the limited capacity the luftwaffe's bomber force

[steverodgers801]

watching " War of the century " and it mentions that it took the Luftwaffe a month to drop just 1000 tons of bombs on Stalingrad. No wonder they couldn't hit Britain that hard.

[Hop]

The Luftwaffe dropped 890 tons on London on the 16 April 1941. They came back 3 nights later and dropped over 1,000 tons of HE in addition to large quantities of incendiaries. (Source The Night Blitz by John Ray)

[phylo_roadking]

watching " War of the century " and it mentions that it took the Luftwaffe a month to drop just 1000 tons of bombs on Stalingrad. No wonder they couldn't hit Britain that hard.

Hi Steve, it's a pretty meaningless figure without knowing...

1/ the number and sortie rate of the aircraft invovled;

2/ the types and thus bombload of the aircraft involved;

3/ how many nights' of operations could be flown in that given month; and

4/ the rate of delivery of oprdnance to the forward airfields where the bombers were based.

There many have been very few aircraft involved, or very few nights that they could sortie on due to the weather and the moon, or aircraft carrying lighter than normal loads to stretch their range, or they were dropping all that could be delivered forward to them....or any combination of those!

[Mr.No one]

According to Joel S. A. Hayward, on the 23rd of August 1942 the VIII Fliegerkorps, reinforced with aircraft from the IV Fliegerkorps, managed to fly 1.600 sorties against Stalingrad, dropping 1.000 kg of bombs. So the Luftwaffe was certainly capable of doing so.

Cheers,
Sean Hansen!

[peeved]

...managed to fly 1.600 sorties against Stalingrad, dropping 1.000 kg of bombs.

Should that be 1000 tons instead of 1000 kg?

Markus

[Mr.No one]

Haha, thanks.
I'm not that much into air warfare, so it didn't strike me as being wrong. But I have now checked the source, and of course you are right
Thanks — and sorry.

Sean Hansen