I’ve read a lot about the inaccuracy of bombing, both day and night. But I’ve also read that the British figured out how to use pathfinders and markers to improve accuracy. And there are many films from daylight raids that show the bombs clustered on target. So what happened? Were there improvements in tactics and training?
One other thing to consider. Later in the war, British losses were climbing as the Nazi’s became better at night air defense.
What’s funny about that is, they could just look around and see the same tactic wasn’t working for the Germans, so why would they think the German people were any different?. The British populace was quite willing to “take it” for the war effort. Stff upper lip, tough old gut and all that.
He showed up, with a line of dialog, as one of the people in Hell in Niven and Pournelle’s “Inferno”, though he did seem somewhat repentant. More than Fat Henry, at least.
See the concept of “Creep back”
The most dangerous time of a bombing raid in World War II was during the bombing run, the approach to the target. The bomber pilot was required to hold the aircraft straight and level, unable to take evasive action in the face of fierce enemy air defences over the target, including searchlights, night fighters and anti-aircraft fire. The temptation was strong for the bomber crew to ‘flinch’ and release their bombs slightly before reaching the target indicator flares that marked the aiming point. The fires started by the short bombs tended to be used as an aiming point by subsequent crews, who in turn also dropped their bomb loads slightly short. The result was that “the bombing inevitably crept back along the line of the bomb run.”[1]
The problem was further exacerbated by the need to re-mark the target with flares as the original markers were extinguished or hidden by smoke and flame. The marker aircraft were also susceptible to creepback, which accelerated the effect on subsequent waves of bombers.
It was easier and much more rewarding to bomb factories. They are much bigger than trains, and they don’t move. You know where they are at all times. Also, since they are the source of whatever it is you want to destroy, destroying the factories leaves trains nothing to carry. I think sending out fighters on a search and destroy mission makes more sense than sending out a bomber group and hoping they run into a train somewhere.
In the short term, sure. They did move though - underground, or simply widely dispersed in cities and countryside.
I don’t think medium or heavy bombers were ever used that way; they had designated fixed targets before they took off.
Fighters and fighter-bombers however, just before and during the Normandy campaign, did go on the kind of mission you describe. To the extent that they started running out of targets later on.
They did delay the arrival of some divisions from north and east to the Normandy battlefront by days or even weeks, as they could only move short distances at night and had to seek cover and camouflage in daylight, which in July 1944 was most of the day.
I assume you mean the Norden bombsight? Yeah, it was supposed to be a game-changer but I’ve read that it basically didn’t really work in real-world use.
Tactics and equipment. First, the radio equipment used by the Pathfinders improved (first Gee, then Oboe) allowing more precise navigation to the target. Then the Pathfinders started using Mosquitos, which were faster and more agile, allowing more accurate marking. HF radios (aircraft to aircraft) allowed a Master Bomber to marshal and control the attacking bombers, and designate different groups to selected flares.
617 Squadron (the Dambusters) were high-precision bombing experts - after Operation Chastise, they trained on and dropped both Tallboys (5 ton) and Grand Slams (10 ton) using the SABS bomb sight. Their CO ( Leonard Cheshire) used a Mosquito (and later a P-51 Mustang) to mark targets accurately at low level for the Lancasters up at 20000 feet. I seem to recall that a Mosquito he had been flying later crashed killing a number of 617 pilots - the main wing spar broke, possibly as a result of Cheshire throwing the plane around while marking targets.
A good article on WWII strategic bombing.
Factories are pretty hard to destroy, especially heavy industries. Apparently, bombs would blow the roof off the factory, but the heavy equipment inside would hardly be damaged. For example, according to Wiki, Germany produced more than double the number of fighter aircraft in 1944 than they did in 1943 (25k vs 10k) despite the intensity of the Allied bombing campaign.
Frankly, an earlier and more intense focus on petroleum supplies would have had greater impact. Nothing moves without fuel and near the end of the war the war machines of both Germany and Japan were both, almost literally, out of gas. But even there, it required direct attacks or capture of oil stocks, rather than the infrastructure. The raid on Ploesti (Operation Tidal Wave) to reduce a central refining point was costly (about 1/3rd of the dispatched aircraft destoyed) and by all accounts the refineries were back up to full capacity within weeks.
The Allies had air superiority over Europe by the time of the Normandy invasion. However, WWII aircraft were not equipped to deal with overcast skies. During the Battle of the Bulge, that overcast kept the Allied aircraft grounded and allowed the Germans freedom to manuever without having to dodge the intense air interdiction. It was so bad, General Patton had the chaplain, Col James H O’Neil write a prayer for clear weather:
Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.
Interesting thread. I don’t have much insight into the subject, but incidentally one data point. I just read yesterday in a local paper that the US Air Force tried a massive air strike on my home town as late as March 1945, because it was an important railway hub on a crucial route, only to miss it completely and instead bombing the two next towns which are 10 and 25 kilometres away, respectively, and are not on that railway line. So much for precision in aerial attacks on railroads.
Close-air support was a well established tactic, but using heavy bombers in artillery’s traditional role of softening up objectives prior to ground engagement was a new temptation. In David Brinkley’s memoirs (if anyone remembers who David Brinkley was) he recalled how he, having been a prewar journalist was pulled out of the line to be man a typewriter, leaving the rest of his North Carolinians just as they were slated to be the ground force in Operation Cobra to mop up the French countryside after the bombers plastered it. But the bombers killed off a great many North Carolinians by mistake.
John Kenneth Galbraith was on the postwar investigation team that surveyed the economic effectiveness of the bombing campaign. They found that the Germans had no troubles digging out drill presses and lathes and getting them back online.
The “Blitz Spirit” may be more to do with propaganda and morale-boosting government efforts than truth.
The government papered over the evidence of the physical and psychological effects of being bombed and focused instead on the stories of British resolve. The propaganda film London Can Take It! reinforced the view that British people were not to be terrorised into submission. The famous photograph of a milkman picking his way through the ruins to deliver the milk was widely distributed, but it was a fake – the milkman was in fact the photographer’s assistant, wearing a white coat. The public face of the “blitz spirit” concealed the awful reality of being bombed.
There was a study in Hull, a much-bombed city, which showed that “people developed serious psychosomatic conditions, including involuntary soiling and wetting, persistent crying, uncontrollable shaking, headaches and chronic dizziness; men were found to indulge in heavy drinking and smoking after a raid, and prone to developing peptic ulcers”.
We know quite a lot about PTSD these days. There is no reason to believe that a civilian population of any nationality, being shelled and bombed in their own homes would suffer any less than a soldier in a battle.
With absolutely no disrespect intended, it’s because you aren’t a historian that it is so clear. Ian Toll discusses how you have to let go of the perfect knowledge which comes from hindsight in order to understand the decisions at the time.
The best answer in this thread:
The Americans started to truly understand the importance of railroads in May and June, 1945, a couple of months after the surrender of Germany and when the afterwar bombing investigation teams were going full force and they started building this perfect knowledge which comes from hindsight.
Those teams developed what became the United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (pdf) which gives an overview to the lessons learned.
(With the big caveat that D.M. Giangreco, author of Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947, points out that this was a self-serving report and things were not as clear cut as presented. It should also be noted that this report was published in the immediate aftermath of the war when the branches of the armed forces were fighting for the dwindling defense funds.)
The report did show that all the efforts at destroying the ball-bearing industry simply weren’t effective. From the report:
However, this wasn’t understood until after the war when they were able to get investigative teams into Germany.
The report discusses railways.
It goes on the discuss the particulars.
As a result of the investigations, the USAAF realized that they needed to increase focus on rail transportation in Japan, which was still an ongoing war. That change has just started to be implemented when Japan surrendered in August, 1945.
It was anticipated that had the Japanese not surrendered, the switch to including heightened targeting of the Japanese rail system would have contributed to the onset of famine conditions in the most populated areas of Japan in the late fall and winter.
One interesting speculation in the Survey is that targeting Japanese railways could have ended the war earlier. (Alt-history speculation has roots which go way back in time.)
It mentions that Azon guided bombs could have been used more effectively (against bridges and such), but again this is from hindsight.
There are lots of good answers in the thread, but it should also be noted that the prewar development of the various strategies and doctrines for air war became obsolete because of the rapid improvements of aircraft. The cost of development was relatively cheap (the B-29 came much later. . . . ) but the results could be large.
Since those people who had been involved in WW1 would have learned of the importance of rail transport, it seems strange that they had forgotten so soon. It was only 20 years later.
You have to try, don’t you?
I mean, the option is leave their cities alone and allow unfettered war production or do your best to stop that. I think they simply had to try.
Oh, I don’t mind them trying. I think destroying factories was a sane and rational plan*. I just think they were deluding themselves about the effect on the general populace.
* It just didn’t work anywhere as well as they thought. You send a thousand bombers just so the odds are good enough you expect ONE bomb to hit the actual target, and expect to keep that up? No one could ever be sure they were actually damaging anything. But it was one tool out of many. The more fighters defending against bombers means fewer available to attack elsewhere.
As for the effectiveness of the Schweinfurt raids, I thought Speer himself in World At War said one more raid like the previous two before they could rebuild would have really hurt them, perhaps terminally. But the Allies had no idea if they were even making a dent, so they had to quit, because the losses were unsustainable. And so the war continued.
Railways proved to be very difficult to deliver a knockout blow to, especially at night, [British] Bomber Command tried many times to concentrate on the marshalling yards, which appeared to be a big enough target, and often failed to do any serious damage at all.
The Butt Report, delivered in Aug 1941, showed that, of those crews who claimed to have successfully identified and bombed the target, (themselves a minority) only one in three were within five miles of where they thought they were - itself a generous measure of success. The conclusion was that most of the explosive being delivered onto Germany was falling on open countryside, or targets of no military importance.
Aside: Schweinfurt was a center of ball bearing production and target of a couple murderous bomber raids. dropdad felt he was lucky that he arrived too late for the first one and was shot down before Schweinfurt Two, or “Black Thursday.” I come by my insanity the old fashioned way, thankyouverymuch.
I believe that Speer said the Allies would target something like “electrical distribution”, and just as they were on the verge of delivering the knockout blow they would become discouraged and switch to another target.
For all the talk about heavy bombers in this thread, the favored bomber for destroying rail transport was the B-26 Marauder. Typically flying at just 10,000-15,000 feet, they were much more accurate than B-17s at 25,000 feet.
