications so that it was impossible to bring even one single railroad
train across the Rhine."

Gen. der Infanterie Georg Thomas, chief of the German Office of
Production:
"Without strategic bombing, the war would have lasted years longer."

Fritz Thyssen, leading German steel producer:
"I knew that German steel production would be bombed and destroyed--as it
was."

Gen. der Flieger Hans-Georg von Seidel, C in C, Luftflotte 10:
"The decisive factor was disruption of German transport communications."

Gen. Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring, C in C in the West after von R.:
"Dive bombing and terror attacks on civilians proved our undoing."

Generaleutnant Karl Jacob Veith, in charge of flak training:
"The destruction of the oil industry."

Generalmajor Ibel, commander of 2 Fighter Div.:
"Allied air superiority allowed everything else to happen."

General Wolff, SS Obergruppenfuehrer:
"The ever-increasing disruption of production and transportation
facilities starved the frontlines to death."

Generaloberst von Vietinghoff, supreme commander SW Italy: "Allied air
attacks on the aircraft and fuel industries."

Oscar Henschel, industrialist:
"American bombing caused our production figures to drop considerably."

Unnamed director of Germany's steel combine:
"The virtual flattening of the great steel city of Dusseldorf contributed
at least 50 percent to the collapse of the war effort."

Feldmarschall Robert Ritter von Greim, Goering's successor: "The
destruction of the Luftwaffe."

Unnamed general manager of Junkers:
"The attacks on the ball-bearing industry disorganized Germany's entire
war production."

General Feldmarschall Hugo Sperrle, C in C Luftflotte 3:
"Allied bombing, particularly of communications."

Unnamed executive at Siemens-Schuckert:
"In March, 1943, one bomb ignited the oil tanks in our transformer plant,
which we believe is the largest in the world, and completely stopped
production of the large type of transformers needed for chemcial and steel
plants. We were the sole manufacturer of such machines. We were never
able to make them again."

Gen. der Flieger Karl Bodenschatz, chief of Ministeramt, Luftwaffe high
command:
"I am very much impressed with the accuracy of American daylight bombing,
which really concentrated on military targets, stations and factories, to
the exclusion of civilian targets."

Christian Schneider, manager of the Leuna Works, producer of synthetic
petroleum products:
"The 8th AF twice knocked out the plant and the RAF did once. Production,
once resumed, was a pitifully thin trickle."

Alfred Krupp, weapons maker:
"The Allies made a great mistake in failing to bomb rail lines and canals
much earlier. Transport was the great bottleneck in production. Plants
can be and were dispersed, but the Reichsbahn couldn't put its lines
underground."

General Dollman, diarist of the 7th Army high command:
"The continual control of the field of battle by Allied air forces makes
daylight movement impossible and leads to the destruction from air of our
preparations and attacks."

Herman Goering: "[USAAF] precision bombing had a greater effect on the
defeat of Germany than [RAF] area bombing because destroyed cities could
be evacuated but destroyed industry was difficult to replace. [8th AF]
selection of targets was good. Without the U.S. [Army] Air Force, the
war would still be going on."

[c...@teleport.com]

In article <5qtrg5$ich$1...@nina.pagesz.net>, cdb1...@aol.com (CDB100620)
wrote:

> In the days immediately following the surrender of Germany, the Allies
> interrogated numerous high-ranking Germans. All were asked what chief
> factor led to their country's defeat. Here is a sampling and summary of
> what they said:

Great information. Where did you get these? I have a reasonable library
of WW II material, but I have never seen some of these quotes.

--------------------------
Fas est et ab hoste docerii.
--------------------------
C. L. Waltemath

[CDB100620]

>Great information. Where did you get these?

I dound them in a file at the research library at Maxwell AFB historical
research center some years ago and copied a handful--there were hundreds
of debriefs, maybe thousands. Professional historians have, I'm sure,
accessed these and published many of them before.

[funkraum]

>os...@pipeline.com (Osika) wrote:
>funkraum <funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk.antispam> wrote:

>>This isn`t really my area of the war but I'd be interested to see
>>a tabulation of target/destruction/collateral damage for each raid
>>in order to compare actual vs intentional, if such a thing exists.
>

>This would be valid if also accompanied by similar targeting data and
>damage assessments for the V1 and V2 weapons used in late 1944 and
>1945.
>

Exactly how would this have a bearing on statistics related to the
quantity of collateral damage produced by USAAF daylight bombing
of point targets ?

>Can that information be provided?
>

All V1 strikes were recorded as part of an organised feedback of
targeting disinformation to the Luftwaffe. Couldn`t say for V2.

--

From: funk...@fen168.demon.co.uk <funkraum> :

[CDB100620]

Will Simmons asks two key questions re quotes posted from various German
bigwigs stating allied strategic bombing had a decisive impact on the war:
Why does Speer say production increased despite bombing, and why did U.S.
Strategic Bombing (SBS) Survey conclude the bombing had little result.
He further asks whether their could be a political factor involved.

My guess is that personal prejudice has played a role, perhaps a major
one, in interpreting the results of the allied air attacks, especially the
USAAF attacks. John Kenneth Galbraith (politically a liberal) is most
famous for belittling the impact of the USAAF strategic attacks,
describing them in a well-known quote as "minor raids that did little to
reduce or contain German fighter production." He based his opinion on the
figures for fighter production in the SBS. In brief, these show fighter
production rising from 1,315 in Jan. 1944 to 2,779 in Aug. 1944. Looking
at these figures superficially, it seems obvious the bombing attacks were
having no affect on fighter production. However, German documents
(Auswertung der Einsatzbereitsch der fliegenden Verb) recovered after the
SBS was completed, showed different figures, for example 1,162 new built
plus 237 repaired in Jan. 1944 and 1,798 new built plus 676 repaired in
Aug. 1944. It seems that the SBS was including repaired fighters in
overall production figures. Walt Rostow (politically a conservative), who
strongly opposed Galbraith's view of strategic bombing, argued that the
SBS figures and the German documentary figures, however accurate--or
innacurate-- they may be, are misleading because there is no evidence that
the fighters built in 1944 were ever actually delivered to the Luftwaffe.
He points to the obvious fact that Luftwaffe operational efficiency did
not rise proportionate to the production figures. In fact, many of the
fighters built or repaired were destroyed at the assembly plant. Many
more were destroyed in transit, and many were not delivered to service
units because the transportation system had been disrupted by allied
bombing. Support for this comes from comparing Luftwaffe Reich (dealing
with German fighter forces in the West) data on fighters accepted into the
command vs. alleged production figures. For Aug., 1944, the SBS says
2,779 single engine fighters were produced. Luftwaffe Reich data for the
same month notes it received 439 single engine fighters. Of course, some
single-engine fighters would have gone to the Eastern Front and other
Luftwaffe units, but considering the priority Luftwaffe Reich had, to
assume it would only get about 15 percent of the production total seems
unlikely.
Of course, credit has to be given to Speer for making German industry more
efficient, but the question has to be asked, how many more fighters would
he have been able to produce without the bombing, even if its only effect
was to force the dispersal of aircraft production facilities, which
delayed produciton and also made it more vulnerable to attacks on lines of
communication.
The reality is that the Luftwaffe was essentially nonexistent in the West
by D-Day. And within a few months of D-Day, it was virtually nonexistent
even over Germany itself. Considering this, one wonders whether Galbraith
allowed his political opinions to detach him from reality (After reading
some of his books, such as "The Affluent Society," the answer may be
obvious.). Be that as it may, Galbraith had a powerful influence in
postwar U.S. policy making, and he and Walt Rostow were duking it out over
the effectiveness of air bombardment decades later during the Vietnam War.
Galbraith's opinions had significant influence in the way Pres. Johnson
conducted the air war during that conflict. The key assumption that
Galbraith et al pushed--based on their interpretation of the SBS-- was
that even the heaviest bombing had little effect, so the main use of
bombing was theatrical and political, to be used as a bargaining chip--and
a white one not a blue one. Rostow et al argued--based on their
understanding of what happened to German industry under aerial
attack--that bombing was not only an effective weapon, it was a decisive
one, but only when turned loose in full fury on strategically important
targets and kept up without pause.

Incidentally, the USAF Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB has a web
site (don't know the address offhand, but typing in the name in your
search engine should find it).

[au...@imap2.asu.edu]

: Will Simmons asks two key questions re quotes posted from various German

: bigwigs stating allied strategic bombing had a decisive impact on the war:
: Why does Speer say production increased despite bombing, and why did U.S.
: Strategic Bombing (SBS) Survey conclude the bombing had little result.
: He further asks whether their could be a political factor involved.

: My guess is that personal prejudice has played a role, perhaps a major
: one, in interpreting the results of the allied air attacks, especially the
: USAAF attacks. John Kenneth Galbraith (politically a liberal) is most
: famous for belittling the impact of the USAAF strategic attacks,
: describing them in a well-known quote as "minor raids that did little to
: reduce or contain German fighter production." He based his opinion on the

I would be careful about dismissing the SBS conclusions based on
presumed bias by an individual. It was quite an effort, and I haven't
really been able to find any fundamental flaws within the report, though
it is often misquoted and sometimes quesionable conclusions are drawn
from it.
It is interesting to me, however, that USAAF would make such a
big important study and then its backers would turn around and try to
decry it. I'm finding the same thing with the Gulf War Air Power Summary.
The AF put its top dogs on the project and bragged it up early. Now,
however, when you quote it to argue against 'official' policy they glower
and mumble about how the GWAPS is 'faulty'. :-)

As far as WWII bombing, there is one major factor that of the
study that I think a lot of times gets forgotten. The study balanced
damage to Germany against "resources used" by the US to do the damage.
Thus, the 'cost' in time, money, and manpower -- to build and maintain
and fly US bombers -- was counted as 'losses'. Some people simply throw
up damage figures for Germany and leave it at that as if the bombers were
free and the crews just materialized out of nowhere. In reality, those
were resources that couldn't be used for other aspects of the war. In a
lot of cases the US was "spending" more on buying the bombers than the
bombers were causing damage in Germany.

It is a deep, complicated, subject however, and there is a lot of
room for disagreement -- which you will see whenever the subject of the
SBS comes up.

regards,

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven j Forsberg at au...@imap2.asu.edu Wizard 87-01

[CDB100620]

Here's another quote to throw into the hopper. From Hienz Knoke's "I Flew
for the Fuhrer."
Knoke was leading a group of Me 109s on 14 May 1943:
"The enemy raids Kiel.... Over Kiel we run into heavy flak from our own
guns. The shooting by the Navy is unfortunately so good that we are
considerably disorganized.
"I observe the Yank bombing. They dump their load right on the Germania
shipyards. I am impressed by the precision with which those bastards
bomb: it is fantastic."

[Eric Gross]

> I would be careful about dismissing the SBS conclusions based on
>presumed bias by an individual. It was quite an effort, and I haven't
>really been able to find any fundamental flaws within the report, though
>it is often misquoted and sometimes quesionable conclusions are drawn
>from it.

I would have to agree with this statement. In my experience, many of those
who criticize the SBS haven't seemed to have actually *read* it. It is a
very thorough and impressive piece of work.

Personally, I would say that daylight strategic bombing in Europe failed to
achieve the objectives initially hoped for it, for a number of reasons.
However, this does not mean that it served no militarily useful purpose,
operationally or strategically.

Strategic bombing in Japan was highly successful.

[Brian Allardice]

In article <5sgqsr$h...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, cdb1...@aol.com (CDB100620) says:
>
>
>>daylight strategic bombing in Europe failed to
>>achieve the objectives initially hoped for it
>

>The objective of daylight strategic bombing by the USAAF (Operation
>Pointblank) was clear and specific: destroy the Luftwaffe in the West
>before Overlord begins. That objective was achieved.

Of course I haven't hitherto followed this thread, but apart from what
you have said, I take it that the American attacks on specific targets,
as opposed to RAF terror bombing, had considerable effects, particulary
with respect to synthetic oil production......

Cheers,
dba

to reply, remove *spamnix* from dba@*spamnix*.uniserve.com

[Joseph Askew]

CDB100620 (cdb1...@aol.com) wrote:

: >daylight strategic bombing in Europe failed to

: >achieve the objectives initially hoped for it

: The objective of daylight strategic bombing by the USAAF (Operation
: Pointblank) was clear and specific: destroy the Luftwaffe in the West
: before Overlord begins. That objective was achieved.

Most people would find the extension of one Operation to cover
the entire strategy of an entire theatre for the entire war just
a little tricky. Don't you?

What I think most people would accept as a sensible phrasing is
that in one Operation (Operation Pointblank) the USAAF (as of
course it then wasn't) meet its objectives. In terms of most of
their other Operations and objectives, not to mention the claims
repeatedly made in public (to the effect they could win the war
single handed etc etc etc), the record is a little more dubious.

[CDB100620]

[Phil McGregor]

On 7 Aug 1997 00:03:34 GMT, Brian Pickrell <emph...@erols.com> wrote:

>Eric Gross wrote:
>
>
>> Strategic bombing in Japan was highly successful.
>

>I wonder about this. How much of Japan's collapse was
>due to submarine warfare rather than bombing?
>Does anybody have any relative figures on the
>effects on production?
>I've gotten the impression that the Run Silent Run Deep
>crowd got lots of credit for heroics but less
>than they deserved for the end results.

You are right in this suspicion -- at the stage that the Strategic
Bombing campaign really started to bite it is my understanding that
there were such shortages of raw materials due to ongoing merchant
ship losses from 1941 on as well as mining that when one factory was
destroyed the raw materials were simply switched to another that was
standing idle.

While I have no doubt that things were that simple, there seems to be
a lot of evidence that the raw material shortage was as bad as I have
indicated.

Interestingly, many of the mines were actually air-dropped -- which, I
suppose, makes *airpower* a winner, even if city-bombing wasn't
particularly.

Phil
-----------------------------------------
Phil McGregor | asp...@curie.dialix.oz.au
Author, Rigger Black Book (FASA)
Co-Author, Space Opera (FGU)
Author, Standard Role Playing (PGD)

[ArtKramr]

Under the right conditions, we could literally put a bomb in a pickle
barrel from 10,000 feet. Of course, conditions were not always just
right. (s)

Arthur Kramer
Bombardier- Navigator
344th Bomb Group
9th TacticalAir Force
ETO

[ArtKramr]

>describing them in a well-known quote as "minor raids that did little to
>reduce or contain German fighter production." He based his opinion on
the

I was a Bombardier Navigator with the 344th Bomb Group, 494 Bomb sqaudron
of the 9th tactical Air Force and flew 50 missions over Germany. As the
war wore on, fighter opposition became less and less. And after a while,
we flew many issions and never saw an enemy fogfhter. We wer hit by an ME
262 (jet) once, but the pilot was so inexperienced and inept that he did
no damage whatever. I was one of the bombardiers thattook out the bridge
at Arnheim (the famous bridge too far) and there was never a single
Geman fighter there to try and stop us, which they couldn't have under any
circumstances. When one walked through Germany the entire country was a
mass of wreckage and decay. It was a destroyod nation crushed to its
knees. German fighter production increased? Nonsense. There were no German
fighters after December 1944, not even a few to help in the Battle of The
Bulge. We resupplied Bastogne from theair and destroyed Panzer groups
in skies clear of any German presence whatever. As I remember it,
Galbraith never fired a shot in anger In the air, or on the ground. (s)

Arthur Kramer
Las Vegas NV

[Charles K. Scott]

In article <5sohme$7th$1...@nina.pagesz.net>
artk...@aol.com (ArtKramr) writes:

Not only were conditions not always just right, they were almost never
right and you weren't bombing from 10,000 feet either. :-)

All the problems of bombing accurately are exaggerated by higher
altitude. And this doesn't take into account the highly accurate flack
barrages you guys had to fly through.

The fighter guys have written that they sat there on their high perch
watching as the bombers just disappeared into a huge black cloud. They
were always amazed that any bombers, much less all of them, made it out
the other side.

Corky Scott

[ArtKramr]

>Not only were conditions not always just right, they were almost never
>right and you weren't bombing from 10,000 feet either. :-)
>
>

Most of our missions were flown at under 10,000 feet. For example, we hgit
the bridge at Arnhiem from 5,000 feet. We hiot the marshalling yards at
Cologne so low that we had to look up at the cologne Cathedral as we flew
between it and the Rhein. By conditions never being right, that is totally
untrue. Bad conditons meant not having good visibility of the target. In
most cases, we could see the target fine. There were a few cases where we
had to go on to alternate targets becuse the primary was socked in. Also,
the Norden Bombsight had a built in error called RCCTE (Range component of
cross trail error) where as the angle of drift increased, the error
increased. We were only error free when we flew in at a zero drift angle.
No crab angle at all. But even these errors were very small under even bad
coinditions. If we could line up on the target and had a clear view for 30
seconds, we would hit it. In 50 missions as a Bombardier Navigator, I only
remember two where we had gross errors, and they were both functions of
weather.

Arthur Kramer
344th Bomb Group
9th Air Force

[ArtKramr]

> And this doesn't take into account the highly accurate flack
>barrages you guys had to fly through.

The flack wasn't always accurate. On many missions it was erratic and
quite inaccurate. But by and large we worried moire about the flack than
about the German fighters. Toward the end of the war, our fighter cover
made short work of the German fighters, although they were always a threat
andoften took their toll..

Arthur Kramer

[Chris Hall]

>Under the right conditions, we could literally put a bomb in a pickle
>barrel from 10,000 feet. Of course, conditions were not always just
>right. (s)
>

Arthur, I am sure you are correct in your statement, but at 10,000 feet
there are two questions you are going to ask. Either "Where the hell is
the pickle barrel?" or "Which pickle barrel?".

As with most battlefield weapons delivery systems, the problem is that
the accuracy of the weapons delivery system itself does not ensure
accurate weapons delivery. You have to allow for the human factor.

With bombing, errors in navigation, bad target identification, bad
visibility over the target, the urge to drop as soon as possible and
turn back all result in exceptionally low accuracy. In a lot of cases,
the last person to judge if an accurate attack has been made is the crew
themselves.

I have read that RAF Bomber Command introduced cameras to monitor their
performance on night bombing. The errors recorded by the cameras were so
extreme that at one stage they could not be believed by the War Office.

The result of all the human factors resulted in all airforces resorting
to carpet bombing rather than precision attacks. There were exceptions
of course, like 617 squadron in the RAF, but the only way to ensure
target damage was to scatter bombs around like seed.

I don't mean to offend, and the crews concerned were very brave men
doing very dangerous jobs, but bombing during the war was generally
inacurate and ineffective.
--
Chris Hall

[Donald Phillipson]

Chris Hall (Ha...@airborne.demon.co.uk) writes:
>
> I have read that RAF Bomber Command introduced cameras to monitor their
> performance on night bombing. The errors recorded by the cameras were so
> extreme that at one stage they could not be believed by the War Office.
>
> The result of all the human factors resulted in all airforces resorting
> to carpet bombing rather than precision attacks. There were exceptions

This was the Bensusan-Butt report of 1941 (Air Ministry, not War Office)
the basis of the new RAF policy of "area bombing" to "dehouse" the
industrial workforce of Germany -- i.e. targeting industrial zones of
whole cities rather than individual factories or buildings, as
unsuccessfully attempted 1939-41. Bomber Command also got a new
commander, Harris, new equipment, viz. 4-engined bombers
replacing earlier Wellingtons, Whitleys and Hampdens, new
technology viz. H2S radar and new techniques, viz. a "bomber
stream" designed to concentrated hundreds of aircraft over a
target in an hour or two -- rather than letting each navigate its
own way to the target any time during the hours of darkness.

--
| Donald Phillipson, 4180 Boundary Road, Carlsbad Springs, |
| Ontario, Canada, K0A 1K0, tel. 613 822 0734 |

[au...@imap2.asu.edu]

: I was a Bombardier Navigator with the 344th Bomb Group, 494 Bomb sqaudron

: of the 9th tactical Air Force and flew 50 missions over Germany. As the
: war wore on, fighter opposition became less and less. And after a while,
: we flew many issions and never saw an enemy fogfhter. We wer hit by an ME
: 262 (jet) once, but the pilot was so inexperienced and inept that he did
: no damage whatever. I was one of the bombardiers thattook out the bridge
: at Arnheim (the famous bridge too far) and there was never a single
: Geman fighter there to try and stop us, which they couldn't have under any
: circumstances. When one walked through Germany the entire country was a
: mass of wreckage and decay. It was a destroyod nation crushed to its
: knees. German fighter production increased? Nonsense. There were no German
: fighters after December 1944, not even a few to help in the Battle of The
: Bulge. We resupplied Bastogne from theair and destroyed Panzer groups
: in skies clear of any German presence whatever. As I remember it,
: Galbraith never fired a shot in anger In the air, or on the ground. (s)

I think that this might be explained in part the same way
Japanese aviation problems could -- the Germans could turn out planes
faster than pilots skilled enough to use them effectively. Your
jet pilot sounds like he might have been an example of this. Sometimes a
similar thing happened with armored vehicles, they would get produced
only to sit out on the lot.
It is a complex subject, however. For example, towards the end of
the war there were fuel shortages, but how much was caused by aerial
bombing and how much by ground forces taking over oil fields? As another
example, bombers from Italy could only operate after ground forces had
taken Italy -- so are their missions a "true" measure of strategic
bombing as opposed to ground action?

I for one vote that they should have kept the war simpler :-).

regards,

[ArtKramr]

>For example, towards the end of
>the war there were fuel shortages, but how much was caused by aerial
>bombing and how much by ground forces taking over oil fields? As

I can't answer those questions. I was just one 2nd Lt. on an aircrew of a
single bomber during the war. I have very little knowledge of overall
statistics and strategies. I can only report on what I saw and
experienced. And I am careful not to comment on subjects where I have no
real experience to relate. Sorry. (s)

Arthru Kramer
344th BG 9th AF

[Otto Braasch]

Arthur,

> I was a Bombardier Navigator with the 344th Bomb Group, 494 Bomb sqaudron
> of the 9th tactical Air Force and flew 50 missions over Germany. As the
> war wore on, fighter opposition became less and less. And after a while,
> we flew many issions and never saw an enemy fogfhter. We wer hit by an ME
> 262 (jet) once, but the pilot was so inexperienced and inept that he did
> no damage whatever.

I knew, I was going to meet you here!

Others must have had more encounters with the 262:
"Three mission today and all rough. We lost three B-26s to Me 262s and one
crash-landed... You can`t tell these combat men that the war with Germany
is over." Extract: 26 April 1945 from the Unit History, 17th Bombardment
Group (M), USAF.
Above lines are from Robert Forsyth's book "JV 44, The Galland Circus".
ISBN 0 95268667 0 8, page 209. Norwich 1996.

The following pages 210-222 are on tactics employed with the 262s and
problems the pilots had with the high speed but slow acceleration etc. of
that new fighter. Also the attack of the 323rd Group on Memmingen AB on 20th
April 1945 is covered, the 323rd was heavily mauled by the jets that day.
Page 214 shows a map with places where the JV44 intercepted tactical bomber
formations in April 1945. On the 322nd and 344th Bombardment Groups it says
for the 24th April: "south-east of Monheim" (which is close to Donauwoerth
and Neuburg an der Donau - we have talked about those places before).

I feel, the book is based on extremely well done enquiries and it is worth
reading. It does not disprove what you have said about the Luftwaffe's
fighters in general.

Regards,

Otto

[ArtKramr]

The objectives were a bit larger than that. The Army Air Corp had to
support infantry in their march from Omaha Beach to Berlin...all the way.
It was a hard 11 months work. (s)

Arthur Kramer
Bombardier Navigator
9th Air Force ETO

[Tom Ensminger]

Agreed - a fair number of B-24s formerly used for supplying the French
Maqui and small numbers of the Belgian and Dutch partisans were used up
flying gasoline to Patton's troops when he got ahead of his ground
supply lines. Of the 80 specially modified "Carpetbagger" B-24s, some
40 were ruined for service in this operation alone because of
contamination of the wing tanks by tank gasoline. Sources: AAFRH-21 and

Ben Parnell's excellent book "CarpetbaggerS - America's Secret Air War
Over Europe". How many other planes were used in such a manner I know
not....

The Drone

[Bill MacArthur]

au...@IMAP2.ASU.EDU wrote:
>
>:<snip>There were no German

>: fighters after December 1944, not even a few to help in the Battle of The

>: Bulge. <snip>

> <snip> the Germans could turn out planes
>faster than pilots skilled enough to use them effectively.<snip>towards the end of
>the war there were fuel shortages <snip>
>
Note that the last major aerial battle of the war took place on Jan. 1,
1945 when the Germans launched an all out attack on bases in the Antwerp
area. IIRC many of the German pilots were so inexperienced that they
were told to just follow the most experienced pilots. They did have some
success catching some RAF squadrons on the ground but once the Allies got
in the air the Germans were slaughtered. The Germans had inexperienced
pilots and had to horde fuel just for this one last gasp.

bil...@uwindsor.ca changing address to keep spammers out of gas

[Drazen Kramaric]

ArtKramr wrote:

> German fighter production increased? Nonsense.

Pleas check the official figures about German production of single
engine fighters from 1939 to 1945. You will see that production of
fighters actually increased in 1944 compared to figures from 1943 and
1942. The same happened to figures of German losses too.

> There were no German fighters after December 1944,

Germans were out of fuel. The truth about Luftwaffe is that she fought
until the last drop of oil if not until the last plane and pilot.

> not even a few to help in the Battle of The Bulge.

Have you ever heard about Operation Bodenplatte aimed to destroy allied
aircraft on the ground, which occured in January 1st 1945 with almost
1000 German single engine fighters?

Assault on Eindhoven airfield was a complete success with entire
squadrons of Canadian Typhones destroyed on the ground, however due to
to much secrecy, German AA crews weren't informed about the operation
and many German planes were destroyed by their own AAA.

> We resupplied Bastogne from the air and destroyed Panzer groups

> in skies clear of any German presence whatever.

The fact that Western Allies had an overwhelming superiority over
Luftwaffe due to large numbers of aircraft deployed is not a secret.
Germans tried to preserve their strength for Operation Bodenplatte.

Drax

[ArtKramr]

Drax,

With all due respect, Bodenplatte was a spit in the icean that amounted to
nothing. We roamed the skies without interference while the "increased
production" of fighters rusted on the ground. No gas. No ammunition. No
pilots worth a damn. A successful hit on one airfield is hardly worth
mentioning in the overall scheme of things.

Arthur Kramer
344th BG 9th AF.

[MarkASinge]

On 19 Aug 97 Charles...@Dartmouth.EDU (Charles K. Scott)
wrote:

>In article <5t2pin$3...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
>artk...@aol.com (ArtKramr) writes:
>>
[Original quote unattributed]

>> >Not only were conditions not always just right, they were
>> >almost never right and you weren't bombing from 10,000 feet >>
>either. :-)
>>
>> Most of our missions were flown at under 10,000 feet. For
>> example, we hgit the bridge at Arnhiem from 5,000 feet. We hiot
>> the marshalling yards at Cologne so low that we had to look up
>> at the cologne Cathedral as we flew between it and the Rhein.

[snip]

>> If we could line up on the target and had a clear view for 30
>> seconds, we would hit it. In 50 missions as a Bombardier
>> Navigator, I only remember two where we had gross errors,
>> and they were both functions of weather.
>

>Sorry Arthur, you are of course correct. I was thinking in terms >of the
heavy bombers and forgot that you were flying in the >mediums, my
apologies. The heavies flew at up to 27,000 feet and
>normally concentrated more bombers on one target than the
>mediums did.

Which might spur an interesting side thread to this discussion. See
below...

>My confusion is because the subject line is about daylight strategic
>bombing, not tactical bombing which was normally handled by the
>mediums such as the B-26's and B-25's.

Whoa Nellie (or Corky, as the case may be ;-) ! Was the campaign against
transportation targets (bridges, railheads, and rolling stock) tactical or
strategic?

The way I have always used the terms, tactical air means battlefield
support. If you extend that to interdiction targets, I could see a bridge
being included, particularly if your forces are engaged in combat nearby,
and enemy reinforcements (or withdrawals) are likely to cross that
particular bridge. The same might be said of a particular railhead. But
a general campaign to cripple a region's transportation infrastructure
should clearly be considered strategic, not tactical.

Let's not confuse heavy bombers with strategic, or medium or light with
tactical. Heavy bombers WERE used tactically, in some cases with tragic
results. Mediums WERE used strategically, and often with very good
results.

>Again, my apologies, that's why I referred to the conditions as >almost
never being right. From high altitude, the heavies almost >never had the
right conditions in which to bomb with unerring >accuracy. But from
10,000 feet or lower, accuracy improved >greatly.

Indeed this seems to be true. Perhaps an interesting side thread to this
discussion would be to examine the relative success rates of mediums vs.
heavies in the strategic bombing role.

I have heard it said that the most cost-effective way to put bombs on a
target in WWII (in terms of cost of equipment and munitions, as well as
crew losses, per ton of bombs on target) was with the RAF Mosquito. I
would expect that the B-26 was right up there as well (followed by the
A-20/A-26?). All were relatively fast and maneoverable at low altitude,
making good platforms for small unit penetrations that could hit specific
targets with high accuracy. B-25s, as I understand it, were more often
used in mid-altitude level bombing (in the ETO), and so didn't have the
success rates of the B-26.

The same improvements in efficiency for bombs on target were also at play
in the SWPO. Remember that the B-17 was originally conceived as a
maritime bomber (protecting the continental US from battle fleets). Ever
hear of a B-17 having success bombing ships from 20,000 feet? Compare
that with the success rates of B-25s, A-20s, Beaufighters, and Mosquitos
coming in "on the deck" for skip-bombing. I think this approach was tried
with B-17s too (a frightening prospect for the giver as well as the
receiver)!

So maybe the issue isn't whether daylight strategic bombing was a failure,
but whether heavy bombers at 20,000 feet in daylight were the right
approach to strategic bombing.

Waddya think?

-marka...@aol.com
(aka: Mark A. Singer squeezed into ten characters)

[ArtKramr]

>So maybe the issue isn't whether daylight strategic bombing was a failure,
>but whether heavy bombers at 20,000 feet in daylight were the right
>approach to strategic bombing.
>
>Waddya think?

I think that both the tactical and strategic operaiitons were largely
successful. I flew with the9th Air Force, also knows as the 9th TAC
becauseit was a tactical unit. We hit mostly bridges but also marshalling
yards, troops. supply dumps, ordnance depots and the like. We did not
engage in ground support, but hit tactica ltargets directly. I guess our
taking out the Arnheim bridge might be conssidered ground support , but
we didn't know it at the time. The heavies were used for strategic carpet
bombing. The job they did couldn't be done by mediums. And while accuracy
suffered at higher altirudes, don't cinfuse that with lack of
effectiveness. They were very effective. Jusr ask any German on the
ground. He'll tell you. Also, there is much talk about the effectiveness
of the A-20. It was obsolete by 1943; too slow, too short a range and not
a heavy enough bomb load. It was kept around until it could be replaced
by B-26's. Then sent off to Russia.. BTW, the R-2800 engine gave the B-26
a bomb capacity (4,000 pounds) just short of the B-17 and a lot faster
cruising speed. Everything was going obsolete as fast as it could be
made. The A-26 made the B-26 obsolete, and a P-47 (also with the R-2800)
with 500 pounders on small targets made mediums obsolete..

Arthur Kramer
344th BG 9th TAC AF

[CDB100620]

>1) The eastern front siphoned off a huge volume of available aircraft.
>2) Most fighters were assigned to defend the Reich from Aliied
> air power, and flew few offensive or ground support sorties.

From "The Rise And Fall of the German Air Force" an Air Ministry Publication:

Distribution of German Fighters, End of June 1944

Western Front 425
Norway 40
Reich Defense 370
Eastern Front 475
Balkans 60

Thus, 835 fighters faced the West, 430 the East.
Western Front fighters were largely employed in ground attack in the
early days after the Normandy invasion.
Example: On June 8, the Luftwaffe launched 500 anti-shipping sorties
against the invasion fleet; 400 of these were made by single-engine
fighters. Sixty-eight of the fighters making these sorties were shot down.
In the first week of Luftwaffe operations against the allied beachhead,
the Luftwaffe lost 362 aircraft. In the second week, another 232 were
lost. Most fighters were lost on futile ground attack missions--they would
be bounced by allied fighters and forced to dump their bombs whether they
were shot down or not; few reached their intended targets.
On 12 June the Luftwaffe ordered fighters on ground attack missions not to
carry bombs. The idea was that, unencumbered, the would be more difficult
to intercept, and, if intercepted, would be able to fight off their
attackers and proceed to the targets for straffing runs. To an extent this
happened, with the average mission able to have 20 percent of its fighters
penentrate allied-held territory (although not necessarily reach their
targets).
For the period 6 June to 30 June, the Luftwaffe lost in combat 931
aircraft in the French fighting, plus another 67 lost on non-operational
sorties.
During this same period, for comparison, Reich Defense lost 250 aircraft
in combat operations plus an additional 183 destroyed in non-operational
accidents.
Fifty fighters were withdrawn from the Eastern Front in early June and
sent to Germany to replace fighters sent to reinforce the Luftwaffe in France.
On June 22, the Soviets initiated their massive attack on the German Army
Group Center.
To meet this attack, 100 fighters were transferred from Italy, 50 from
Germany (those just sent from the East to Germany) and 40 from France.

[ArtKramr]

> Third, many of the pilots were so poorly
>trained that if they survived the air combat then they probably had
>difficulty finding their way back.

Bill,

You might find it interesting that we flew a number of missions where all
we bombed were empty fields. We were quite upset by this, since why fly
missions to hit nothing? We learned larter that we were
actaullytcratering these fields, which were fallback landing fields for
the Luftwaffe. As our troops advanced, Luftwaffe squadrons would fall back
to these fields, only to find them cratered and unfit for landing. Many
German pilots had to just bail out and let their planes crash. I guess
the Air Corps generals were smarter than they looked. (g)

Arthur Kramer
344th Bomb Group 9th Atr Force

[Scott K. Stafford]

In article <5u7m9h$q...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, C.C.J...@worldnet.att.net
says...

> It wasn't very successful at all. Most of Japan's industry
> was scattered throughout the cities, much of it existing
> in private homes ( the so called "cottage industry")
> The fire bombing of cities did more to undermine Japanese
> industry than did precision bombing. Don't forget that the
> Japanese managed to stockpile thousands of combat
> aircraft in expectation of a U.S. invasion.

Man, for countries that lost WWII so resoundingly, both Japan and Germany
sure managed to stockpile a lot of useless, ground-locked aircraft before
they squealed, "uncle!"

Seriously, though; this is where the "oh, but bombing wasn't effective"
crowd gets a roar of laughter from the crowd. No Allied soldier set foot
in mainland Japan before the surrender, yet some nitwits still wonder
whether airpower had anything to do with their surrender.

Duh.

--
Scott K. Stafford <sco...@together.net>
***************************************
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Gojira ga Ginza hoomen e mukatte imasu!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!

[C.C. Jordan]

On 7 Sep 1997 18:55:34 GMT, sco...@together.net (Scott K. Stafford) wrote:

>Seriously, though; this is where the "oh, but bombing wasn't effective"
>crowd gets a roar of laughter from the crowd. No Allied soldier set foot
>in mainland Japan before the surrender, yet some nitwits still wonder
>whether airpower had anything to do with their surrender.
>
>Duh.

>Scott K. Stafford <sco...@together.net>

What really defeated Japan was Naval power.
Without it, there would be no bases to operate long range
bombers on missions over japanese cities. Without it,
the industry of Nippon would not have been strangled
by a near total lack of imported resources. Without it,
the Japanese merchant fleet would not have utterly
destroyed. Without it, Japanese fuel stocks would not
have been depleted to near zero.

Without the contibution of US fleet submarines and naval
tactical air power, the war against Japan could not have
been won. Without naval power, no islands would have been
captured. No Marine would have stepped Iwo Jima. No
army troops would have retaken the Phillippines.

The total contribution of strategic precision bombing did
not exceed 1% of the contribution of that of naval power.
The simple fact of the matter is this; Strategic airpower was not
decisive in the defeat of Japan. Japan was looking for a
way out before the use of the atomic bomb. Japan's
fate was sealed before the first B-29 ever landed on
Tinian.

Naval power defeated Japan. Without it, the Air Force
would would still be defending California.

Duh................

C.C. Jordan

"Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let
them howl."
Benjamin Jowett

http://www.aerodyne-controls.com

[C.C. Jordan]

[Will Simmons]

In article <5uvtvk$1h...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
C.C.J...@worldnet.att.net (C.C. Jordan) wrote:

[SNIP]

> Japan was looking for a
>way out before the use of the atomic bomb. Japan's
>fate was sealed before the first B-29 ever landed on
>Tinian.

[SNIP]

The second sentence, with which I agree, has, IMHO, very little to do with
the first. Certainly, given hindsight, Japan was in deep strategic trouble
before the bombing started. But, at the time, the Japanese war party
either did not know it or refused to admit it. And, In any event, they
refused to act on any such thoughts prior to the _second_ atomic bombing.

Doubtless, they might have negotiated a peace at some point, but that was,
as they knew, never satisfactory to the U.S., which had always correctly
demanded unconditional surrender (except for agreeing at the last minute to
continue the Emperor's position). See, generally, McCullough, David G.,
Truman, New York: Simon & Schuster 1992.

IMHO, two things were the precipitating causes of that unconditional
surrender in August, 1945 (as opposed, perhaps, to years later, with many
more American and Japanese casualties): the fire bombing and the atomic
bombing. The latter finally dissolved the still powerful war party notion
of defending the home islands, house by house, against an invasion.

Naval power provided the necessary infrastructure for application of what
turned out to be the final blows via air power. The victors needed both to
obtain (a) an unconditional surrender (b) in August 1945.

Some people certainly do argue otherwise nowadays, for diverse reasons and
in support of various agendae, but, IMHO, they are not supported by the
historical record.

-- Will --

--
Nntp-Posting-Host: world.std.com
Newsgroups: poster
Path: user
From: wsim...@world.std.com (Will Simmons)

[Petr Habala]

ve8pf$u...@portal.gmu.edu>
Organization: Godcorp
Distribution:

Will Simmons (wsim...@world.std.com) wrote:

: IMHO, two things were the precipitating causes of that unconditional

: surrender in August, 1945 (as opposed, perhaps, to years later, with many
: more American and Japanese casualties): the fire bombing and the atomic
: bombing. The latter finally dissolved the still powerful war party notion
: of defending the home islands, house by house, against an invasion.

Not entirely correct. The atomic bomb did not produce anything that fire
bombing would not do before. The only new thing was a psychological shock
- one bomb causing this damage. I am not trying to say that this played
absolutely no role in the surrender decision, but I find it unbelievable
that you can ignore an event which was at least as important as both nukes
together: the USSR's entry into the war. Despite what you say:

: Some people certainly do argue otherwise nowadays, for diverse reasons and

: in support of various agendae, but, IMHO, they are not supported by the
: historical record.

There are lots of sources to show beyond any doubt that USSR's entry into
the war had a major impact on Japan's policy makers. In fact, testimony of
some of Japanese leaders of the time suggest that USSR's entry into the
war shocked them more than atomics. The reason is simple. Atomics did not
do anyting really new. In fact, the damage and causalties count did not
reach the level of some firebombing raids. On the other hand, till the
last moment Japs were kidding themselves that some way out was possible
through Soviet connection. The USSR's entry into the war on August 9 put
those hopes out.

As far as I know, there is no historical record that would show that the
atomic bombing changed the minds of Japanese leadership. As far as I know,
there is no historical record that would attribute the surrender to the
USSR's entry. The only thing we know for sure is that they changed their
minds after August 9, and two things happened on that day: the A-bomb and
Manchuria attack. How can you claim based on this that it was the atomic
bomb only is a mystery to me. If you want some indication as opposed to
facts), we have some testimonies of Japanese leaders from those days and
they tend to put more weight on the USSR, we also know that the first
atomic did not help.

I personally think that both factors contributed, perhaps USSR a bit more,
but it is hard to judge. The exact ballance of influences will never be
known (but always be discussed). What cannot be supported at all by
facts is the assumption that it was just one factor.

This is of course just a part of a larger myth about the great
war-deciding air force. We have such myths about Germany in WW2 (recently
a PBS documentary about B-17 started "this war-winning weapon", despite
the fact that the war was decided by the time they appeared in any numbers
over the Germany), we have them about Japan (where they definitely did
play an important role, nevertheless it seems that Japanese industry was
even more harmed by what submarines did), we have them about Vietnam
(Linebecker II I seem to recall, hailed as a victory of the air power,
where bombing allegedly forced Hanoi to sing an agreement, thou' in fact
it was USA who broke the talks, who initiated a new talk and who
eventually signed a document almost identical to one which they refused to
accept mere three months before). I am a big fan of aviation, but I think
we should respect facts, however painful it may be for us.

Bye, pH.

[Michael Turton]

I am not trying to say that this played
>absolutely no role in the surrender decision, but I find it unbelievable
>that you can ignore an event which was at least as important as both nukes
>together: the USSR's entry into the war. Despite what you say:

[snipped usual claims about J leader's shock at USSR entry]

>
>As far as I know, there is no historical record that would show that the
>atomic bombing changed the minds of Japanese leadership. As far as I know,
>there is no historical record that would attribute the surrender to the
>USSR's entry. The only thing we know for sure is that they changed their
>minds after August 9, and two things happened on that day: the A-bomb and
>Manchuria attack. How can you claim based on this that it was the atomic
>bomb only is a mystery to me.

C'mon, this ground is so well-worn it's a mystery to me that anyone
continues to write on it.

The claim that Soviet entry had any effect on the decision to end
the war is not supported by evidence. Whatever Japanese leaders claimed
they thought in discussions and interviews in the postwar period, when the
propaganda campaign against the Bomb was in full swing, clearly Soviet
entry AND the second atomic bomb changed no minds at the top. All you have
to do is look at the voting on the 9th, which remained identical to
previous voting patterns for last five months.

However, that is irrelevent. It is clear you are not informed as
to the actual order of events. The war ended not because Japanese leaders
changed their minds -- they did not and even if they had, it would not have
mattered because under the constitution they had no authority to end the
war -- but because of the direct intervention of the Emperor. All sources
agree on that. Once again, the civilians never changed their minds; they
voted throughout the 9th not to change current policy and the Emperor
intervened late in the day, after two votes by the Supreme War Council and
one by the Cabinet failed to produce a move to end the war. If Soviet
intervention had a major impact, it didn't show up in anyone's behavior.

Moreover, we know that on August 7th, two days prior to RUssian
intervention and the atom bomb on Nagasaki, the Emperor called foreign
minister Togo to conference. Pointing to the A-bombing of Hiroshima
(already known to be an A-Bomb at that point), he told Togo to have Suzuki,
the PM, convene a meeting of the Supreme War council the following morning
to end the war. This meeting was not held until the 9th because a military
member of the council "had more important things to do." Had it been held
on the 8th as planned, the war would almost certainly ended prior to Soviet
intervention and prior to Nagasaki. In other words, the one person who
could end the war, had already decided before August 8th to end it.

You must be careful when using information based on interviews and
statements made after the war. All postwar discussions of the A-bomb have
taken place in the context of massive propaganda on both sides to convince
the world that their position is the correct one. The evidence that
carries the most weight is their actions of the time, and they show that
Soviet intervention had little effect on the concrete evidence on the
positions of Japanese leaders (heck, some even welcomed Soviet
intervention, thinking it would bring the US to the negotiating table).

I would suggest you curl up with Weintraub's _The Last Great
Victory_ and pay close attention to the events which unfolded after the
9th. They show that minds had really changed very little at the top (and
elsewhere). Only the insistence of the Emperor broke the deadlock and
ensured the end of the war.

Also, on this list, it is not considered polite to refer to the
Japanese as "Japs" unless quoting some historical source.

Mike

[Mike white]

> As far as I know, there is no historical record that would show that the
> atomic bombing changed the minds of Japanese leadership.

In his radio address announcing the surrender to the Japanese people, the
Emperor attributed his decision directly to the use of the atomic bomb:
"...a cruel new bomb...".

[Mike Fester]

Petr Habala (habala@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN.gmu.edu) wrote:

: - one bomb causing this damage. I am not trying to say that this played

: absolutely no role in the surrender decision, but I find it unbelievable
: that you can ignore an event which was at least as important as both nukes
: together: the USSR's entry into the war. Despite what you say:

However, Anami was on record as stating he felt that the USSR entry into the
war would work in Japan's FAVOR: he felt the US would be thus inclined to
offer Japan better terms than she'd otherwise get.

: There are lots of sources to show beyond any doubt that USSR's entry into
: the war had a major impact on Japan's policy makers. In fact, testimony of

There are none, because none of the policy makers changed their vote. The
council was deadlocked 3-3 immediately after the Potsdam Declaration, and
deadlocked again after both bombs and the Soviet entry into the war.

: As far as I know, there is no historical record that would show that the
: atomic bombing changed the minds of Japanese leadership. As far as I know,

True.

: there is no historical record that would attribute the surrender to the

: USSR's entry. The only thing we know for sure is that they changed their

True. What there *IS*, however, is accounts of the meetings to discuss the
situation; clearly, the topic of discussion was the atomic bombs. The
Soviet entry came as a surprise to no one.

: Manchuria attack. How can you claim based on this that it was the atomic
: bomb only is a mystery to me. If you want some indication as opposed to

: facts), we have some testimonies of Japanese leaders from those days and
: they tend to put more weight on the USSR, we also know that the first
: atomic did not help.

Actually, we don't. In fact, The Pacific War Research Society (Taiheiyou
Sensou Kenkyuusha) has published (at least) 2 works with a great
deal of information on the surrender: _The Day Man Lost_, and _Japan's
Longest Day_.

Both rely on extensive interviews with the people involved, as well as
what documents there are. Both quite clearly indicate that the bombs
utterly destroyed the myth that Japan could fight one last glorous battle
to harm the US fighting spirit, and were the major topic of discussion.

Both books are still in print.

Mike

[George Hardy]

In article <60sgnh$k8s$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
mtu...@ms1.showtower.com.tw (Michael Turton) says:

> I would suggest you curl up with Weintraub's _The Last
>Great Victory_ and pay close attention to the events which
>unfolded after the 9th.

But has Weintraub changed his mind? I suggest that you curl up
with Weintraub's "The Three Week War", MHQ, vol. 7, # 3, 1995.

GFH

***************************************************************
http://www.ankerstein.org/
The Anchor Stone Building Set (Anker-Steinbaukasten) Home Page
See what makes me tick.
***************************************************************