Why did the Luftwaffe bomb... mud?

[RT]

AA Defence was not used to bring down the Bombers but for interdiction, the game is simple if you want to bomb the target you hv to go thru the fire wall , decision depends on how heavy is the wall it seems, to add that the more the bomber flew low the more AA is accurate, the more high the bomber flew the less accurate is the bombing

Remi

[Bill Walker]

I think the answer would lie mostly in bombing accuracy. The Luftwaffe was most likely not aiming at mud. Remember the well known studies of RAF bomb aiming accuracy in the early parts of the war. There is no reason to suspect the Luftwaffe was much different.

Can you supply dates for the examples you mention? Were there legitimate targets within a few miles of the mud?

[Bombphoon]

Originally Posted by Bill Walker

I think the answer would lie mostly in bombing accuracy. The Luftwaffe was most likely not aiming at mud. Remember the well known studies of RAF bomb aiming accuracy in the early parts of the war. There is no reason to suspect the Luftwaffe was much different.

Can you supply dates for the examples you mention? Were there legitimate targets within a few miles of the mud?

Thanks for the replies.

There are too many examples to mention individually, but even in daytime raids, there are some odd choices of targets. In June 1942, a Do217 deliberately circled a small village in Leicestershire, in broad daylight, and then bombed a farm in the middle of the village, killing a bull. There were no factories, airfields, military camps in the vicinity for miles. Does this mean it was simply a Terrorangriff?

[Csaba B. Stenge]

Originally Posted by Bombphoon

Thanks for the replies.

There are too many examples to mention individually, but even in daytime raids, there are some odd choices of targets. In June 1942, a Do217 deliberately circled a small village in Leicestershire, in broad daylight, and then bombed a farm in the middle of the village, killing a bull. There were no factories, airfields, military camps in the vicinity for miles. Does this mean it was simply a Terrorangriff?

Most of the possible reasons were mentioned already.
But if we are talking about a single daylight intruder, don't forget another type of bombing. In many cases, the long range reconnaissance (Fernaufklärer) aircraft also flew with some bombs. These aircraft had no bomb aiming devices, so their aiming accuracy was extremely poor. (Such bombings based on the observer's visual estimation only.) Furthermore, the crews were very happy to release such ordnance as soon, as possible, since it is greatly decreased their performance.

[Kapper]

Bombphoon,

Beam bending is a ligitimate reason.

The German navigation at night in breif terms, involved the aircraft picking up two signals from the mainland that are sent from location wide apart. When the signals intersect over the target they drop their bombs. The Britsh learnt how to bend the beams away from the target so that the bombs were dropped in less damaging areas.

See the attached link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams

Regards,

Craig...

[Laurent Rizzotti]

In June 1942 a TerrorAngriff on a small village could be the answer.

Here is another example, a story told by a gunner of a B-24 of 15th AF.

He said that during a raid against Ploesti, his bomber started to have engine failure. The crew decided to continue towards the target but to stay in formation, the pilot asked the air bomber to get rid of one bomb to reduce the weight of the bombload.

They were then flying over Yugoslavia, over barren high country. The crew could see nothing but grass and dropped the bomb. Then they noticed just along their flight path a small isolated farm thay had not seen before. The bomb fell right on it and exploded. Most of the crew were sick when they saw that.

Now consider how the inhabitants of the farm will see the event. You are living in a small farm remote of every worthwile target. Hundreds of bombers are flying by and suddenly one drops one bomb that hits perfectly the small target that is your farm, with nothing else around to be targetted. For sure you will think the farm was the target, and the American bombers were very accurate (sic).

[Brian Bines]

Looking through AD(I)K there are some examples of the reasons already mentioned:-

Report 354/1942 composite on three KG2 crews - In mid Oct. 1942 crew of U5+IS were scheduled to attack a small town to the N/E of London (daylight ). However having crossed the coast they overflew a small lake and then approached a large country house which they bombed from 150 ft. This was despite low cloud which meant they could have carried on to the primary target.
Later the same report said there was no organised interrogation of returning crews, an officer or NCO of the Gefechstab would ask what luck they had. Usually the B would claim the objective had been reached whether this was true or not.

Report 99/1944 dated 1-3-1944 on morale of crews on London attacks - claimed crews had a 'belly full' and realised attacks on were having little effect on London. N.B looking through the morale section on individual reports only a few crewmen are shown as having poor or fair morale.

Report 153/1944 on crew of 2/KG54 14/15-3-1944 - This claimed that some crews found London unhealthy and bombed indiscriminately but claimed to have hit the target. This led to returning pilots and observers being more closely interrogated on return including on target flares. There being a hint that a different coloured flare would be included in the target markers.

Report 160/1944 on Pathfinders dated 5-4-1944 - included a section on I/SKG10 ops. and notes prior to the installation of FUG.25a some pilots claimed wonderful results but were not over the target. Now pilots who did not understand the function of the equipment found themselves in trouble as the Egon procedure fixed their position at point of release.

Report 239/1944 dated 30-5-1944 on Morale noted - crews were unhappy with the Pathfinders being aware of failure of the raids on Bristol (decoy site) and Hull.

So I guess some crews did not press on regardless, there were failures of navigation, marking and weather forecasts, decoy sites, new crews over awed by the defences. In the KG 51 history a Me410 Bf notes how tough London's defences had become in 1944. Did not the RAF have many of the same problems untill the low level Mosquitos started to check the marking and redirect, something the Lufwaffe did not do.

[Bombphoon]

Thanks for all your answers chaps.