Forum: Air Power

The legacy of this man is still higly controversial both in Germany and Britain.
Many people think that his campaign of city and area bombings failed either to affect German morale or to cripple German war industry and made practically no contribution to final victory and wasted unneccessarily the lives of hundreds of RAF pilots in the process who were slaugtered by German night-fighters of the Kammhuber Line during his Ruhr area bombing campaigns .

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Are we counting just the RAF contribution to the area bombing, or are we including the USAAF contribution as well. If so you could say that their efforts helped tie down resources better used elsewhere. For example whole regiments 88mm guns, the same ones that were so effective against are tanks, had to be tied up to help stop them. Also in a major war of attricion, they helped grind down the Luftwaffe's fighter force, killing hundreds of experienced pilots that could have made contributions to other theaters, like the Mediterranean.

Under the theory of total war civilians are workers and their homes industrial housing and thus a legal target. Bombing cities and attack enemy morale was an accepted doctrine during WWII and was introduced by Germany.

Harris was simply a poor leader. Almost all his underlying assumptions were wrong. The one time his forces managed to really destroy a city early enough in the war to matter was against Hamburg in Operation Gomorrah which was then never repeated. Bomber Command was actually defeated by the night fighters according to it's own war diary.

The US strategic bombing offensive was not area bombing.

Blaming Harris for night area bombing is however a tad simplistic for my taste. He should get a lot of blame on a whole host of strategic and operational factors but that does not remove responsibility for the campaign from higher leadership nor does it remove the fact that however ineffective night bombing was just about the only offensive campaign available to the British for some time.

Harris built Bomber Command into an effective weapon then squandered it. By 1944 the Brits were more accurate than the USAAF but Harris measured progress in acreage and called hitting individual targets "panaceas". The synthetic oil targets were the size of small cities and Bomber Command could have wiped them out easily. Instead they bombed houses.

I wish I could dig it up now, but I am sure Germany`s leaders with the exception of Hitler said at the time, 5 or 6 raids like Dresden where 60,000 died would have finished German morale for good. It perhaps may have been Goering himself who said this. Would it have ended the war early? Unlikely.

The loss of bomber crews was immense, but dwarfed by the number of civvies who died under that bomb tonnage over 6 years.
I actually think bombing cities was an error, a waste of resources in men and material, but Harris had his supporters none the less.

snypa777 wrote:

I wish I could dig it up now, but I am sure Germany`s leaders with the exception of Hitler said at the time, 5 or 6 raids like Dresden where 60,000 died would have finished German morale for good. It perhaps may have been Goering himself who said this. Would it have ended the war early? Unlikely.

The loss of bomber crews was immense, but dwarfed by the number of civvies who died under that bomb tonnage over 6 years.
I actually think bombing cities was an error, a waste of resources in men and material, but Harris had his supporters none the less.

The citation you want is by Speer in his book in reference to Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) not Dresden. Moreover, he was talking about industrial production not morale. Hamburg was mid 1943 vs Dresden in early 1945.

Interesting history snapshot, lb, thanks..

and snypa77 I too agree with your conclusion of it being 'an error', but it tragically was within the potential human paradigm of the time, on all sides of the end-game conflict. It was the nature of the beast in that era brought on by the War it self and the maximum evil of human potential when faced by it. Just another reason to be humbled, while thankful for our freedoms today (and the desire to never repeat it) too.

Cheers lB.
Whatever the actual words, it seems Area Bombing had an effect. Whether the effect v effort and losses were worth it, will be a never ending debate.
Interesting that people say the RAF lost the night bombing war, when the RAF continued to bomb Germany until the end of the war?
Geogen, we never seem to learn, do we!
I watched a program on TV last night about the ATA in the UK, the ATA comprised all female pilots who delivered every type of aircraft from the factories to RAF frontline fighter and bomber bases. An incredible story in itself. the girls would fly several different types every day, from Spitfires to Wellingtons, to Hellcats.

One of the women said she never really believed WWII would start after growing up seeing the whole nation mourn the losses from WWI...

Someday I want to do more research into the subject, but from what I've read the whole area bombing strategy was kind of a tragic farce. As I understand it, they started with daylight 'precision' bombing and got wrecked by air defense, and then switched to night bombing with the subsequent drop in accuracy, which was far worse than anticipated. No one at first wanted to admit how incredibly inaccurate the night raids were because, surprise, surprise, bomber command didn't want any funding diverted away from their fiefdom. "Everything's great! We need more Bombers! Now!"

Since they could only hit targets miles wide, they started bombing cities. Instead of getting the right weapons for the planned strategy (which is what should happen), they went the other way around to justify the enormous expense of maintaining a strategic bombing force. This was explained by saying "oh, it's just de-housing" the factory workers, somewhat glossing over the fact that hey, houses have people in them.

So, you end up with hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and German industrial output increasing every month until the very end of the war.

I always thought it was incredible how much the Blitz is pumped up in the western view of the war, when a total of about 40,000 civilians died. "Those horrible Nazis! Indiscriminately bombing civilians! Think of the children!"

40 thousand might seem like a lot, but we double that total on single nights...

Not a subject I am too familiar with either in great detail, but I think it is unfair to say that Bomber Command never invested in trying to make bombing accurate at night. From 1942 onwards, Bomber Command did a pretty good job alongside our allies the US in daytime raids.
In fact, vast resources went into accuracy. GEE, OBOE, H2S and Pathfinder squadrons to name but a few bombing and navigation aids. The initial problem was navigation, which of course, leads to accuracy issues!
Harris never brought forward the idea of destroying the "Morale" of the German people, that policy already existed before he took charge of Bomber Command. Also, Bomber Command was supported right up to the Chief scientific advisor for the government.

Remember, industrial production increased in the UK, faster than it did in Germany throughout the whole war. Although Bomber Command didn't "break" the morale of the German population, I bet it was crap being bombed.

More on accuracy, tell the dambusters about inaccurate bombing Smile

Please, show some respect for the 60,000 UK civilians who died in the war. that IS a lot. As I do for the 300,000 Germans. I don`t think there is any argument that the Nazi`s were indeed "horrible".

Right, but none of those systems even promised Norden-style accuracy (which was still awful), so they were still stuck with soft targets.

Ah, and the wikipedia article if riddled with [citation needed] so I guess I'll have to make a trip to the library before too long.

I'm sure area bombing had some effect, the real question is was it worth the price? Could you have spent the money on developing and producing bombers to greater effect elsewhere?

Any number of civilians dead is a lot, I just hate the History Channel-style of History Lite (tm) where the good guys are always good and the bad guys are always bad. The Blitz is something that's just seen without greater context pretty often- thing of the attention Coventry gets vs the coverage of Dresden or Hamburg. I hate it when truly horrible things are regarded as a cause for celebration.

I beg to differ on night bombing accuracy, the RAF successfully attacked V2 rocket sites with pinpoint accuracy amongst the 1,000s of targets hit at night with precision. This was not the case throughout the war but accuracy greatly improved from 1943 onwards. Of course, the V2 arrived late on in the war. H2S and H2X helped tremendously.

In fact, Wikipedia gets a bad press, it is no more or less accurate than any other open internet source I see quoted on these very boards. Otherwise, you have to go to .GOV sites for official stats.

The bombing of Oil fields and war material production sites had a far greater effect, some believe it shortened the war, others don`t. The RAF didn`t exclusively attack population centres.

The cost? Was the cost of the war worth the aspirations of a madman?
The same thing can possibly be said of any area of the war where there were losses. In victory, I guess sacrifice is not in vain.

The History channel style programmes only reflect the fact that the Nazi`s started the war were the BAD guys, the enemy. Why would anybody outside of Germany celebrate any Nazi success?

Prinz, I grew up in the UK, and I can tell you, NOBODY ever celebrated the bombing of Hamburg or Dresden at any time during my life, but looked at the bombings as the horrors of war. We know the difference between the History Channel, and History.

You have to remember, it wasn`t a battle between Germany and the Allies, it was a fight for survival against fascism and evil. To the victor go the spoils.

Salute!

Some good points here.

The 8th AF had a huge advantage over RAF Bomber Command in terms of numbers. Additionally, U.S. airpower folks were bound and determined to prove the doctrine of "precision" bombing.

In the end, a combination of night and day bomber raids seemed to wear down the resistance. Over Japan, it was primarily area bombing and not "precision" attacks. And then the U.S. dropped two nukes and demonstrated that whole cities could be laid waste with one bomber.

Sad that we had to do what we Allies did, but the goal was clear.

Gums sends...

snypa777 wrote:

I beg to differ on night bombing accuracy, the RAF successfully attacked V2 rocket sites with pinpoint accuracy amongst the 1,000s of targets hit at night with precision. This was not the case throughout the war but accuracy greatly improved from 1943 onwards. Of course, the V2 arrived late on in the war. H2S and H2X helped tremendously.

Do you have a source for that accuracy? Because they would be 20 years ahead of their time if they managed to get within 200 feet.

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In fact, Wikipedia gets a bad press, it is no more or less accurate than any other open internet source I see quoted on these very boards. Otherwise, you have to go to .GOV sites for official stats.

Wikipedia's accuracy is dependent on source material. [citation needed] could mean someone is too lazy to look up the source (which, incidentally, shows their dedication to the material) or they are pulling it out of somewhere...

RAF didn't only attack population centers, but it was their largest mission. Attacking the oil industry is one of the things that should have happened sooner, and might have if the magical destruction of German moral via dehousing wasn't given as high a priority.

Harris and area bombing is important because not only was it a waste of resources, but because, we, the "good" guys, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in doing it. It should serve as a lesson, which requires people to actually think about it and consider what could have been done differently.

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The History channel style programmes only reflect the fact that the Nazi`s started the war were the BAD guys, the enemy. Why would anybody outside of Germany celebrate any Nazi success?

The History Channel and other popular sources of history simplify what happened to the extreme, which is a disservice to everyone. I don't "but they started it!" is an entirely adequate excuse for burning thousands of civilians to death, especially when the resources used to do it could have been better spent elsewhere.

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Prinz, I grew up in the UK, and I can tell you, NOBODY ever celebrated the bombing of Hamburg or Dresden at any time during my life, but looked at the bombings as the horrors of war. We know the difference between the History Channel, and History.

Blitz (43,000)= Horribly evil thing Germany did.
Bombing of Germany (> 305,000)= Totally understandable thing the Allies did because, you know, War is War.

Yeah, totally not hypocritical.

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You have to remember, it wasn`t a battle between Germany and the Allies, it was a fight for survival against fascism and evil. To the victor go the spoils.
Prinz_Eugn

Wow, incredible. This is exactly the kind of crap you get from History-lite.

Hey, you know who was our greatest ally in WWII? I'll give you a hint: he had a stupendous mustache and killed more than 10 million people...

Survival? Yes. Evil? Errr, um... Kinda-sorta, and we definitely weren't terribly picky when it came down to doing horrible things ourselves.

Gums!
Sad indeed and I hope we never repeat WWII. The USAAF not only had the advantage in numbers but the B-17 was much better protected than the Avro lancaster so worked in daylight. The Americans also tried to prioritize "targets" first like rail yards and factories, although the cities were destroyed anyway.

Prinz_Eugn wrote:

Do you have a source for that accuracy? Because they would be 20 years ahead of their time if they managed to get within 200 feet.

The Lancaster and other RAF bombers ignored height orders and bombed at heights they thought were best for their own survival when area bombing.

No RAF bomber, Wellington Halifax or Lanc was able to release bombs above 17,000 ft and bombing heights on average were between 7K and 17K ft, dropping Iron is always more accurate lower down, if you want accuracy at night, check out the Dambusters raid from 60 feet. I have seen post strike photos of V2 rocket pads which were peppered with craters from iron dropped by Lancs at night. I agree, over the course of the majority of the war, night bombing accuracy was poor, but accuracy DID improve through the use of technology and more importantly, experience. I remember reading of a raid on the Forben plant in Germany where on one raid, over 700 bombs landed within the factory fences at night. For sources, look yourself mate as there are plenty of similar results.

Prinz_Eugn wrote:

Wikipedia's accuracy is dependent on source material. [citation needed] could mean someone is too lazy to look up the source (which, incidentally, shows their dedication to the material) or they are pulling it out of somewhere...

Irrelevant because as I said, Wiki is in fact, no more or less accurate than any other open internet source. A study on Wiki accuracy by a UK university produced these findings.

Prinz_Eugn wrote:

RAF didn't only attack population centers, but it was their largest mission. Attacking the oil industry is one of the things that should have happened sooner, and might have if the magical destruction of German moral via dehousing wasn't given as high a priority.

For sure, it was indeed the RAf`s largest mission, should it have happened sooner? Maybe, but neither you nor I were in Churchill's or Roosevelt's shoes at the time.

Prinz_Eugn wrote:

Harris and area bombing is important because not only was it a waste of resources, but because, we, the "good" guys, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in doing it. It should serve as a lesson, which requires people to actually think about it and consider what could have been done differently.

Hindsight is great, and in the end you are probably right but at the time they thought they were doing the right thing. As far as I am concerned if Hitler had not invaded Poland, we could have avoided 50 million deaths. In the end I believe the lesson was heeded as WWIII was avoided.

Prinz_Eugn wrote:

The History Channel and other popular sources of history simplify what happened to the extreme, which is a disservice to everyone. I don't "but they started it!" is an entirely adequate excuse for burning thousands of civilians to death, especially when the resources used to do it could have been better spent elsewhere.

That`s what TV does in general mainly because of time constraints. I recommend The World At War series. Coventry was bombed FIRST, as was London, why on earth would you expect the British NOT to bomb German cities in retaliation? The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, which led to the atomic bombing of Japan. Dropping the BOMB saved more lives than it took. Where do you draw the line Prinz from your moral high ground? All war is a tragedy.

Prinz_Eugn wrote:

Blitz (43,000)= Horribly evil thing Germany did.
Bombing of Germany (> 305,000)= Totally understandable thing the Allies did because, you know, War is War.

Yeah, totally not hypocritical.

Both events terrible, both understandable for when they occurred and the circumstances surrounding them.

snypa wrote:

You have to remember, it wasn`t a battle between Germany and the Allies, it was a fight for survival against fascism and evil. To the victor go the spoils.

Prinz_Eugn wrote:

Wow, incredible. This is exactly the kind of crap you get from History-lite.

So how would YOU describe the Naxi regime mate? What part of the Nazi regime was NOT evil? What Fascist leader was not a Fascist? Tell the world it was not a fight for survival, you keep wearing those blinkers.....

Prinz_Eugn wrote:

Survival? Yes. Evil? Errr, um... Kinda-sorta, and we definitely weren't terribly picky when it came down to doing horrible things ourselves.

Yup, we did terrible things, the Nazi`s represented a terror we had to get rid of and did FAR more terrible things.
The Allies did what they did to win, whilst the Naxi`s did what they did to conquer, oppress, murder and eradicate. I pity the ordinary civilian, but I have zero pity for the butchers in charge of Germany and the justice they got in the end was more than deserved.

In the end, sweet Prinz, the Nazi`s were responsible for area bombing and the butchery of there own civilian population.

Forum: Air Power

The Legacy of the Bomber , Sir Arthur Harris