![]() ![]() Years of the war the Germans were able to win victory after victory without maximizing industrial efficiency. In part German war productionĬontinued or even increased in spite of the bombing because Germany's industry was not at 100 percent capacity until 1943-44. Tanks and armoured vehicles, ball bearings, steel, consumer goods and food supplies, and V-1 and V-2 missiles. It had less effect on the production of aircraft, Strategic bombing severely impacted German production of oil, ammunition, vehicles, U-Boats. The resulting " United States Strategic Bombing Survey " concluded that the bombing had mixed levels of success. War a committee of American industrial experts was asked to produce an impartial assessment of the effectiveness of the Allied bombingĬampaign on German industry. The second major purpose behind the Allies massive air bombing campaign was to cripple key German war industries. Germans discovered during the London "Blitz", the bombing stiffened German resistance instead of weakening it. Thousands of German civilians and the incredible destructiveness of the firestorms shocked the Nazi leadership. The destruction caused hardship to hundreds of The aim of the offensive was to break the morale of the German people. Which resulted in high civil casualties were Swinemuende (23,000 dead), Pforzheim (21,200 dead), Darmstadt (12,300 dead), and Kassel In each case, a series of co-ordinated raids created a firestorm and left tens of thousands dead. The most destructive raids in terms of casualties were those on Hamburg (45,000 dead) in 1943 and Dresden At its worst this combination could burn out an entire city center in one night, ![]() Out the massive fires caused by the incendiaries. The high explosives destroyed water supplies and water lines preventing firemen from putting A combination of massive "blockbuster" bombs and incendiaries New methods were introduced to increase the destruction. Two further 1,000 bomber raids were executed over Essen and Bremen, but to less effect than the destructionĪt Cologne. 411 civilians and 85 combatants were killed, more than 130,000 "Operation Millenium", the first "1,000 bomber raid" when 1,046 aircraft bombed Cologne, dropping over 2,000 tons of highĮxplosive and incendiaries and burning the city from end to end. Indiscriminately destroying everything for kilometres around in every direction. In practice what this meant was that 200 to 1000 aircraft would mass "carpet" bomb a German industrial area or city center, The first was stated in the February, 1942 Bomber Command "Area Bombing Directive".īomber Command was to target German industrial sites with the additional aim of attacking the morale of German industrial workers. As a resultĪllied planners adopted two bombing strategies. On some missions the entire bombing group dropped their bombs on the wrong location. A USAAF study estimated that less than ten percent of bombs fell withinĨ kms of the intended target. High altitude mass bombing was extremely inaccurate. To spin, roll, or break up, the crew had little chance of getting to their parachutes, or of strapping them on and ejecting.Īmerican crews kept their parachutes close beside them. If a plane was on fire, or if the plane began In RAF/RCAF bombers all parachutes were kept in a central locationīecause movement down the long tunnel of the fuselage was extremely difficult. Which flew daylight raids over Europe, had a casualty rate of only 17 percent, but a further 15 percent became POWs.Ī key reason for this was the problem of parachutes. RAF/RCAF bomber crews had twice the casualty rate of American crews. Statistically, an airman couldn'tĮxpect to survive twenty missions. On every mission over Germanyįive bombers out of one hundred failed to return and another would crash on landing. Six expected to survive their first tour and one in forty would survive their second tour. Aircrew had little prospect of surviving a tour of 30 operations and by 1943, only one in Out of 125,000 airmen who served in Bomber Command, over 55,000 were killed, 8,000 wounded, and 9800 became prisoners of war. ![]() The Continuing Controversy Over Bomber Command įew people realize how deadly bombing missions were to aircrew. ![]()
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