Questions on 8th AF Swinemünde raid on 12 March 1945

[Juha]

Thanks a lot again, Chris.
Delmenhorst gives 3.211 1000lb GP bombs dropped on Swinemünde if I calculated the figures right, and in Your list there are 3.293 those bombs. So it is still possible to accept both, even if that means that 97,5% of 1000lb GPs were dropped on Swinemünde. The problem is those 18 70 Incd dropped by 2AD according to Delmenhorst’s message. Those suit the description of M47A2 (an incendiary bomb of 70lb nominal weight), but according to Freeman, it was not used by 8th AF. But in Freeman’s War Manual there is surprisingly little on bombs when one remembers that the original raison d’être of 8th was the bombing, so there might be other bombs which suited in the description or maybe 500XII in Your list means M12 cluster. According to Freeman M12 was a cluster of 6lb M69 incendiary bombs. He doesn’t tell how many bombs there were in one cluster but 70*6lb makes 420lb, add to weight of the case or other material which keeps the cluster together one gets enough close to 500lb that the cluster might have got to nominal 500lb range. After all the M17 cluster had 110 4lb M50A1s. But according to Your list 2AD dropped only 2 500XII and only 6 500lb bombs altogether and there are 20 500lbs in Delmenhorst's list. Maybe at some level there has been a clerical error. Or maybe there just wasn’t column for every type of bombs in the loading sheets, so some were put down in the column the clerk thought as the nearest equivalent.
But You both seemed to agree that there were no fragmentation bombs and that's the most important info to me just now because of the book review. The other info is also important and have greatly enhanced my knowledge on the Swinemünde attack on which I knew next to nothing only a few weeks ago.
So again thanks a lot for Your input and effort
Juha