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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 11:37:49 GMT
THE STRATEGIC BOMBING OFFENSIVE AGAINST NAZI GERMANY AS ORIGINALLY ENVISAGED AND ACTUALLY EXECUTED BY THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN – DOCTRINE VERSUS REALITY PREAMBLE
This paper sets out to identify the respective beliefs and assumptions that arose in the United States and Great Britain with respect to the role in modern warfare of the strategic bomber, and to contrast and compare the doctrine that each of the prospective Allies chose to adopt. It also seeks to chart the changes that occurred within those doctrines during the course of the Second World War, and the impact that those changes had on the way that the bomber forces of both countries understood and executed their assigned missions. The paper does not focus on operational aspects, except insofar as operational experience resulted in doctrinal change. Additionally, it does not discuss the military or political effectiveness of the strategic bombing campaign, nor does it examine any claims made as to its morality or immorality. |
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 11:43:21 GMT
1 – STRATEGIC BOMBING AS A MILITARY AND POLITICAL CONCEPT
The launching of explosive projectiles from the air onto a terrestrial target goes back to the days of ballooning, however the first known incident of bombing from a powered aircraft dates from the start of the First World War. The earliest instances of aerial bombardment were tactical in nature, that is, they were directed against strictly military objectives, at or closely adjacent to, the front line. Strategic bombing, however, is concerned with targeting the enemy deep behind the lines, even in his home country, and is not limited to military objectives; industrial and civilian infrastructure are also seen as appropriate targets. The first instances of strategic bombing were the Zeppelin raids on English coastal cities, that started in January 1915, and which were continued with Gotha heavy bombers from mid-1917 until almost the end of the war. In 1917-18 the British and French responded in kind, with bombing attacks on a number of German cities.
Militarily, strategic bombing in WW I was a total failure, however the disruptive effects on the local civilian population were noted, and the seeds sown for the development of the strategic bombing concept as a potentially decisive factor in future wars. One of the early pioneers in this new thinking about the use of air-power as a strategic weapon was the Italian General Giulio Douhet, whose highly influential book The Command of the Air was first published in 1921. Douhet’s doctrine of total war waged through the aerial destruction of the enemy’s industry and national life found many adherents in the 1920s and 1930s, not least in his native country where Mussolini attempted to implement such a strategy during the colonial wars in East Africa. But the lesson was perhaps heeded most closely in the two countries with which this paper is concerned: Great Britain and the United States.
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 11:55:56 GMT
2 – THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH POLICY AND STRATEGY DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD Like most of the other major belligerents, Britain in 1919 rapidly demobilized its armed forces and slashed military expenditures. For the RAF this was an especially difficult time, particularly since it had only existed as an independent entity for a few years. In terms of the pecking order for the much-reduced budget funding for military purposes, it stood at the rear of the queue. So it became essential for its leadership to come up with a unique rationale for its continued, independent existence, one which enabled it to clearly differentiate its role from that of the Army and the Navy. The strategy chosen for this purpose was the one that the air force was uniquely able to implement: bombing.
Paradoxically, aerial bombing solved one the major challenges for the fiscally-strapped post-war government: how to police the unrulier parts of the Empire without the necessity for an ever-increasing number of British troops being permanently stationed overseas for garrison duty. In places like Iraq and on the North-West Frontier, the RAF stepped into the breach, with the enthusiastic backing of then-Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill. This killed two birds with stone – it demonstrated the indispensability of the RAF as well as confirming it in its new-found role as a means of power projection.
In 1923, Hugh Trenchard, a disciple of Douhet, and known as ‘The Father of the Royal Air Force’ elaborated on his doctrine of the value of the bomber as follows: “It is on the bomber that we must rely for defence. It is on the destruction of enemy industries and above all on the lowering of (enemy) morale caused by bombing that the ultimate victory rests”. Trenchard’s prestige and influence were such that the concept of the ‘knock-out blow’ delivered from the air dominated Air Staff thinking and policy determination throughout the 1920s and 1930s. This was supported in the public mood stimulated by popular screen depictions of HG Wellsian predictions about future airwars (Wells coined the term ‘atomic bomb’ as early as 1913) and in the political consciousness by the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1931.
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was said to be particularly shocked by the effects of the Japanese attacks and, shortly afterwards, he delivered his famous phrase in the Commons debate on Disarmament “The bomber will always get through”. By 1933-4 the aggressive threat posed by Nazi Germany was becoming generally recognized in political and military circles, if not publically acknowledged. Behind the scenes planning went ahead on the assumption that, in any future conflict involving Britain and Germany, air-power would play a decisive role. In 1934 and 1936 two crucial events occurred, the issuance of Air Ministry Specifications for the two crucial elements necessary to implement those plans. The first was for the high-speed all-metal monoplane fighters that would provide for air defence against the Luftwaffe (the Hurricane and Spitfire), and the second for the construction of the fleet of four-engined heavy bombers, which resulted in the Stirling, the Halifax and eventually the Lancaster. 1936 also witnessed the destruction of Guernica by the Luftwaffe ‘Condor Legion’, whose operations in Spain, and particularly the destructive and moral effect of the bombing, were closely noted by the Air Ministry in Britain. So much so that by 1938 more than 40% of British military expenditure was being devoted to re-equipping the RAF to fulfil its role as an aggressive strategic bombing force, as well as to defend the homeland against what it was assumed would be a similarly aggressive German strategy. |
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 12:04:41 GMT
3 – THE DEVELOPMENT OF US POLICY AND STRATEGY DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD
As in Britain, the end of hostilities in 1918 signaled the beginning of a period of retrenchment for the American armed services, and the Army Air Service was no exception. From a final strength of 185 flying squadrons in 1918 it was reduced to a total of 22 a year later, and a mere eight of those were ‘combat’ squadrons, that is, equipped with fighters and/or bombers. Additionally, all efforts to have the AAS transform itself into an independent service like the RAF failed, and in fact the US air forces remained structurally a part of Army all through World War II until the USAF was formed in 1947.
In the early postwar years the most vocal advocate of air-power was Brigadier-General Billy Mitchell, who had met Hugh Trenchard whilst serving in Europe, and shared many of the same doctrinal ideas concerning the war-winning potential of strategic bombing. Before he was forced out of the service in 1925, Mitchell orchestrated a number of demonstrations in which obsolete naval vessels were sunk through aerial bombardment and, although the use of bombers for maritime defence was vigorously opposed by the Navy, Mitchell’s experiments had a profound effect on the development of US policy with regard to strategic bombing, as well as on the design of the bombers themselves.
The success of bombing in destroying targets as small as a ship brought into the spotlight the concept of precision bombing, and introduced the possibility of using the bomber force as a means of national defence, particularly with respect to distant and potentially vulnerable overseas territories such as Hawaii and the Philippines. The focus on precision led then naturally to the adoption of the famous Norden bombsight which permitted an unprecedented accuracy, prompting some officers to brag that they could ‘place a bomb in a pickle barrel from 10,000 feet’. Another key strand in the development of the strategy was the belief that the bomber could be self-defending, provided it was equipped with sufficient defensive armament and was accompanied on it its mission by a sufficient number of other bombers, all flying in close formation. The concept of the self-defending bomber led naturally on to the design of the Boeing B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’, which first entered service in 1937. The design of the Consolidated B-24 ‘Liberator’ followed closely the same requirements and principles.
At this point then, in the late 1930s, we can start to compare and contrast the strategic bombing doctrines of the two future Allies. Unlike in Britain, there seems to have been little support at this stage in the US for the concept of the strategic as a means of delivering the ‘knock-out blow’ which would take an enemy out of the war. Additionally the US emphasis was on daylight precision bombing of targets of specific military significance, rather than, as in the British view, on the general economic and civil infrastructure of the adversary’s industrial cities. Neither believed in the concept of long-range escort fighter support for the bomber force; the British because they felt that such a machine would be necessarily at a disadvantage against short-range, purely defensive fighters, and the Americans because they felt that the self-defensive capabilities of their bombers did away with the need for escorts.
Whereas the interwar period ended abruptly in September 1939 for the British, for the Americans the lull continued for another two years or so. The US Army Air Corps, as it was now called, was in 1939 rather unprepossessing; in size it ranked only seventh in the world, behind Romania. In the late 30s a debate arose concerning the conduct of future air war, with opinion being divided about whether the targeting of civilian population centers could be morally justified. In the event, the USAAC set itself against area attacks (as did the British initially) but, as events later showed, it was often difficult to adhere to this lofty principle in actual practice. One of the benefits for the US of being an observer on the sidelines, as it were, was that it was able to note the relative failure of the night area bombing campaigns of both the Luftwaffe and the RAF, and this tended to cement the official doctrine of daylight precision bombing even more firmly into place. |
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 13:54:55 GMT
4 - RAF BOMBER COMMAND OPERATIONS THROUGH 1942
In the mid-1930s the RAF had been re-organized into several branches, or ‘Commands’, of which Bomber Command was one. At the outbreak of war Bomber Command comprised 33 squadrons (of 55 planned) with a total strength of just over 280 front-line aircraft, but that included none of the heavy four-engined bombers, which had yet to enter squadron service. General RAF Operations were directed in accordance with a series of ‘Western Air Plans’ from the Air Ministry, and in the case of Bomber Command specifically, supplemented and amplified as required by ‘Directives to the Air Officer Commanding, Bomber Command’. In all 47 such Directives were issued through the course of the war, and it is through inspection of these Directives (all conveniently reproduced in Volume IV, Section III of the Official History) that we can trace the changes in the strategic bombing strategy over time.
At the outset, the RAF, like the USAAC and the Luftwaffe operated under specific directions to avoid the bombing of civilian population centers. Consequently, the first RAF raid on Germany, on the night of September 3/4, 1939, was directed against German naval vessels in the vicinity of Wilhelmshaven. Volume I of the Official History sums up the outcome of this first effort as follows, and in doing so provides in passing a telling indication of the ‘shape of things to come’:
“… The over-optimistic view of what might be achieved; the care taken to avoid harming the German civil population; the large proportion of aircraft failing to locate the objective; the ineffective bombs and inconsiderable results; the expectation that crews would be skilful enough to find and bomb in atrocious weather a precise and hotly defended target on the other side of the North Sea; and the unflinching courage with which the attacks were pressed home – all these were typical, not merely of September 1939, but of many months to come.”
The reality was beginning to dawn that in 1939 the bomber force had been only at the foot of a very steep learning curve, and that the overblown predictions of a mass breakdown of civilian morale and the optimistic hopes about ‘knock-out blows’ had proved to be in error. As an aggressive weapon, Bomber Command essentially went into a state of suspended animation for the period of the ‘Phoney War’ in the winter and spring of 1939/40. There were the occasional raids on German coastal targets, the dropping of propaganda leaflets, and the far more productive mine-laying sorties (code named ‘Gardening’), but few actual aggressive sorties against the Fatherland itself. A consequence of the heavy losses that Bomber Command incurred whenever it did launch an attack over enemy territory was the decision to abandon daylight bombing entirely. The concept of the ‘self-defending’ bomber force had proved to be a myth, and the RAF would not return to large-scale daylight attacks on targets in Germany until late in 1944.
The situation would change dramatically with the German invasion of the Low Countries, and in particular the bombing of Rotterdam. In response to the latter the Western Air Plan W.A. 5 was activated, which called for the bombing of military and industrial targets in the Reich itself. As a result a sizeable force of around 100 aircraft was dispatched to attack oil and rail targets in the Ruhr, which the Official History notes as being the starting point of the strategic bomber offensive proper. Within a few weeks France had fallen, and Hitler then launched in July 1940 what has since become known as the Battle of Britain, the attempt by the Luftwaffe to gain air superiority over the RAF, as the precursor to a land invasion.
During the course of the Luftwaffe’s attacks in late August on an oil refinery along the Thames several aircraft strayed off course and released their bombs over residential districts in the East End of London. This is now known to have been accidental, but in retaliation the RAF was ordered to launch an attack on Berlin. Churchill’s motivation for ordering this raid is still a matter of much debate, since he must have known what Hitler’s response would be. But whatever the truth of the matter, the Berlin raid precipitated the start of the start of the Blitz which lasted from early September through May 1941. The irony though is that if the Luftwaffe had continued with its original strategy of attacking RAF airfields and aircraft production centers, rather than switching to bombing of cities, there is a better than even chance that they would have succeeded in defeating the RAF and gaining what they originally set out to do, that is, gaining air superiority in support of the planned land invasion of Britain.
At this point, then, ‘all bets were off’ in the sense of avoiding attacks against population centers, and the change in official stance is recorded in the Air Directive of October 30th, 1940 which, for the first time, included the direction that Bomber Command should, in addition to its existing priorities, make a ‘… definite attempt to affect the morale of the German people’. This low-key phrase was to have momentous implications for the way in the RAF’s bomber campaign would be pursued throughout the war. Events were to take another crucial turn again in November with the devastating Luftwaffe attack on the industrial city of Coventry. This was closely studied by the Air Staff because of two important innovations, namely: the first successful use by the Germans of a radio direction-finding technique (Knickebein) as a navigational aid for night-bombing, and the dramatically-effective use of incendiaries alongside conventional high-explosives. In retaliation for the Coventry attack the RAF responded with its first intentional area- or ‘carpet’-bombing attack of the war, that on Mannheim on December 12th, 1940.
Another important Air Directive appeared on July 9th, 1941, and this represents the first official acknowledgment of what commanders in Bomber Command had been aware of for some time: given the technological state of the art, and the navigational skills of the bomber crews themselves, precision bombing of heavily-defended targets in the climatic conditions prevailing in Western Europe was impossible. So, by the middle of 1941, in the light of hard-won experience and bitter disappointments, the perception of the role of strategic bomber, in Britain at least, had moved away from the pre-war theorizing and wishful thinking, and more into the realm of practical reality. For Bomber Command this marks the end of the beginning, and the start of the period in the scientific air war begins to take shape. From now until the end of 1942, Bomber Command will focus on equipping itself with the tools and techniques necessary to turn itself into a weapon with war-winning potential.
Another momentous event would also occur in 1942, one which would have a decisive impact on the conduct of the air war: the introduction of the 8th US Army Air Force into the European Theater of Operations.
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 14:17:13 GMT
5 - USAAF STRATEGIC BOMBER OPERATIONS THROUGH 1942
The ‘Mighty 8th’ was officially established in the UK in June 1942, and conducted its first independent operation in August against targets in occupied France. By the end of the year there were six bomber groups in the UK, with a total front-line force of around 200 heavy bombers, at this time all B-17 Flying Fortresses. It would be late January 1943 though before the 8th dropped its first bomb loads on Germany itself.
Despite having had the opportunity of observing the experiences of both the RAF and the Luftwaffe in the close to three years preceding its arrival, the commanders of the 8th AAF appear to have taken very little of it on board. The official doctrine still embraced all the old pre-war elements: precision bombing, daylight rather than night operations, the staunch belief in the self-defending bomber force, the refusal to contemplate the necessity of long-range escorts, and the moral insistence on strict avoidance of attacks on population centers. In hindsight it’s really quite remarkable that this should be the case, given all that had happened in the previous three years, and the fact that both the RAF and Luftwaffe, which had both also earlier embraced a similar doctrine, had since abandoned it entirely. The 8th was thus standing at the foot of the very same learning curve that Bomber Command had faced in September 1939.
The build-up of the strength of the 8th in Britain was somewhat retarded by the necessity of supporting the Torch landings in North Africa in late 1942. Any ‘spare’ bomb groups were diverted in support of that operation, and eventually came to form the nucleus of the 15th USAAF which would, following the invasion of Italy, play its own part in the strategic bomber offensive. In addition to the diversions for Torch, large numbers of the long-range B-24 Liberators were assigned to the Pacific Theater or to anti-submarine operations in the Atlantic. Nevertheless the build-up, training and acclimatization of the 8th AAF continued in parallel in Britain. |
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Post by Orac on Jan 29, 2024 14:29:22 GMT
I wonder if the initial fumble was caused by the same intransigence that led the US navy to ignore the advice of the Royal navy regarding convoy tactics and anti-submarine warfare. Significant segments of the US military leadership seemed to britophobic and assumed we were all talking nonsense?
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 14:56:12 GMT
There was a surprising amount of discord amongst the Allied upper ranks, fuelled by resentments and misunderstandings on both sides.
Irving's The War between the Generals is a good source on the fractious post D-Day relationships between, amongst others, Monty and Bradley, which had to be smoothed over by Ike and Churchill. That's the real reason why Monty was never given the go-ahead to take Berlin before the Russians which he could very well have done once over the Rhine.
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 15:02:49 GMT
6 – 1943-5 THE COMBINED BOMBER OFFENSIVE
At the beginning of 1943 the Allied air forces stood on the threshold of really being able to carry the strategic air war to Germany. If we consider the period from 1939 through 1941 as the first phase of the battle, in which the RAF learned its business in the School of Hard Knocks, 1942 represents the second phase, a year of development, with advanced new aircraft coming into squadron service, new techniques being adapted and adopted, sophisticated navigational and target indicator systems coming into operational use and, above all, the appearance of the 8th. 1943 thus represents the start of the real offensive in which the Germans would come to understand the full nature of strategic air warfare.
The first half of 1943 represents a period of growth and consolidation for the 8th USAAF. Its doctrine of the self-defending bomber force required that a critical mass of aircraft be available for operation in order for the force, according to the theory, to be effective both offensively and defensively. Another six combat groups would be available for operations by April 43, followed by a further five by mid-summer. By that point the critical mass of a minimum of 300 heavy bombers would be judged to have been attained. In the winter and spring of 1943, following the initial exploratory raid by 91 aircraft on Wilhelmshaven in January 1943, the 8th generally restricted its sphere of operation to targets lying within range of the available escort force, which precluded for the time being raids against Germany itself.
In the meantime, and following agreements reached at the Casablanca Summit in January, in May 1943 the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff issued its Directive on the Combined Bomber Offensive from the United Kingdom (Operation Pointblank). This document (Appendix 23 of the Official History) describes the mission of the United States and British bomber forces as:
“…[conducting] a joint US-British air offensive to accomplish the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.” (emphasis added)
The Directive goes on to enumerate a series of principal objectives, seventy-odd targets in all, that included key facilities for submarine construction and maintenance, aircraft production, ball bearings, oil, synthetic rubber and military vehicles. Various other ‘intermediate’ objectives are also defined, but the interesting aspect is the way in which the Directive is framed to reflect and reconcile the divergent doctrines and operational ‘cultures’ of the two air forces. In calling for a combined offensive, the Directive stresses the ‘complementary’ nature of the two forces. In essence the 8th AAF was to pursue its precision bombing mission on the seventy-odd individual targets during daylight attacks, while Bomber Command followed up with night bombing of the urban areas adjacent to the precision targets.
The first opportunity to put the Directive into practice arose in July 1943, with the combined operation Gomorrah, which was to unleash the terrifying firestorms on Hamburg. The area bombing aspect was, by Bomber Command reckoning, a complete success, while the actual impact of the 8th’s (much smaller) daytime precision attacks was considered to be fairly nominal. Nevertheless, the overall operation itself was seen to portend well for the future Combined Offensive, particularly once the strength of the two forces became more balanced.
The next major event for the 8th was the first of a series of Pointblank-inspired attacks on the ball bearing and aircraft industries, in which separate bomber forces were sent against Schweinfurt and Regensburg on August 13th. For once weather conditions were optimal over the target area for a daylight precision attack so, although the mission was acknowledged to be high risk, it proceeded on the assumption that while flak might provide a challenge, the combination of tight formation flying and heavy defensive armament would serve to minimize losses due to enemy fighter action. The raid itself is considered to have been a qualified success, in terms of the accuracy of the bombing and the damage inflicted, however the losses were startling. Of the 376 aircraft that departed from England a total of 71 (19%) were either shot down or damaged so badly that they had to be written off on their return. Another five raids with a similar loss-rate would have meant the total demise of the 8th as a fighting force. After regrouping and further analysis, it was decided to revisit Schweinfurt once again two months later on October 14th when, if anything, the results were even more disastrous: 25% of the 300-odd aircraft dispatched failed to return.
This stimulated a period of quiet reflection and doctrinal re-analysis amongst the AAF command. Although its strength continued to build – by January 1944 the 8th comprised over 30 heavy bomber groups, about 1,000 aircraft – no further major daylight raids were conducted against heavily-defended targets until the spring of 1944. The Summary Report of the US Strategic Bombing Survey summarizes the predicament as follows:
The U. S. Army Air Forces entered the European war with the firm view that specific industries and services were the most promising targets in the enemy economy, and they believed that if these targets were to be hit accurately, the attacks had to be made in daylight. A word needs to be said on the problem of accuracy in attack. Before the war, the U. S. Army Air Forces had advanced bombing techniques to their highest level of development and had trained a limited number of crews to a high degree of precision in bombing under target range conditions, thus leading to the expressions "pin point" and "pickle barrel" bombing. However, it was not possible to approach such standards of accuracy under battle conditions imposed over Europe. Many limiting factors intervened; target obscuration by clouds, fog, smoke screens and industrial haze; enemy fighter opposition which necessitated defensive bombing formations, thus restricting freedom of maneuver; antiaircraft artillery defences, demanding minimum time exposure of the attacking force in order to keep losses down; and finally, time limitations imposed on combat crew training after the war began. (USSBS Summary Report p. 5)
With its daylight precision bombing and self-defending bomber force doctrine under a cloud, the 8th was forced into a critical re-appraisal of its sole and objectives. The strength of the Reich Air Defence system was exacting intolerable losses on the force, and a solution had to be found, and quickly. As it happened, by late 1943 the answer was already at hand in the form of the North American P-51 Mustang. This aircraft was originally designed to an RAF specification and entered squadron service with the RAF in 1942. In its original early versions, however, it lacked the performance at higher altitudes to be competitive with contemporary German fighters. Its revolutionary laminar-flow wing and superb airframe were let down by the mediocre Allison engine. This was rectified by the substitution of the same Roll-Royce Merlin engine that currently powered the Mk. IX Spitfire with the result that what was at best an average machine, deemed by the RAF as more suited for an army cooperation role, was transformed at a stroke into probably the best piston-engined fighter of the war. For the 8th, however, its most attractive attribute was its long-range capability which would allow the P-51 to function effectively as an escort fighter for raids deep within Germany, as far as Berlin itself or even further. It is probably no exaggeration to claim that the introduction of the P-51 in escort duty in the spring of 1944 was the single most important development in the entire air war. The P-51 contributed greatly to the rapid degradation of the fighter defences of the Reich, reducing losses from enemy fighters to such an extent that Bomber Command felt confident by August 1944 in resuming mass daylight raids on targets within Germany.
Another cherished aspect of the original American doctrine that had to be abandoned was the belief that precision bombing in daylight would be routinely possible under combat conditions in Northern and Central Europe. Even when equipped with the superb Norden bombsight, 8th AAF crews could not be expected to perform accurate visual bombing missions of targets obscured by cloud, industrial haze or, as was often the case, smokescreens erected by the defenders themselves. The need for systems to facilitate non-visual or ‘blind’ bombing even in daytime became apparent. Fortunately, many of the systems and procedures for such operations had already been developed and implemented by Bomber Command in support of its own night operations, and so many AAF bomber groups came to employ navigational and target identifier systems such as Gee, Oboe and H2S (H2X in USAAF parlance), and also to deploy dedicated target marking forces, similar to Bomber Command’s Pathfinder Force.
The final doctrinal element to eventually wither away was the belief that precision bombing with large forces under wartime conditions would result in minimal civilian casualties. Gradually, the technical and practical limitations on bombing accuracy, as well as the inevitability of ‘collateral damage’ came to be recognized. Although the official posture right up until the end of the European War was that the USAAF did not intend for civilians be to be targeted, the reality was that given the prevailing state of the art and the physical conditions there was no way to avoid it. Interestingly though such moral scruples did not seem to apply in the Air War in the Pacific, as the fire-bombings of Tokyo and other cities, and particularly the dropping of the atomic bombs, demonstrate. The latter, of course, represent a classic instance of area bombing in its most extreme form.
The necessity for doctrinal change was not restricted to the American side. Bomber Command also had to work through its own share of agonizing re-appraisals. Most of those occurred in the earlier years of the bomber war, and although the turn to area bombing is these days often condemned as bloodthirsty and immoral, at the time it represented more of a pragmatic realization of the then current realities and capabilities, while at the same time retaining an ability to take the war to the enemy. Arthur Harris, AOC-in-C of Bomber Command from early 1942, argued consistently and fervently against both the diversion of resources to other purposes such as support for battle against U-boats, Operations Torch, and Overlord, as well as against what he viewed as an obsession with ‘panacea’ targets (oil, ball bearings, etc.), although even he was eventually forced to concede that the area bombing campaign had failed in its objective to significantly affect the morale or productive capabilities of the German people. Supporters of Harris today would probably argue that it was a combination of resource diversion, diffusion of target focus and, above all, the absence of a critical mass of heavy bombers that prevented the bomber offensive from realizing its full potential as a war-winning weapon. In such a view, had the commanders of the Allied forces been given the resources they claimed were required, it is likely that Germany could have been bombed out of the war, rendering an invasion of the European continent unnecessary.
Be that as it may, the outcome was that Bomber Command was obliged, for a variety of reasons, to perform other tasks besides Harris’ (or more correctly the Air Staffs’) preferred mission of undermining German morale. In the last nine months of the war, for example, Bomber Command dropped more tonnage on German oil targets that did the USAAF (64,000 compared to 46,000 [Official History Vol. IV, p.200]). In a sense then, both Bomber Command and the 8th AAF arrived in the end at the same conclusion: that it made sense to do precision bombing when you could, and area bombing when you couldn’t. Both forces had to rethink and modify their doctrine and operational procedures in the light of real events on the ground and it is instructive to note how similar their operations became over time, even though the official doctrines and public pronouncements would seek to suggest otherwise. |
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 29, 2024 15:06:16 GMT
NOTES ON SOURCES In researching this paper, I wanted to find and use a principal source that not only covered the operational and technical aspects of the air war, but also the political and organizational dimensions as well. In addition, I wanted to use a source which discussed the conduct of the bombing campaign from both the American and the British perspective, and did so in as even-handed a manner as possible. It was also important to get an understanding of how the two forces interacted at the command and operational levels. I eventually settled on Robin Niellands’ The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany, Overlook Press, New York 2001. In addition to this main work, I relied on the following:
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report, US Government Printing Office, 1946
G. Webster, N. Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-45 Vols. I - IV, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London 1961 (the ‘Official History’)
J. Terraine, The Right of the Line: The RAF in the European War 1939-45, Hodder and Stoughton, London 1985 |
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Post by Vinny on Jan 29, 2024 15:08:31 GMT
It was necessary.
And it did enough damage to make the land invasions of Nazi Germany succeed.
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Post by bancroft on Jan 29, 2024 18:51:44 GMT
What did happen suppose we would call it blowback today was German teens joined up after seeing all their relatives had been killed by the bombers.
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Post by Pacifico on Jan 29, 2024 22:02:20 GMT
There was a surprising amount of discord amongst the Allied upper ranks, fuelled by resentments and misunderstandings on both sides. Irving's The War between the Generals is a good source on the fractious post D-Day relationships between, amongst others, Monty and Bradley, which had to be smoothed over by Ike and Churchill. That's the real reason why Monty was never given the go-ahead to take Berlin before the Russians which he could very well have done once over the Rhine.For which thousands of British troops were eternally grateful. Why die to take territory that was going to be handed back to the Russians anyway?. |
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Post by Pacifico on Jan 29, 2024 22:04:55 GMT
What did happen suppose we would call it blowback today was German teens joined up after seeing all their relatives had been killed by the bombers. They were going to get conscripted anyway - the bombing offensive did not alter that fact. |
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 30, 2024 12:10:26 GMT
There was a surprising amount of discord amongst the Allied upper ranks, fuelled by resentments and misunderstandings on both sides. Irving's The War between the Generals is a good source on the fractious post D-Day relationships between, amongst others, Monty and Bradley, which had to be smoothed over by Ike and Churchill. That's the real reason why Monty was never given the go-ahead to take Berlin before the Russians which he could very well have done once over the Rhine.For which thousands of British troops were eternally grateful. Why die to take territory that was going to be handed back to the Russians anyway?. This is very much a side issue so I don't intend to make much of it, but there was a definite mismatch in the way in which the US armies in the south and centre were given their head to get as far east as they could, with Patton's Third Army getting as far as Leipzig before halting. That is over 200km east of the boundary of the future Soviet zone as agreed at Yalta. Monty's 21st army group (which still included the US 9th Army) was ordered to halt after it had taken Magdeburg, just 140 km from Berlin. This despite Eisenhower's order to Monty on 15 September 1944 to consider Berlin as the 'main prize', something apparently completely forgotten just six months later. Some commentators attribute this strange volte-face to Roosevelt's curious 'love-in' with Stalin which had first got underway at the Tehran Conference. Irving notes that Eisenhower was also smitten, later explaining that the Kansas plainsman felt that Russians 'with their generous instincts, their healthy direct outlook on everyday affairs, bore a marked similarity to the average American'. Needless to say Stalin was delighted and telegraphed instant approval of Eisenhower's plan to remove Berlin from the (Western) Allied agenda giving his own forces (still bogged down on the Oder at that point) a free run at the capital, which just months earlier had been deemed the 'main prize'. (Irving, op cit pp 415-418].
Churchill was of course furious at what he considered the naivite of the US high command and political leadership.
One beneficial outcome of this, as far as the US is concerned, was the capture of the V1/V2 production sites at Nordhausen whose contents were snaffled before the Russians arrived when the area was handed over in July.
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