SHORT PAPER: The Allied Bombing of Germany: Its Underappreciated Importance to Victory in Europe

 

 

SHORT PAPER: The Allied Bombing of Germany: Its Underappreciated Importance to Victory in Europe



While German industrial capacity actually increased during the heaviest period of the Allies “Combined Bomber Offensive’ (CBO) in World War II, the CBO was tremendously effective because it disrupted communications and transport networks, tied down Luftwaffe fighters which were husbanded in defense of the home front, and tied down almost 1 million personnel across Germany.

The Allied bombing offensive, also known as the Combined Bomber Offensive, (CBO) conducted by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF), was an attempt at primarily, crippling the German Luftwaffe followed up with the secondary targeting of Germanys principle industrial centers of war making with oil being the highest priority target. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 the Combined Chiefs of Staff laid out the strategic directive for the Allied Air Offensive:

Your primary object will be the progressive destruction of the German military, industrial and economic system, and undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where there armed resistance is fatally weakened.[1]

 

The directive was quite general in nature and afforded the commanders, Harris of RAF Bomber Command, and Eaker of the USAAF, wide latitude and initiative. Subsequently, Bomber Command focused on industrial areas that had the byproduct of potentially demoralizing the German factory laborers. The USAAF concentrated on Luftwaffe assets such as fighter production, aircraft engine and component manufacturing and railyards. But before 1943 and the Allied Conference in Casablanca, Morocco, RAF Bomber Command attacked Germany alone. And in those early years, many tough lessons were learned and much was sacrificed.

The Early Years: RAF Bomber Command All Alone

Bomber Command had hoped for the eventual delivery of 4,000 bombers with which to destroy Germany. In late 1939 Bomber Command had less than 350 assigned aircraft due to sending Squadrons to RAF Coastal Command, North Africa, and the Far East. And precision aiming instruments and navigation were hopelessly under-developed for the war that would come.

During the Battle of Britain, RAF Bomber Command was the only organization capable of mounting offensive strikes against the Germany. Early efforts revealed inefficiencies, ineffective or incapable aircraft, and the results were less than satisfactory against the targets selected. Bomber Command, recognizing the issues, elected a strategy that was focused on area bombing techniques and subsequently concentrated on night area bombing. The USAAF Eighth Air Force, arrived in England all through 1942, and as they gained strength and became operational, they completely focused on daylight precision bombing techniques with their Norden bombsight.

The RAF Bomber Command at first, committed large numbers of twin engine medium bombers such as the Vickers Wellington, Handley Page Hampden, and Armstrong Whitworth Whitley. These medium bombers proved obsolete or insufficient for the task. Through hard fought lessons learned, RAF Bomber Command developed the Shorts Stirling, Avro Lancaster and the Handley Page Halifax, four engine heavy bombers. The USAAF deployed a host of light and medium bombers for tactical work whilst deploying the Boeing B-17 Super Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy four engine bombers for precision daylight bombing of Germany proper.

Early RAF bombing missions against Germany in December of 1939 were mostly daylight sorties with medium twin engine types. The results were shocking to the RAF and Bomber Command. The main conclusion from the disastrous daylight raid on 18 December 1939 was inescapable: the loss rate was ten times the level Bomber Command had estimated it could afford.[2]

The Bomber Command attempts of late 1939 saw a series of medium twin engine bombers execute daylight, unescorted, and low level attacks against German shipping. On 4 September, 7 of 29 Blenheims and Wellingtons were lost; on 29 September, 5 out of 11 Hampdens; and on 14 December, 5 out of 12 Wellingtons.[3] The loss rates would render Bomber Command combat ineffective and, as the only arm capable of mounting an offensive against Germany proper, this was unacceptable. Consequently, Bomber Command elected to operate at night. Difficulties ensued with nighttime operations as precision was all but impossible. Especially on moonless nights or against targets that were heavily defended by searchlights and anti-aircraft artillery. 

The decisions made during the inter-war years and in the first year of the Second World War would resonate for the remainder of the war. Area Bombing was not a novelty of a hard pressed air arm but a technique within a strategy that Douhet, the Italian Airpower theorist and advocate, had written of during and after World War I. Douhet first presented his theories in his work, Command of the Air, which he theorizes that strategic bombers could play a most decisive part in winning wars. He also laid out the targeting for bombers, such as industrial targets, ports, government buildings and military forces. Within Command of the Air, he discusses not only attacking industry and government, but the will of the people. Douhet was an advocate of total war and believed that once war began, all targets were fair game. This included civilians as they were seen as a resource. Armies and Air Forces were built of its citizens. And it was the civilian laborer who manufactured the weapons of war. Many of the Air Forces after the First World War grew in maturity and studied the best and most practical use of this new strategy; airpower. The Royal Air Force and Bomber Command were no exception; having developed light and medium bombers in the 1920s and 1930s they then theorized how best to use them. The area bombing strategy was studied and adopted given the limitations of the technology associated with navigation and precision aiming. The proponents and executors of the Bombing Campaign had all studied both the American, Billy Mitchell and the Italian, Giulio Douhet. The RAF and USAAF Bomber commanders would strive to implement Douhets and Mitchells strategies.

The Allied Bombing Decision Makers

The key personalities and figures associated with the Combined Bomber Offensive included Generals Carl Spaatz (commander of the Eighth Air Force and eventually Strategic Air Forces Europe), Ira Eaker (the author of the CBO campaign plan), Henry Hap Arnold (commander of the Army Air Force) and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal (who led Bomber Command and eventually led the RAF), Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Bomber Harris (who led Bomber Command). Of these personalities, they all shared a belief in the effectiveness of airpower and would press hard for the aggressive use of their organizations in the day and night bombing raids across Germany. The various leaders were also attentive to their own Air Force prescriptions for success against Germany. Bomber Command would implement the area bombing campaign at night. And the USAAF would deliver massed daylight aerial bombardment against Germany with its multi-engine, long range, Norden equipped bombers.

Both President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill supported the Allied bombing offensive. At the very least they thought it would, perhaps, buy time until a serious land campaign on the continent could be mounted. Politically, it helped appease Stalin and the Soviets who were expending enormous resources holding down the Wehrmacht in the East. But in order to buy time, Bomber Command, and later, the USAAF, would have to tackle targeting Germanys spread out industry and learn to negotiate the inhospitable skies above a defended land. All while learning to navigate massive bomber streams from cloudy England to the ever changing weather patterns of Northern Europe.

Targeting and its Evolution

Early targeting was developed by the RAF Bomber Command and concentrated on industrial centers to little effect. In order to address both, navigation issues, and targeting issues, Bomber Command relooked at target locations, navigational aids, and developed best practices. Area Bombing would lessen the burden on new bomber navigators. Easy reference points would be adopted from existing German terrain, architecture, and city lay outs. And eventually, the RAF would use target marking aircraft such as the De Havilland Mosquito, to fly ahead of the bomber streams, and acting as a Pathfinder, lay out trails for the navigators and pilots to follow.

 Once the USAAF arrived, General Hap Arnold and the Eighth Air Force developed a strategy leveraging the capability of the multi-engine long range bombers and early operations were all based out of England. In addition, the Fifteenth Air Force arrived in Italy during 1943-1944 and the Bomber Offensive began to yield results, especially against communications and transportation targets. The Americans had paid particular attention to the misfortunes and early errors of the RAF. But this is not to say the Americans had learned those lessons, rather, they observed and executed without implementing RAF recommended tactics and suggestions. Thus, for the USAAF, 1943 was a baptism by fire with some difficult weeks and heavy losses for the new American long-range bombers.

American military-industry had provided their four engine long-range bombers with an incredible bomb sight; the Norden. This sight offered the USAAF a very real potential for precision bombing. The Norden bombsight, when tested in peacetime conditions, was affording the circular error probable (CEP: measurement of precision for weapons systems) of 75 meters. This was fantastical given the variables utilized. In wartime conditions the CEP expanded but was well within 1,000 feet of the aim point. The USAAF, with its new B-17 Super Fortresses and B-24 Liberator four-engine bombers, equipped with the Norden Mark XV bombsight, elected to wage its campaign against Germany in daylight, concentrating on precision targets.

The Luftwaffe: Luftflotte Reich and the Kammhuber Line

Awaiting the bomber streams of Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force was an air defense network that took time in the making. The Luftwaffe, and especially its fighter commanders, were culturally inculcated in a doctrine of the offensive. German BF-109 squadrons were hunters by nature. They had sizable success across the Low Countries, Poland, north Africa and during the Battle of Britain in 1940. Defending the skies above Germany was not necessarily, the position with which the Luftwaffe wished for. Earlier successes had been associated with offensives and in support of the Wehrmacht.

Within the Luftwaffe, the Jagdwaffe (Fighter Force) provided groups and squadrons in Western Europe, Norway, north Africa, the Mediterranean, and in Russia. As such, it was tremendously overstretched. Air Defense of the Reich was the responsibility of the Luftflotte (Air Fleet) Reich. Within this Air Fleet, the Luftwaffe assigned fighter squadrons, anti-aircraft artillery, search lights, and early warning radar. As the war progressed, so too did the air defense network in Germany.

The Kammhuber Line was the night air defense network specifically established to defend against the RAF Bomber Commands night campaigns across Germany. General Kammhuber, General of Night Fighters, established an interdiction zone across northern Germany and the Low Countries with accompanying searchlights, sound locators, anti-aircraft artillery, and radar equipped night fighters. At the height of German night fighter operations, no more than 350 fighters[4] were ever assigned. Despite their low numbers, the Luftwaffe night fighters would take a tremendous toll on Bomber Command.

As for daytime defenses against the USAAF, the Luftwaffe had a robust defense arrayed against the Allied bomber streams. By September 1943 8,876 of Germanys excellent 88-mm guns supported by a further 24,500 light flak guns, 7,000 searchlights[5] and an additional 300-400 Luftwaffe day fighters were available to meet the Combined Bomber Offensive.

RAF Bomber Command and the USAAF: Different Techniques

When comparing the RAF Bomber Commands area bombing approach with that selected by the USAAFs precision bombing approach, area bombing receives tremendous criticism as it targeted cities. Many have argued that the USAAFs precision bombing techniques were far more effective. However, as historian Anthony Verrier argued in The Bomber Offensive in 1968, the terms area bombing, precision bombing, and selective bombing are misleading, because they imply absolutes.[6] Bomber Command targeted cities for certain, whereas the USAAF made every attempt to target specific points within or on the outskirts of cities that were directly associated with military manufacturing.

However, an important element is often glossed over, when comparing Bomber Command with the USAAF. Bomber Command was the principal force associated with mounting anything offensive in nature between the years of 1939 to 1943. Further, Bomber Command was far more capable of operating at night, and by 1944 was fully utilizing at least three navigational and blind bombing aids such as GEE, Oboe, and H2S. The USAAF in 1943 was essentially a fair weather bomber force; they possessed the very fine Norden bombsight which required clear line of sight from the bomb aimer to the release point and associated targets. Of note, the Roosevelt administration shared (Lend Lease) tremendous amounts of material, aircraft, tanks, and other sundry items. But they did not ever share the Norden bombsight with their British friends.

The Alliance often mutually supported one another and would hit the same targets at different times in a given period. But Bomber Command maintained its independence and Harris was not inclined to deviate from the area bombing technique nor the strategy of destroying German cities and dehousing the laborers of essential German war making industry. 8th Air Force, by May 1944, had begun a campaign against German synthetic fuel and oil[7]. Bomber Command and the USAAF were redirected in June 1944 towards targets in Western Europe. Much to the dismay of Harris, Bomber Command was to siphon off whole Bomber Groups to hit French railways and Belgian ports. Harris would begrudgingly hit the targets mandated with the intent to return to the area bombing of German cities. And 8th Air Force would return to its oil campaign.

Operation Overlord: D-Day Preparations

Allied airpower was fully committed to the preparations for Operation Overlord, the Allied landings in Normandy France during June 1944. It was during this re-missioning period that the Allied Bomber Offensive, however much their Commanders believed in concomitant strategic theories of employing bombers, realized they really were in a supporting effort and not the main effort; this would solely be the purview of the Allied Ground Forces. Berlin was avoided during this preparatory period and targets were selected across Western Europe in order to assist Overlord.

The Combined Bomber Offensive was ostensibly, an insurance policy for the Normandy landings. The 8th Air Force and Bomber Command would reorient its priority targets to those that would hinder the planned landings on the European continent. Both the USAAF and Bomber Command were against taking pressure off of Germany in order to strike railroads and communication centers in France. However, they obliged as ordered and the results were significantly beneficial to the Allied ground forces. The targets selected included the French and Belgian transportation and communications networks. As the attack on petroleum centers was the focus of the USAAF, they bombed the French rail system when weather prohibited daylight attacks of German petroleum centers. 15th Air Force, operating out of Italy would strike petroleum targets in Romania and Bomber Command would attack railyards and marshaling centers for a two week period. Attacks on the rail system in western France were particularly effective, and by mid-June it had ceased to operate.[8]

Once D-Day had proven successful, Bomber Command and the USAAF returned to its bombing campaigns. A further directive amending the Casablanca Allied Air Campaign strategy was issued. Titled Pointblank, it prioritized the targets with the number one priority being the destruction of the Luftwaffe fighter force and the fighter production facilities, followed by attacks on German petroleum and synthetic oil and fuel manufacturing.

A Return to Germany: Oil and Dresden

Harris ignored much of both directives and continued the night attacks against German cities. The USAAF, however, concentrated its B-17s and B-24s against both, the Luftwaffe and the factories associated with fighter production while simultaneously striking Germanys petroleum facilities. The most significant change from 1943 to the summer of 1944 was that the Allies finally had long-range fighter escorts in the Merlin-engined P-51 Mustang and the heavy P-47 Thunderbolt. By the end of 1944 and into early 1945, the USAAF was almost exclusively focused on a campaign against German oil; the synthetic fuel for the air and ground machines of the Wehrmacht. This, the Allies concentrated on, until the end of the war. In focusing on the petroleum facilities, the Allied Bombers forced the Luftwaffe to curtail flight hours and the Wehrmacht to leave many of its armored vehicles idle in motor pools for lack of fuel. Bomber Command participated in the anti-petroleum campaign as well, however, Harris adamantly continued the area bombing of Germany. As many cities were razed, Bomber Command updated target lists and added other cities.

The finals months of the war saw Bomber Command destroy a city which would have repercussions across the Alliance and the RAF. The 7th largest city in Germany in 1945 was Dresden. It was a culturally important city with a rich history. Bomber Command planners treated Dresden as they did numerous the other cities they had attacked; it would simply be another target. It was selected because it made the list of industrial centers remaining in Germany. It was hardly an industrial city of any value, nevertheless, it was flattened. The news spread across the RAF, USAAF, London and Washington. Dresden was reported as a terror attack and nothing more. Its reverberations finally reached Churchill who requested an immediate review of the area bombing campaign. The war was finally winding down. With peace came a review; research, bombing surveys, and after action reports. The wars end saw acclaim for some. And severe criticism for others. Harris, RAF Bomber Command, and the area bombing campaign came in for review.

Criticisms: Area Bombing and Precision Bombing

Criticisms of the bombing offensive have included the acknowledged argument that precision was hardly ever achieved. Further critiques identified the bombing offensive invariably included horrible civilian casualties, and most alarmingly, that German industrial efforts actually increased every six months thereafter. Although the criticisms are certainly warranted, the period between 1942 and the Normandy landings in June 1944, the Allied bombing offensive did in fact yield significant effects on the German war making capacity in the East and across Europe overall. The Luftwaffe, who bore the brunt of the Allied aerial offensive, had to dramatically shift resources from southern Europe and especially on the Eastern Front, in order to defend the homeland. German men and women were dedicated to manning defensives across industrial centers. Over a million personnel manned over 35,000 anti-aircraft batteries. And the campaign wrested control of the skies over Europe from the Luftwaffe to the Allies. The Allied aerial campaign and the associated sacrifices made by the RAF, RCAF, and USAAF prepared the conditions for the Allied pushes into Germany from the East and West.

Bomber Command and Arthur Harris received much criticism during and after the war for area bombing typically included the civilian loss of life on the ground. And much credit, in the moral argument, has been given to the USAAF and their election to bomb with precision, having avoided area bombing altogether. The USAAF did participate in area bombing attacks on occasion with much the same results as Bomber Command. But the distinction ends rather abruptly when, in the course of the entire Second World War, the USAAF fire bombed every major Japanese city and industry killing more Japanese civilians than both the atomic bomb casualty figures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

The essential question with respect to the Allied Bombing Offensive during the Second World War should be related to the concept of total war rather than the effects. How did the bomber fit in to the concept of total war? Douhet had first proposed strategic bombing as a decisive aspect of total war. He hinted that bombers could ravage a nation from the air while its ground forces waited on the periphery. This, in order to avoid the carnage that was the Great War. From both Churchills and Roosevelts conferences, it is apparent that both wished to avoid the casualty figures of Verdun and the Somme. The Allied Bombing Offensive provided the space and time for the Allies Armies to sort themselves out for their eventual investment on the European continent.  With regard to the matter of time, one could only imagine the progress of the war should the Allied bombing campaign have never been undertaken.

Conclusion

The terminology used between Bomber Command and the USAAF led to some very sharp differences in their approaches to Douhets theories. In the USAAF, advocates of precision bombing fully believed in the Norden bombsight, and subsequently, were also champions of the strategic effects of airpower. Of the whole effort, Bomber Command bombed Germany by night as the USAAF by day. This was total war; an effort to destroy German industrial capacity, communications networks, synthetic fuel, rail yards, ports, airfields, and factories. And perhaps German morale. The Allied Bombing Campaign was done with the technology of the day and the technology didnt always match up with the understanding of theory. The Bombing Campaign was indeed an offensive; the Allied Air Forces owned the initiative and executed a most aggressive and thorough application of airpower across the full spectrum air operations.

The results of the Combined Bomber Offensive did not inhibit Germanys capacity for production of war making material. German industry was spread out far beyond the Ruhr valley and didnt come online (fully mobilized for war) until well after 1942. Modern industrial capacity was simply not very well understood by many of the target planners. Bomb damage assessment of the Ruhr campaign was often overestimated. So too was the claim that the bombers could win the war. The Allied Combined Bomber Offensive couldnt win the war as the single instrument in the Allies arsenal. German fighter production actually increased as the Bomber Offensive increased its activities. As such, critics point out the manufacturing increases by Germany as a measure of the Bomber Offensives failure. However, any discussion as to the effects of the Bomber Offensive must return to the original intent of the overall strategy by the Allies. On balance, Bomber Command and the USAAF accomplished the following: the Luftwaffe was fatally weakened; German transportation was successfully interdicted; the submarine and V-weapons successfully combated from the air; the German economy increasingly eroded in the year-long conquest of mainland Europe.[9]

What decreased were efficiencies in distribution of German material. Second and third order effects included a forced dispersal of manufacturing, husbanding of certain assets such as fighters for homeland defense, and logistics/communications issues that hindered effective command and transport. A most important facet of the Allied Air Offensive was that it may not have decreased production to the degree anticipated by the various Air Force planners, but it certainly emplaced limits as to how much could ever be produced. Fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, Albert Speer, the former Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, from his jail cell in Spandau Prison wrote:

The real importance of the air war consisted in the fact that it opened a second front long before the invasion of Europe. That front was the skies over GermanyThe unpredictability of the attacks made the front gigantic.[10]

 

It was these effects that significantly contributed to the Allies victorious march into Berlin. Regardless of the semantics, British and American bombers struck Germany. And they repeatedly struck every aspect of the German society from government buildings, to marshalling yards, ports, factories, roads, power plants, to cities and residences. In 1939, after the German Blitz against London, the world, which had slept through the bombing of Guernica in 1937 was suddenly awake. Soon Birmingham, Belfast, Coventry, Glasgow, Sheffield, and Swansea would be added. For the remainder of the war, the British people didnt raise too many objections against the area bombing of German cities. A few raised their voices. RAF aircrew didnt much care for it either; it was a task that had to be done. Randall Hansen in his work, Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945, certainly took issue with the Bomber Offensive. He judges it amoral. And many do. But the Russians, who surely benefitted from the Allied Bomber Offensive, as it simply tied down more and more Luftwaffe fighters for home defense as opposed to the Eastern Front, didnt judge it amoral. Especially with the loss of 27 million of her own men, women, and children in the most epic struggle in human history. Regardless of the moral aspects associated with the Allied strategic bombing of Germany, the campaign was indeed, tremendously effective.


Bibliography

Bowman, Martin W, Voices in Flight: Daylight Bombing Operations 1939-1942, Pen and Sword, Barnsley: 2014

Hallion, Richard P, Strike From the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack 1911-1945, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.: 1989

Hansen, Randall, Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-45, Doubleday Canada, 2008

Hastings, Max, Bomber Command: Churchills Epic Campaign, The Inside Story of the RAFs Valiant Attempt to End the War, Touchstone, New York: 1979

Hecks, Karl, Bombing 1939-1945: The Air Offensive Against Land Targets in World War II, Robert Hale, London: 1990

Murray, Williamson and Millett, Alan R. A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge: 2000

Overy, R.J., The Air War: 1939-1945, Stein and Day, Briarcliff Manor: 1980

Overy, Richard, Why The Allies Won, Norton and Company New York: 1995

Richards, Denis, The Hardest Victory: RAF Bomber Command in the Second World War, Norton and Company, New York: 1994

Saundby, Sir Robert, Air Marshal, Air Bombardment: The Story of Its Development, Harper and Brother, New York: 1961

Weinberg, Gerhard L., A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1994

Verier, Anthony, The Bomber Offensive: The Exciting Saga of the American and British Bomber Offensive against Germany from 1939 to 1945, Macmillan Company, London: 1968



[1] Saundby, Sir Robert, Air Marshal, Air Bombardment: The Story of Its Development, Harper and Brother, New York: 1961 p.145

[2] Hecks, Karl, Bombing 1939-1945: The Air Offensive Against Land Targets in World War II, Robert Hale, London: 1990 p.93

[3] Ibid p.81

[4] Hastings, Max, Bomber Command: Churchill’s Epic Campaign, The Inside Story of the RAF’s Valiant Attempt to End the War, Touchstone, New York: 1979 p. 236

[5] Ibid p.241

[6] Verier, Anthony, The Bomber Offensive: The Exciting Saga of the American and British Bomber Offensive against Germany from 1939 to 1945, Macmillan Company, London: 1968 p.321

 [7] Murray, Williamson and Millett, Alan R. A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge: 2000 p.328-329

[8] Ibid p.327

[9] Overy, R.J., The Air War: 1939-1945, Stein and Day, Briarcliff Manor: 1980 p.152

[10] Hastings, Max, Bomber Command: Churchill’s Epic Campaign, The Inside Story of the RAF’s Valiant Attempt to End the War, Touchstone, New York: 1979 p. 241











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