The momentous cost of Bomber Command.

[SES]

Hi Bill,
Thank you very much, MOST interesting quotes, but some parties may still not be convinced or claim that they were extracted under moderate physical duress ;-).
bregds
SES

[Bill Walker]

I suspect that for many of them the greatest duress came from their own egos. "It wasn't my fault...."

[Allan125]

Tony

Thank you for giving us the background information to your question - perhaps things might have turned out differently with some replies if you had put your current reply in with your question.

"Recall the thread was triggered by Fahey's publication of the first ever analysis of the momentous cost of BC. This raised the question whether and how our opinions about BC should now be revised".

From the benefit of hindsight everybody can see how things could be done differently - my opinion is they did a necessary job with the tools and orders they were given. As, no doubt, did your father and others in 2 Lincolns, none of whom knew the war would end in 6 weeks and war is a messy business. And would those attacks costing 24 lives still have gone ahead even if they knew when VE-Day was - yes it would!

"The question that arose then was later verbalised into this: why did the Allies, with control of the air and unlimited resources, lose so many men, and find it so difficult, to advance against the remnants of a beaten German Army within six weeks of the end of the war?"

Simply put - they were fighting an invader of their country, with draconian measures being taken if they tried to fall back without orders, which must have concentrated the mind somewhat!!

Bill Walker appears to have found some quotes from leading German military figures with different views to yours.

Allan

[tcolvin]

Allan,
I thought this thread was finished, but it has sprung back to life.

Bill Walker's quotes from leading Germans do not support BC, and are not different from mine.

An analysis divides their reasons into four main (non-exclusive) areas;

1. Transportation got 13 votes (Galland, Jahn, Guderian, v Seidel, Veith, Wolff, v Vietinghoff, GM of Junkers Italy, Sperrle, Bodenschatz, Krupp, Dollmann, Goering)
2. Oil got 7 votes (Galland, Jahn, v Massow, Veith, v Vietinghoff, Goering, Wille)
3. Production got 6 votes, but production must include oil (Schacht, Thyssen, Wolff, Henschell, Siemens-Schukert, Steel director)
4. Unspecified strategic bombing got 7 votes. I don't know if 'strategic' includes transportation, although it must include oil (Lindemann, Kolb, v Rohden, Thomas, Kesselring, Ibel, Goering).

It is clear that the biggest number of votes for why Germany lost go to Transportation and Oil.


Both of these targets were, however, strongly rejected by BC as 'panaceas'. BC and Churchill/Lindemann were adamant that area bombing of city centres was about to end the war. BC must not be diverted to tactical bombing which had its own TAFs under Leigh Mallory.
Spaatz commanding 8 and 15 USAAFs, and not BC, chose Oil.
The AEAF and SHAEF, and not BC, chose Transportation.

Zuckerman produced an entirely convincing analysis of the effect of bombing on the Southern Italian and Sicilian railroads. Zuckerman argued that “the destruction of the railway network of W Europe should become a prime strategic target sui generis, and not just a series of targets related to Overlord” (Apes to Warlords, page 222).
Leigh-Mallory, Portal, Tedder and Eisenhower agreed with Zuckerman. But BC strongly disagreed and used one argument after another against it.

1. Harris sent a letter to Portal on January 13, 1944 listing 22 reasons why BC was not designed for, and was unsuited to doing, anything except area bombing of city centres.
2. This got everyone behind Harris' objection - the Air Ministry's Director of Bomber Operations (Bufton); the Intelligence Wing of the Ministry; the Enemy Objectives Unit of the US Economic Warfare Dept (Kindleberger, Rostow and Kayson); the Objectives Dept of the British Ministry of Economic Warfare (Lawrence); and Slessor in the Med.
3. Harris argued that BC at night was inaccurate and had an average error of 1,000 yards. It could not therefore do the job of bombing marshalling yards and bridges, and would kill 40,000 French civilians and wound 120,000 in making the attempt. Zuckerman showed that the calculation was fallacious and the right estimate was that 12,000 civilians might be killed and 6,000 seriously wounded. (Actual casualties were 10,000 killed and wounded).
4. The next argument was that military traffic on the railway was so small a proportion that it could not be significantly effected in any relevant period of time. The attack on railway centres would have to be continued for 12 months before the German war effort could be adversely affected. Kindleberger argued that the Germans had so many locomotives that they would be able always to get military traffic through to the front. Zuckerman pointed to the fact that in southern Italy the railroad system was paralysed even though there were plenty of locomotives.
5. Zuckerman pushed for the Transportation Plan to be generalised across the Reich. Bufton stated Harris' contrary view; 'Attacks on railway centres in the Reich will represent effort dissipated in some measure against one of the most invulnerable targets of the German economic system. The fact that the railway system is the one common denominator of the whole enemy war effort is a clear indication of its unsuitability as a vital target system in strategic attack” (Apes to Warlords page 244).
6. BC argued they could and would smash Germany through night raids on German cities, while the American Strategic Forces would do so by precise attacks on the arsenals of German air power – aircraft and aircraft component factories, and on Germany's synthetic oil plants. Not one member of the intelligence etc. staffs, nor even Tooey Spaatz, suggested prior to D-Day that the oil offensive would yield immediate results in the military field. That came later.
7. So Portal and Eisenhower decided on the Transportation Plan because they thought it the only target that could affect the Germans in the field in the first month of the invasion. On March 27, the Combined Chiefs of Staff gave control of the strategic air forces to Eisenhower. But Harris and Spaatz still went on arguing, and it was not until April 17, 1944 that Eisenhower directed implementation of the Transportation Plan and Pointblank. But still nothing but Pointblank was implemented. BC raised the spectre of massive French civilian casualties which Churchill sent to FDR on May 7, 1944. FDR replied on May 11 that it was Eisenhower's decision.
8. Harris finally got the message, complied, and implemented well starting in earnest on the eve of D-Day.
9. But Harris was not convinced, and soon topped bombing railroads to concentrate on area bombing. This came to light in an analysis by Zuckerman of how the Germans managed the build-up for the Ardennes counteroffensive, which could never have happened had the Transportation Plan continued to be implemented. Harris did not speak the truth in his memoirs when he said he had always supported the Transportation Plan.
10. Zuckerman saw the light when he studied the Southern Italian and Sicilian railroad results. From then on he argued that Transportation should be the sole target for all of the Allied strategic heavy bombers. German industry would then grind to a halt without the need for bombing cities or factories, because inputs and outputs could not be moved. It seems the Germans in Bill Walker's list of quotes agreed with Zuckerman. I certainly do, but my point has always been that destroying the Achilles' heel of transportation or electrical generation and supply was a job for TAF Mosquitos, which made BC redundant. Fahey shows how much money that would have saved. Tony

[drgondog]

Tony - those are well reasoned arguments but lend themselves to post mortems. The clear message is that Harris, like Spaatz had enormous influence for their points of views and the political clout to advance their theories despite heavy losses.

There is no doubt that Transportation was a critical strategic resource, as well as Power, as well as the Petro/Chem industry.

The challenge is that each thesis had to have enough analytics behind them that the argument could a.) be easily grasped and b.) easily presented to Churchill and FDR.. otherwise they depend on the senior officers in charge to make the decisions and be accountable for the results.

To the last point, it was only possible AFTER the war to parse through the German production and logistics and perspectives to gain true insight to the relevance and resources which "could" have been wiser and better choices. Facts were hard to come by during the day to day parsing of bombing results.

[Juha]

Hello Tony
IMHO Mossie was not nearly as good as a heavy bomber against marshalling yards, one key target type of transport plan, which needed to be saturated with bombs to make them inoperative. Also some sturdy bridges/viaducts were easier to knock down with superheavy bombs, of which only Lancs were able to carry in ETO.

Didn’t notice that earlier
Quote:” that first arose in 1947, and which I finally answered to my own satisfaction only in 1995.

In 1947 as an 8-year-old living in Germany, I was taken by my father to a battlefield where his unit, 2 Lincolns in 3rd British Infantry Division had succeeded at great loss in breaking through the German defences on March 2, 1945. We placed flowers on the graves of 24 soldiers who had died that day and whose remains were soon moved to the Reichswald War Cemetery - the CWGC's largest.

The question that arose then was later verbalised into this: why did the Allies, with control of the air and unlimited resources, lose so many men, and find it so difficult, to advance against the remnants of a beaten German Army within six weeks of the end of the war?”

At least the Soviet system didn’t produce a sure answer, look http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ilomantsi, that battle ended 3 weeks before armistice between SU and Finland. Now Soviet losses might well have been only ½ of that mentioned in the article but still fairly high.

Juha

[Kutscha]

A comparison of the key issues raised in Hansen's account (Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-45) with those of Goebbels (diary) on the same subject follows:

Hansen: "It cannot be proved that bombing prevented the increase in arms production from being considerably greater than it was."

Goebbels: "The damage to our armaments potential is quite beyond repair"; "we are bombed day and night and damage to our ... armaments potential is very severe"; and "our armaments potential ... (is) being battered to such an extent that we shall be standing in a void."

Hansen: Destruction of cities "may have helped the war effort by releasing workers from non-essential occupations to work in the armaments industry."

Goebbels: "... bombed cities undergo pretty bad dislocation of public life as a result of which workers often stay away from their workbenches for weeks ... This explains the large production deficits we record"; "Destruction in the munitions industry can be more easily repaired than is the case with the disorganization in cities"; "the population ... is sunk in lethargy and looks upon events of the war with the greatest apathy. This is primarily due to months of uninterrupted enemy air bombing"; "Once again a major attack descended upon the Reich capital. One of the main targets was large munitions plants. The situation has become even more alarming in that one industrial plant after another has been set on fire."

Hansen: "The effects of these (British) raids on production (in the Ruhr) were minimal."

Goebbels: "... another exceedingly heavy (British) raid on Essen. This time Krupp has been hard hit"; "the night raid of the English on Dortmund has been extraordinarily heavy ... with industrial and munitions plants (having) been hit."

Hansen: "After two years, the effects of the (British) bomber dream was obvious to everyone but Harris himself."

Goebbels: "The Berlin munitions industry is still in bad shape. Alkett [which produced almost half of Germany's field pieces and was hit during a British raid] is almost completely destroyed"; "it is necessary that we overcome England's nerve-wracking air superiority"; "I cannot understand how the English can do so much damage."

Hansen: "They (the Americans) wanted to avoid hitting towns if they could"; "... the U.S. will not at any time direct (its) efforts towards area bombing."

Goebbels: "... frightful damage wrought daily by the American Air Force on unfortified and undefended German towns"; "The Americans over fly German territory almost unrestricted and are destroying one town after another"; "The Americans carried out heavy area bombing of (Berlin) causing fearful devastation. In extent, this raid was at least as heavy as the last terror raid."

Hansen: "Despite the failure of area bombing to deliver results ... it was clear, and increasingly so, that area bombing was not delivering results"; "... area bombing was a moral and strategic failure."

Goebbels: "... for in the last analysis all our setbacks are due to failure of the Luftwaffe to stop allied air attacks"; "Our entire military predicament is due to enemy air superiority"; "The reason for our military decay is to be found in the air terror."

more: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...g=content;col1

Esprit de Corps Sept, 2010 by Michael Jarvis

[Bill Walker]

Thanks for these Kutscha. I'm not sure Goebbels was a great expert on production and military matters in general, but it clearly shows the bombing campaign was worrying high German officials. That alone counts for something.

If I may offer a general comment:

Global war is a complicated affair, with a need to deploy multiple weapons and methods in multiple locations. It is easy with what we know today to calculate what worked and what didn't, but at the time this information was not always available to the leaders on both sides. They had to try everything they could at every chance they got, or risk falling behind. I think that in the end it wasn't any one weapon or tactic that won or lost the war. Instead, it was the greater willingness of the Allies to try a bit of everything, and their greater ability to try a bit of everything (because of production capability, manpower resources, training strategies, etc.) that won the war.

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Juha

IMHO Mossie was not nearly as good as a heavy bomber against marshalling yards, one key target type of transport plan, which needed to be saturated with bombs to make them inoperative. Also some sturdy bridges/viaducts were easier to knock down with superheavy bombs, of which only Lancs were able to carry in ETO.
Juha

Two points.
1). In his December 1943 report on the Sicilian and Southern Italian railways that persuaded Tedder and Eisenhower to insist on the Transportation Plan over BC's objections, Zuckerman wrote; "The two factors which contributed most to the outcome of the offensive ... were the destruction and damaging of rolling-stock and repair facilities. Largely because of this, the Sicilian and Southern Italian rail systems had become practically paralysed by the end of July 1943 - as a result of attacks on only six railway centres, Naples, Foggia, San Giovanni, Reggio, Messina, Palermo. ..... so too was the finding (unexpected) that the most economic way to disrupt communications was not to cut lines, but to attack large railway centres which contain important repair facilities and large concentrations of locomotives and rolling stock.... The efficiency of a railway system ... appears to fall very rapidly when bombing simultaneously leads to an increase in the calls upon, and a decrease in the capacity of the repair facilities."

2) Zuckerman does not specify the weight of bomb used in paralysing the Sicilian and Southern Italian railway system, but I would be surprised if any bomb larger than the 4,000 lb (1,182kg) bomb was used on that task in mid-1943.
And please remember that this large bomb could be carried by the 54 Mosquito B Mk IVs that were modified by BC with a bulged bomb bay. So I believe the Mosquito was up to fulfilling the Transportation Plan had that aircraft been available in numbers - which it would have been in the absence of BC.

Tony

[Juha]

Tony
geography of Italy and France is very different and so were their rail networks and as Zuckermann writes, the most effective way to knock out a railway system was to attack big marshalling yards, repair works were usually at marshalling yards and usually there were plenty of rolling stocks there. And most effective way to do that was a massive attack with heavy bombers, so USAAF and RAF had the right tools for that.

Juha