effectiveness of WW2 air bombing of Germany

The bombing campaign absolutely, definitely, unquestionably helped shortening in the war.

At various points in the war, the bomber fleets knocked out factories, destroyed entire German towns and cities, severed railroad nets and communications, diverted production, forced withdrawal of numerous fighters, severly set back rocket research/production, mined sealanes, supported ground offensives, critically reduced fuel supplies, disrupted the u-boat campaign, delayed raw materials and supplies, a vast drain on the ammunition expenditure...I could go on. Saying all these things did not shorten the war by a single day strikes me as sheer folly.

In short, the German increase in production had more to do with switching from a lazy civilan production scheme, to a heavily centralized and coordinated war production under Speer and cohorts, than any failure of the Allied offensive.

 

Just some data to read and think about

Part from Was the British bombing offensive worth the costs in men and resources that were invested in it?

By Stephen Canning


The Happy Valley-Ruhr

The main pressure put on Harris after his assumption of command was to attack the Ruhr, the industrial heartland of Germany. After the success of Cologne, this was now considered feasible. However, the Ruhr was a more sprawling target with many significant towns and cities within the region, and would take far more than one raid to devastate. Bomber Command had to commit more resources and manpower to the offensive and there is still great debate over its success. Of the 43 major attacks, some 18,506 sorties were dispatched, 872 failed to return and 2,126 were damaged (26). 4.7 per cent was a high loss of aircraft and aircrew for any battle but the Ruhr was a particularly well defended and difficult target to hit. On some nights, 30 per cent of aircraft dispatched had come back damaged or failed to return (27). Hastings posed the question of; 'Who was winning this extraordinary contest between bombs and concrete?' and in return answered that; 'the struggle seemed as far as ever from any decisive conclusion'. This view clashed with Harris who termed the Ruhr campaign as 'a whole succession of catastrophes, which overcame the cities of the Ruhr'. Based on the evidence, it is fair to say that the Ruhr was dealt a series of crippling blows. Nevertheless, the Ruhr area specifically, and Germany in general, was a far from capitulation. The losses sustained in the Ruhr left Bomber Command a narrow margin with which to preserve the future fighting efficiency of the force. However, the Ruhr was one of the 'must be destroyed' targets and Bomber Command's high loss rate was considered acceptable against such a well-defended target. Compared to the losses suffered by the army taking part in the drive into the already devastated Ruhr by early 1944, Bomber Command's losses were extremely low. It was calculated that 400 acres of Germany had been destroyed in 1942. By 1943, this increased to 26,000 acres. Harris' daily availability of bombers rose from 593 in February 1943 to 787 in August 1943. This illustrates the rapid progression in the provision of men and resources into Bomber Command.

The Battle of Berlin was not merely an assault on a single city but a convenient title for a sustained struggle embracing targets all over Germany. Hastings contends the city was 'too large to lend itself to a second Hamburg; too deep in Germany to achieve similar concentrated attack against heavy opposition; and too difficult to hit accurately by means of H2S'. The operation was simply beyond Bomber Command's capabilities. In all, Bomber Command made sixteen major attacks on the German capital, fought in appalling weather and in conditions resembling none other in the history of warfare .

According to Harris, judging by the standards of the attack on Hamburg, Berlin was not an overwhelming success. With far more sorties, a far greater bomb load, and ten times as many casualties, Bomber Command appeared to have destroyed only a third of the area devastated during the attack on Hamburg .

The British bombing offensive was a long and bloody siege, which resulted in the death of fifty-five thousand five hundred and seventy three (1) men from the Royal Air Force.

The author´s message:

By the end of the war, Germany's cities lay in ruins. That in itself justifies the bombing campaign's worth in men and resources.

http://www.bomber-command.info/Quawra1.htm

 

Interesting topic, in fact, it was this very topic that I did my senior thesis on at school.

My conclusions were that while the strategic bombing campaign was successful in helping win the war against Germany, aside from breaking the Luftwaffe (not trying to downplay that), it was, generally, not decisive in stopping Germany's ability to wage war.

It has been estimated that the US Strategic Air Campaign consumed 30% of the war effort in Europe. On a pure cost/benefit analysis, one would have to say it was not worth the effort.

As has been mentioned before, 1944 saw the peak output of German production, which coincided with the peak of the tonnage dropped. German morale, either on the homefront or at the shooting front, never broke, even after the obliteration of large portions of cities like Hamburg, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Bremen, etc. German manufacturing centers adopted to the new threat by re-locating underground or disperal of factories.

However, the defeat of the Luftwaffe was a key by-product of the campaign. It unlocked the succesful invasion of Normandy, the same way that winning the U-Boat war paved the way for the succesful buildup of American forces and material into England.

I tend to think of the Strategic Bombing Campaign as similar to the Allied effort in Italy-It helped tie down and distract German resources and commitments that may have tipped the balance in other theaters. While neither was decisive in the defeat of Germany, each contributed in their own way, and provided the building blocks for the eventual victory of the Allied powers. They (Italian campaign, and Strategic Bombing) probably cost the Allies more resources then German to keep them sustained, but it was a price the Allies could afford to pay, and one that further stressed an already over-burdened German war machine.

 

Just curious as I agree with your assertation but what did you use for literature references ?

E

 

Everything I could get my hands on! Everything from The Survey of the Strategic Bombing Campaign done shortly after WWII, up to the most modern sources I could find. Memoirs from Harris, Eisenhower, Churchill, etc. Unit histories, when available, of the 8th AF and RAF units. As much as I could locate, within the time period I had to work with, went into my report.

Literally, the crux of my paper was how the view of the effectiveness of the effort changed over time. If one looks at the general body of writings on Strategic Bombing, one sees that from the period of 1946-1970 or so, it is almost exclusively "Pro-bombing", i.e. Bombing was crucial in winning the war, it contributed to Allied Victory immeasureably, etc.

Then, in the late 1960's/early 1970's, there was the start of the "bombing is not so effective" crowd. More and more writings chronicled that bombing was not a decisive as it had once been thought of, and that it was not the most efficient use of resources.

My theorey rested upon the idea that historians are products of their times, and that what was happening in the US at the time (Vietnam) impacted a great deal of contemporary writing. In short, during Operations Lindbacker 1 and 2 and Rolling Thunder, the US dropped 3 times the tonnage of bombs it dropped on Germany during WWII on undeveloped, 3rd world Vietnam, and could not subdue that country in submission or bringit to the peace table. My theory went on to state that recent historians operated under the assumption that if 3 times the amount of tonnage, dropped with greater precision and more sophisticated delivery platforms could not make Vietnam come to the peace table, how could 1/3 of the tonnage have had an appreciable effect on a modern country and economy 25 years prior?

One has to look at the time when the "pro-bombing" school was writing. It was post-war, there was an active arms-race, the space program was in its infancy, and the Air Force, the newest member of the US Armed Forces, was looking to establish itself quickly and immediately. It did not hurt to have recent wartime experiences for it to point back to and say "See, this is why we are relevent and deserving of funding and continued funneling of resources in our direction". In addition, when one wins the greatest war of modern times, who didn't want to pat themselves on the back and say "our commitment was THE MOST crucial"? Also, there had to be a justification for the tremendous outlay in men and material. Finally, when you look at a lot of the source material from the time period, it is either incomplete or not available.

I think the experience in Vietnam, where Strategic Bombing clearly failed against minimal opposition, clearly had an impact at critically re-evaluating the effects of aerial bombardment and its ability to supress and even destroy a country's ability to sustain war.

Of course, I wrote this nearly 15 years ago, and since then, we've seen air power used to devastating effect in Dessert Storm, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, which seems to have re-invigorated the idea that bombing from the air can have strategic implications. The debate certainly goes forward.

To reiterate, I certaily do not view the Allied Strategic Bombing campaign as having had no effect. It did have impact, but not the effect of being a decisive blow. It was complimentary to the overall Allied effort to defeat Germany totally, unequivicably, forcefully, and on all fronts simultanously.

 

Interesting. You did do research for the WW 2 section on the cities themselves that were bombed. Areas given, altitude of the attacking bombers and cities and terrain correct ? It all made a difference in the effectiveness in the bombing results achieved.

E

 

No, as the crux of my paper was aimed more at the historiography of the topic then a true analysis of the effectiveness of the campaign. This was due to the fact that I had only a 3 month window to write the paper, I was a struggling University student with little or no money, and I did not have access at the time to many primary sources of information. In order to develop my thesis, I needed to explain the subject, and then look at how the writing, reporting, and analysis of the subject changed over time, and what caused that shift in attitude.

Had I been blessed with additional time, a true research budget, and the ability to focus on this and nothing else in my life, I am sure I would have delved much deeper into the true effectiveness of the bombing campaign on a much more grainular level. As it was, I employed any and all available resources available to me.

And again, this was almost 13 years ago, so much has changed since then. I am sure with the rise in electronic information sources available, coupled with my since-developed research skills (I am a corporate research librarian), I could most likely do a more thorough and comprehensive report today. I am not sure if my results and conclusions would change, but it would be interesting to see what new sources would reveal.

 

Well, I think that the fighter-bomber raids were more important for the outcome of the war. Rather than the heavy 'precision' bombardment... It destroyed cities and some of the German infraestructure. But the small aircraft cut all supply lines, destroyed railroads and anything in the roads, avoiding the supplies already manufactured in 'bombed' factories to reach the front. The Allies (specially the Americans) I think succeeded in breaking Germany's industrial backbone in the second half of 1944, not before. Destroying every train loaded with tanks, ammunition and most important of all: petrol and diesel affected the war much more, as well fighter-bombers' raids against German air fields...

 

Well, in my small meaningless opinion..

I think bombing Germany was probably one of the best moves the Allies, RAF in particular, could have done. IIRC the Luftwaffe was bombing mainly military targets in the beginning of the BoB, to the point where Britain was on the edge of losing the entire war, before (again if I remember correctly) Liverpool was accidently bombed, to which the RAF retaliated by bombing Berlin. It enraged Hitler to the point of ordering the Luftwaffe to flatten Britain's cities, instead of their airfields and other real targets. That's probably what saved the British in my opinion, and then things went downhill for Germany. The Allies had enough bombs and bombers that if they dropped enough of them on German cities they would inevitably flatten the German industrial infastructure, as well as civilians. The Luftwaffe didn't have the might to do the same.

Also, I think all-out bombing of German cities on a massive scale scared the Luftwaffe into sending untrained, unexperienced pilots up into the air as quick as possible.

So in retrospect it seems the RAF's decision to carpet bomb Germany had more of a psychological effect on German High Command than it did on their actual industrial capacity.

My.. small.. opinion.

 

That's true.

In fact, the bombings had a moral effect on the German civilian, not so much meant to lower the moral of a soldier or pilote.

Maybe they destroyed some factories. But instead the production of tanks, weapons, artillery, ... doubled or tripled when the bombing was the heaviest.

At the end of the war - and in fact from the middle of 1944 - the Germans had a lot of airplanes, but no pilotes to fly them.

 

Heavy losses for Bomber Command:

From Williamson Murray Luftwaffe 1933-1945

In the five months of the battle of Berlin, Harrison´s forces lost 1,128 aircraft, nearly all four-engine bombers. These losses were only marginally above the 813 bombers lost during the battle of Hamburg and the 923 lost during the battle of Ruhr.

----

Losses over Nuremberg ( March 1944 ) when combined with those in the week, meant that Bomber Command had lost 190 bombers in seven days ( 73 in Berlin, 9 in Essen, and 108 in Nuremberg ).

----

Aircrew survival rate, Bomber Command 1939-1945

Killed in operations 51%
Killed in crashes in England 9%
Seriously injured in crashes 3%
POW 12% ( some injured )
Shot down but evaded capture 1%
Survived unharmed 24%



[ 24. March 2003, 01:22 PM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

Lousy chances of getting through the muddle Kai.....only when June of 44 and the early warning radars along the coast was silenced and the jamming of airborne radars did the casualties overall decrease. Did not either help when the NJG 2 Ju 88G-1 made a wrong course heading and landed in England.......Ooooooops

Erwin, actually there were plenty of pilots till may of 45 and plenty of nf a/c. No fuel was the problem and being bombed out repeatedly at the flügplatz

E

 

Hasting´s Bomber Command

In July 1943 bombings, in one week in Hamburg area, Bomber Command killed more people than Luftwaffe in the eight months of the Blitz in England in 1940-41.

3,095 sorties
9,000 tons of explosives
Loss of 86 aircrafts

Among others 580 factories were totally destroeyd
i.e. 3.6% of total production.

 

It is pretty much universally accepted that the bombing campaigns had little direct effect on German Industry. Speer's ability to increase overall industrial output comes partly from streamlining an inefficient system, and concentration of model production, but it also came due to his mobilisation of resources and personnel. Industrial production was simply not significantly affected before late 1944, and at that point things are going so badly for Germany that it is impossible to determine how much the subsequent fall-off in production was due to bombing.

Further, The Bombing campaigns had the effect of strengthening German Morale, not weakening it, just as the Bombing of London had done for the French. Goebbles effectively turned their hate and anger against the allies, and in fact used it as a most effective propaganda weapon.

There were however many indirect effects of the bombing:

1) The most obvious one was that Speer himself stated there were over a million men in the Reich facing skywards with flak or searchlights, manpower badly needed elsewhere.

2) As has been mentioned elsewhere, once the P-51 came into play, there was a serious attrition factor on the Luftwaffe which would have telling effects. (Note: see my recent post on the bomber campaign in the What-if section)

3) Enormous air forces were redeployed to Germany from Russia and Italy, crippling the German war effort on these fronts. Russian soldiers account how in the space of two months in 1944, it went from German Air superiority to Soviet Air supremacy, and nobody knew why...

4) Though the effects on German industry were minor, Speer started a campaign of decentralisation, moving industry into the country, digging it into mountains, and so on. This decentralisation of Industry had a serious effect on the efficiency of production.

5) Oil and ball bearings. The only two sectors which were actually affected by strategic bombing (though not until mid to late 1944), oil refinement and ball bearing production. Notably, contrary to a previous poster, the attacks on the Rumanian oil fields were worse than useless, and oil production never stopped going up until the fields were taken by the Soviets. The roadblock was refining the oil. At the end of the war, Germany still had a small but reasonable amount of fuel, what they lacked was the highly refined fuels such as Avgas. The whole 'Battle of the Bulge stopped by lack of Oil' is the Hollywood version of History.

6) V-weapons: One of the most telling indirect effects of the bombing was the huge increase in the priority of V-weapons. The V-1 was generally useless but no big deal, but the V-2, for all its long lasting technological achievement, was the most idiotic, foolish and disastrous campaign the German High Command ever embarked on. Do not even get me started on the stupidity of the V-2 project.

Those are some of the significant indirect effects on Germany of the Bombing campaign. There are others on the Allies, for example in 1942, Britain simply had to be seen to be doing something, and Bombing was just that, something. It had a significant effect on British Morale...

In any case, when you take into account the indirect effects of the bombing, it is clear that yes, the Bombing campaign did have a significant impact on Germany and likely shortened the war.

 

Any one interested in this their is a essay on this subject on my site:

http://www.freewebs.com/mahross/bombingcampaign.htm

This is my opinion on the bombing campaign over germany.

 

One interesting related aspect of this campaign was the used of electronic warfare. Of all the means at the Allies disposal it proved probably the most cost effective in reducing casualities among bomber aircraft and crews. Without it, this campaign would have almost certainly been lost.

 

Interesting...

As to Russian front I´d like to remind that Luftwaffe losses were huge at times . I give credit to the huge numbers of Russian planes in achieving this and as well German tactics of not being allowed to send their planes to safer air fields in time which led to destroying planes by their own hands as Russians were close to capturing the planes.I think Galland said this latter reasonin his book.

AS well during the campaign in Normandy a couple of thousand planes were lost, probably over 3,000 , until Aug 1944...

http://www.butler98.freeserve.co.uk/thtrlosses.htm

Eastern Front

Sept-Dec 1943
1736 all losses

Jan-May 1944
3214 all losses

Jun-Oct 1944
3650 all losses

Naturally the fighter percentage of planes was lower in the east but still a huge amount of German planes were destroyed.

I thought the Hollywood version was that the US soldiers stopped the attack ( Patton, Bastogne, Nuts ) and not the lack of oil? Anyways, I´m sure that you agree that the Germans were really sort of fuel. Without getting fuel from the US reserves during their attack the Germans would not have gone very far after the first 24 hrs, I think.

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_11.htm

"The original route assigned Peiper's kampfgruppe ran west to Schoppen. This was a poor road, bogged with mud from the winter rains, and since the 12th SS Panzer Division had not yet come up Peiper pre-empted the latter's paved route through Bullingen. Also he had been told that there were gasoline stores in Bullingen, and a great deal of fuel had been burned during the jockeying around Losheim. Sure enough, the gasoline was found as predicted. Using American prisoners as labor, the Germans refueled their tanks.


Anyway, Peiper had already oincredible problems on the first day...

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_11.htm

Kampfgruppe Peiper on the Move

On the morning of 16 December Colonel Peiper journeyed to the advance command post of the 12th Volks Grenadier Division, whose troops were supposed to make the gap in the lines of the American 99th Infantry Division north of the Schnee Eifel through which his armor would be committed. [1] To Peiper's disgust the infantry failed in their assigned task and the day wore on with Peiper's column still waiting on the roads to the rear. The blown bridge northwest of Losheim increased the delay; for some reason the engineers failed to start repair work here until noon or later. This was not the end. In midafternoon the horse-drawn artillery regiment of the 12th Volks Grenadier Division was ordered up to support the infantry, hopelessly clogging the approaches to the bridge. Peiper himself took over the job of trying to straighten out this traffic Jam but more time was lost. It was not until 1930 that the armored advance guard was able to reach Losheim, the village which gave its name to the gap at the northern terminus of the Schnee Eifel.

 

Thanx Mahross,

very interesting article.I have always found it interesting that the bomber leaders ( well, Harris anyway ) believed that the war could be won by bombers alone(?).

As well the western allied approach that Germans are bad, and should be bombed to kingdom come, was interesting...Even Stalin said that Russia wanted to kill Hitler and nazis and not Germans ( well, whatever his troops did in Germany)...

If this principle is brought to today, we should think that all Iraqi people are bad and should be bombed to kingdom come..or North Korean...or Afganishtans..Right?

 

Hastings Bomber Command

In June 1944 11.6% of Spaatz´ efforts against oil targets, July 17% and August 16.4 %

At the same time

Petroleum available to Luftwaffe ( aviation spirit )

180,000 tons in April 1944

50,000 tons in June

10,000 tons in August 1944


As well from the net

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj97/win97/davis.html

On 5 April, Spaatz resorted to subterfuge. Under the guise of attacking Ploesti’s main rail yard (each oil refinery also had its own such yard), the Fifteenth made its first raid on Romanian oil. As the official history of the AAF noted with some satisfaction, “Most of the 588 tons of bombs, with more than coincidental accuracy, struck and badly damaged the Astra group of refineries.”11 On 15 and 26 April, the Fifteenth returned, again somehow missing the main rail yard and unfortunately damaging more Axis refineries. As a result of this “transportation” bombing, German imports of finished petroleum products fell from 186,000 tons in March to 104,000 tons in April.


http://members.tripod.com/~Sturmvogel/ussbsgensum.html

Up to May, 1944, the RAF and the USAAF together dropped 509,206 (all bomb tonnages are short tons (2,000 lb) and all production tonnages are metric tons (2,205 lb.) tons of bombs on enemy targets in Europe, of which 5,670 tons, or 1.1 percent, went down on German oil targets. None of these attacks caused important loss in German oil production. From 12 May 1944 to 8 May 1945 (V-E Day), the combined air forces dropped 191,256 tons on the 87 German oil-producing targets, and production took the downgrade. The output of aviation gasoline tobogganed (Figure 2). The initial reaction of the Luftwaffe was to offer increased resistance, and consumption increased with a consequent terrific drain on the storage tanks. From August to the end of the war (except December), consumption always exceeded production (Figure 3). Less than 500 tons of aviation gasoline were made during February, 1945, only 40 tons were made in March, none at all in April. Stocks of aviation gasoline on I February were only 82,000 tons- barely enough to wet the tank bottoms.

 

Another one from Hastings

After losing 31,000 aircrew casualties between January 1941 and June 1944, Luftwaffe suffered 13,000 casualties between June and Ocotber 1944 alone.