While I’m no scholar on WWII, still I don’t ever recall learning much about the role of the Air Corps in WWII in Europe. With the railroads being the German’s lifeline, did we ever pound the heck out of the railroads to try and paralyze Germany before stormin’ Normandy? Or, were our planes all busy bombing Japan?
Or, could it be hindsight? In the classroom, so much emphasis is placed on the German’s efficient use of railroads. Was this common knowledge when we entered the war in Europe? - Jinx
Davis Simmons would probably be the best poster to answer, but I’ll take a stab at it.
The AAF and RAF liked to bomb factories that supported the German war industry. For example, they bombed ball bearing factories, refineries, dams, etc. in an effort to stop German production of war materials.
Trains seemed to be popular targets for the AAF fighter aircraft, which could swoop down on targets of opportunity and strafe them. By disabling the locomotive, the train would come to a stop and it would be easier to attach the carriages.
Unfortunately, some of these trains were carrying Allied prisoners. (Some Japanese ships carrying POWs were also sunk, in the Pacific.)
Couldn’t they have randomly bombed the miles and miles of railroad track? Just break up the whole network? It would have brought their war machine to its knees quickly, IMHO!
There was significant bombing of the rail lines, principally at or near junctions, prior to D-Day, to assist in preventing the Wehrmacht from bringing in reinforcements to combat Overlord. In addition, the Resistance stepped up their sabotage campaign.
But the idea of bombing railroad track calls for a degree of precision that was just not there at the time – for most of its length, any given train track runs through rural areas, and the majority of attempts to bomb it would produce a nice crater in a field of millet, or some terribly discontented cows with a hole in their pasture, and leave the tracks themselves unscathed.
In the build up to the D-Day operation, the US army air corp did concentrate on transportation targets. The operation was very successful and helped delay the German army from bringing up their Panzer divisions in time to prevent the Allies from moving off the beaches.
I happen to have the mission list for my father’s bomb group, the 490th BG(H) of the 8th Air Force. They didn’t fly their first mission until a week before D-day, so their target list may not have been typical. Bridges and airfields seem to dominate around the time of D-day. Over the next several months a wide variety of targets is listed, including flying bomb sites, oil refineries, gun emplacements, warehouses, ordinance depots, etc. Between early October 1944 and mid-March 1945, marshalling yards (switchyards) inside Germany are the most common targets. Railway bridges, stations, and junctions were also targets, but more rarely. In all, about 65 of their 158 combat missions targeted rail facilities.
You will have to take my word for it that all of the craters in the picture are the location of a railroad yard. That’s the Rhine river.
Bridges and railyards were a common target. Prior to the Normandy landings there was no a single intact bridge across the Seine River which isolated the eastern German forces from the Western as far as rapid movement of reinforcements was concerned.
However, the Germans got very good at repairs and previous targets had to be retargeted.
U.S. Army Air Forces: Combat Chronology 1941-1945.
Prior to Normandy the strategic bombing generals and theorists assumed that bombing rail targets would be ineffective (too easily repaired or rerouted, etc). Prior to D-Day, however, Ike had the clout to make the heavies bomb transportation targets to help isolate the invasion area and beachhead. Once the air forces realized the effectiveness of the strikes, they took to Tranplan with a vengeance. (IIRC the American half of the Dresden raid was a transportation plan attack on the railyards at Dresden).
Post war analysis showed that many of the targets that had been emphasized during the strategic bombing campaign were the wrong targets to have the crippling effect on the German economy that was desired. There were crucial bottlenecks (transportation network, coal supplies, powerplants) but the allies only figured them out post war.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey makes some interesting reading - we studied it briefly in a class I took as an undergrad. Here is a link to a Summary Report of the ETO version (another one exists for the PTO), which might be of interest.
This section in particular discusses the attacks on railways and waterways. An excerpt:
They make it sound like railroad bombing didn’t begin in earnest until a few months after the Normandy invasion, which jibes with the comments MMI made.
