Operation Steinbock question

[Graham Boak]

1 out of every 2 bombs did not hit the right country. Only one in five hit a target the size of London. One aircraft lost for every 2 ton of bombs that did hit London, plus whatever accuracy was obtained on the other missions. That's close to one aircraft lost for every two sorties on target.

Whatever the sufferings of Londoners, or indeed Bristolians and others, that's not a successful bombing campaign.

[BC]

Dr Alfred Price in Blitz on Britain (Ian Allan, 1977, p170) says during the first 5 months of 1944 air raid casualties in Britain totalled 1,556 killed and 2,916 seriously wounded. More than half of these resulted from five concentrated attacks on London commencing with that of 18 Feb.
Losses amounted to more than 300 aircraft, about 60% of the number available at the beginning of the operation.
The Luftwaffe, he states, lost approximately one bomber and four trained crewman for every five British civilians killed on the ground.

BC

[RT]

The more general question is hv ALL strategic bombings failed ???
Put apart the moral question, it seems..

Rémi

[Graham Boak]

Define failure. The Strategic Bombing Survey of Germany concluded that it had been a success. It is difficult to argue with the success of the B-29 against Japan.

If the criteria is the defeat of a nation by strategic bombing alone, then the answer is that it has never been tried. Wisely, I feel. It is argued that the retreat of the Serbian forces from Kosovo with no direct action other than aerial attack proved the principle. Others disagree, but then there will always be disagreements over such involved matters.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by RT

The more general question is hv ALL strategic bombings failed ???
Put apart the moral question, it seems..

Rémi

Try to get hold of a recent paperback "The Wages of Destruction" by Adam Tooze. It's about the economy of the Third Reich and includes an interesting discussion of the impact of Allied bombing.

[RT]

THks Nik for the hint try to get this one,

Graham when I wrote my message I think about the Serbian case, Serbia hv to lay down when International.com , read the USA, decide to put them dow, any mean they use they fail, Concerning Germany nd Japan man could think that when they decided, or forced to be defensive they hv lost the war nd by far no strategic war hv been engaged against them at that time.

"nation by strategic bombing alone, then the answer is that it has never been tried"
England tried nd failed nd without the back-up of the US this strategy to invest considerable assets in the bombers could hv been the only way to loose the War for U.K..

Remi

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by BC

The Luftwaffe, he states, lost approximately one bomber and four trained crewman for every five British civilians killed on the ground.

BC

Two things need to be considered.

Firstly, those 300+ plus bombers appearantly include aircraft lost in the accidents/non-enemy related causes, and one has to wonder what a bomber crashing on takeoff at France and becoming a write-off would mean 4 lost bomber crews in each and every case, like it would be if the bomber would be lost over England. I belive Price is actually quoting some Churchillian paper from the given wartime period, actually, estimates on enemy losses, with a bit of a political spin on it. It would be most interesting to see the actual figures.

Secondly, it would appear the targets included a good deal of other things than just civillians - Londond docks for example, and major seaports - so a bizarre comparison of dead civvies vs. dead aircrews is odd, and simplifies things as well.

The '60% lost' figure is also nice, save for it appears to be a smokescreen for the fact that overall, the losses were not particularly heavy by any standard - we`re speaking of a period of five months here, which works out to 60 bombers lost per month, of which about 40-50 lost per month to enemy action over Britain. That`s considerably less than the losses suffered between July-October 1940, and quite miniscule compared to the big picture. Bomber Command lost as many, or even twice as many during single raids over Germany, rather than a month..

If my Excell tables on German bombers (ie. Kampfgeschwadern only) losses are correct (I think there are some small glithces, but the number is apprx. good, certainly not less), it shows for example 191 bombers lost to enemy action, 148 to non-enemy action, and 169 were written off to overhauls and repairs. 508 in a single month to all causes, and yet the bomber force alltogether stood at some 2200 aircraft by the end of January.

From Jan-May, the figures are ~881 enemy, ~700 n-e, ~1063 to Überholung, total ~2644. It would also appear that some 150 bombers were transferred from bomber units to others during the period.

[Juha]

Hello
As RT wrote the main point is was the damage done worth of resources used. And IMHO they were not. The 2 late Feb attacks on London were rather successful and time to time some railway infrastructures were hit or blocked but usually bombing was very bad and the British got idea of intended targets only after interrogating PoWs and/or from maps found in wrecks.
On the attacks on harbours which Kurfürst mentioned, according to Ken Wakefield in his article on Oper. Steinbock in The Blitz Then and Now Vol 3
29/30 April on Plymouth, 101 sorties flown by LW, 8 tonnes of bombs hit Plymouth
14/15 May on Bristol, 91 sorties, 3 tonnes hit Bristol
15/16 May on Portsmouth, 106 sorties, 1,4 tonnes hit Portsmouth
22/23 May on Portsmouth, 104 sorties, 1,5 tonnes hit Portsmouth
27/28 May on Weymouth, 28 sorties, 13 tonnes hit Weymouth
28/29 Mat Falmouth, 51 sorties, missed altogether but 18 KIA, 6 MIA and 6 badly injured in Torquay

With that sort of accuracy IMHO the attcks were not worth of fuel used, even less so to crews lost. To my understanding the critical factor to LW was crew casualties, they had difficulties to replace combat ops capable lost crews.

Juha

Ps Brian Bines
Thanks a lot for Your statistics.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Juha

On the attacks on harbours which Kurfürst mentioned, according to Ken Wakefield in his article on Oper. Steinbock in The Blitz Then and Now Vol 3

29/30 April on Plymouth, 101 sorties flown by LW, 8 tonnes of bombs hit Plymouth.

What was the target that night ? Plymouth itself or dock installations and warships in the harbor ...? If I understand correctly Mr. Beale`s Kampfflieger book, it would seem that at least the Do 217s of III./KG 100 were targeting the harbor and warships on that night, and this series of raids on ports in late April/early May aimed at invasion shipping gathering in British ports and certainly not in British cities. Disraelihas a fitting quote about statistics, but it escapes me at the moment, yet it does make me wonder if your other statistics were arrived at in a similiar fashion.

There`s, of course, no arguement about that the Steinbock operation was a small operation, using very limited resources - ie. compare the ~4500 or so sorties flown in five months to the ~3700 night bomber sorties flown in September 1940 alone - yielding limited losses and limited gains.

[Graham Boak]

This may be an misunderstanding from language differences: the phrase "8 tonnes hit Plymouth" does not imply the city as opposed to the dockyard: it would be rather difficult to separate the two. Whether it excludes bombs that fell into the harbour I cannot say, but I would assume it includes all observed bombs falling there. Perhaps a relevant question would be how many ships were sunk (none, I believe) and how much damage was done to harbour installations?