Effectiveness of Allied Strategic Bombing

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Michael Kenny
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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#16

Post by Michael Kenny » 11 Jan 2015, 07:58

From Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe by Richard G. Davis. Smithsonian Institution Press, , 1994.

A further look at Eighth Air Force operations has revealed two egregious
examples of the gap between bombing practice and stated bombing policy: the
target categories “city areas” and “marshaling yards.” The two most cited Eighth
Air Force statistical summaries that cover the entire war do not list a target cate-
gory “city areas” or “towns and cities.” Both summaries were prepared from
the same set of data within a month of the end of the war in Europe.
Monthly statistical summaries of the Eighth’s operations prepared during the
war, almost contemporaneously with the events they recorded, tell a different
story. The Eighth Air Force Monthly Statistical Summary of Operations, gener-
ated at the end of each month from May 1944 to April 1945, listed a “city areas”
target category. For calendar year 1944, the summary reported that the Eighth
dropped 43,611 tons on “city areas.” Nor did these reports make any bones
about their targets. The report for the May 8, 1944, Berlin raid baldly states,
“Berlin city area attacked. Bombing raid done through 10/10 undercast on PFF
markers. Believed that the center of Berlin was well hit.”
After reaching a
high of 9,886 tons (41 percent incendiaries) in July 1944, when the Eighth con-
ducted a series of H2X raids on Munich, the monthly “city area” totals steadily
declined to 383 tons in December.
A summary in a working paper from a USSTAF file, “Review of Bombing
Results,” shows a similar dichotomy according to time period. From January
1944 through January 1945, the Eighth dropped 45,036 tons on “towns and
cities.” From February 1945 through the end of the war, this summary
showed not a single ton of bombs falling on a city area. Unless the Eighth had
developed a perfect technique for bombing through overcast, such a result was
simply impossible. Obviously, the word had come down to deemphasize reports
on civilian damage
.
For instance, when Anderson cabled Arnold about USSTAF’s
press policy on the Dresden controversy in February 1945, he noted, “Public rela-
tions officers have been advised to take exceptional care that the military nature
of targets attacked in the future be specified and emphasized in all cases
. As in
the past the statement that an attack was made on such and such a city will be
avoided; specific targets will be described.”

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, although not explicitly listing a target
category such as cities or towns, had an interesting definition of “industrial
areas.” The survey placed three types of targets in “industrial areas”: (1) cities,
towns, and urban areas; (2) public utilities (electric, gas, water, and telephone
companies); and (3) government buildings. Given that definition the survey even
managed to describe RAF area raids as strikes against “industrial targets.”
The target category “marshaling yards” received more of the Eighth’s bomb
tonnage than any other, somewhere between 175,000 and 200,000 tons of bombs.
At least 25 percent of all the Eighth Air Force bombs dropped over Europe fell on
“marshaling yards.” One-third of the American incendiary bombs dropped over
Germany fell on the same system. As a matter of directive and policy for most
of the period between September 1944 and April 1945, the same period in which
the Eighth delivered 90 percent of the total tonnage dropped on the system, mar-
shaling yards had the highest nonvisual bombing priority. During that period the
Eighth Air Force dropped 168,038 tons of bombs, 70 percent (117,816 tons)
blind
and 30 percent (50,222 tons) visually. Postwar research showed that
only 2 percent of bombs dropped by nonvisual means landed within 1,000 feet
of their aiming points.
Rail yards as such, however, were poor targets for
incendiaries. If the fire bombs landed directly on or near rail cars, they destroyed
or damaged them; otherwise, they could do little harm to the heavy equipment or
trackage. The Eighth realized this. Of the 9,042 tons of bombs dropped on
French rail yards, mostly during the pre-OVERLORD transportation bombing
phase, when the Americans took scrupulous care to avoid French civilian casual-
ties, 90 percent were visually sighted and only 33 tons were incendiaries.
Even over Germany itself, during Operation CLARION, when the Eighth bombed
dozens of small yards and junctions in lesser German towns, it dropped, over a
two-day period of visual conditions, 7,164 tons of bombs in all, but less than 3
tons of fire bombs.
In contrast, using H2X, the Eighth pummeled marshaling yards and rail sta-
tions in large German cities with high percentages of incendiary bombs. For
example, rail targets in at least four major cities garnered the following percent-
ages of fire bombs out of all bombs dropped on them: Cologne, 27 percent;
Nuremberg, 30 percent; Berlin, 37 percent; and Munich, 41 percent.
“Marshaling yards” undoubtedly served as a euphemism for city areas. Because
the yards themselves were not good targets for incendiaries, the prime purpose
in employing such weapons was to take advantage of the known inaccuracy of
H2X bombing in order to maximize the destruction of warehouses, commercial
buildings, and residences in the general vicinity of the target. Large numbers of
planes scattering their bombs around their mostly unseen and unverifiable aim-
ing points surely would cause great collateral damage to any soft structures
located nearby.

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#17

Post by ljadw » 11 Jan 2015, 12:29

Other exemple of the inaccurateness of air attacks in wwii :

operation Paula : on 3 june 1940 the LW attacked French air bases and Citroen factories in Paris ;result : 252 dead and 654 wounded (80 % civilians)


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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#18

Post by dshaday » 11 Jan 2015, 18:33

Hi


See page 120 of http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/pdf/b ... in-ww2.pdf

"For example, using "GEE," the first radar navigational aid (which became available in March 1942), Bomber Command of the RAF, in attacks on towns in the Ruhr, could drop approximately 50 per cent of its bombs within five miles of the aiming point and 10 per cent within two miles. This meant that only 5 to 10 per cent of the tonnage dispatched could be dropped on a town the size of Essen and only two to three per cent on the Krupp works within Essen. Thus, economy required that attacks be aimed at the city center, ensuring that the maximum tonnage of bombs would fall somewhere on the target.*"

* U.S.S.B.S.,Area Studies Division Report (Item #31 for European War), pp. 3f.


That is, to be economical with bombs, the city centre was chosen as the point of aim by the RAF. Since Essen – and not Krupp- was the target. Civilian casualties are not considered. This is different to choosing the Krupp works as a point of aim and accepting civilian casualties because of the known, poor bomb spread. Especially if you can actually “see” and target the Krupp plant (which is what I refer to as precision bombing).

Regards

Dennis

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#19

Post by Guaporense » 11 Jan 2015, 22:12

Attrition wrote:
Guaporense wrote:
Attrition wrote:~~~~~Indeed. Area bombing had very poor strategic results.~~~~~

Not according to Tooze. If the bombing was only intended as terrorism, it managed to destroy rather a lot of factories and reduce German war production.
That depends. I think that strategic bombing had very significant effects on German war production, in the following areas:

1. Bombing targeting steel output managed to reduce German steel output from it's planned level of 32 million tons to 30.6 million tons in 1943.

2. Bombing targeting aircraft fuel plants managed to greatly reduce the supply of aircraft fuel, one of the main reasons for the reduced impact of the Luftwaffe in the last 12 months of the war.

3. Bombing targeting the German railroad system appears to have been the most successful of all, German railroad activity collapsed during the last 8 months of the war, after it was targeted, though the causes are many besides bombing.

Bombing of German cities and general bombing of industrial facilities was not successful. Damage to Germany's industrial capital stock was very small (130,000 machine tools destroyed out of a stock of 2.3 million, 6% or equivalent to 8 months of output), and bombing of cities was successful if you think of killing civilians, destroying their homes, destroying historic buildings of artistic importance, as valid military objectives.

A better use of allied resources would be not bombing cities and allocating these airforce resources against valid military targets or simply reducing the budget of the airforces and increasing the size of the army, enabling greater numerical superiority in the field.
The point of a British mass air force was to avoid a mass army.
No it was not. They did not avoid anything, well, besides the fact that British contribution to allied victory was in the end very small: while the Soviet Union took the bulk of the job, the US helped significantly sending supplies and a middle sized army in Europe, the British deployed less than 10% of the allied armies in continental Europe as they were focusing their resources on killing civilians and destroying cities, for very small strategic military gain: in the end it's arguable that strategic bombing did not reduce German war production by a significant extent (to the point of reducing significantly allied casualties in the frontlines, even in 1945, after dropping enormous quantities of bombs on Germany, Allied casualties in 4 months were over 3 million men at the frontlines, the German army still had adequate supply of munitions to operate, aircraft output decreased but the binding constraint on the luftwaffe wasn't aircraft, it was fuel and pilots).

Allied victory was due to numerial superiority in the frontlines, strategic bombing helped a little by reducing the manpower available to the German army by perhaps 1 million men, employed in cleaning and manning flak guns, but it also reduced the manpower available to the allied ground armies, by way more than 1 million men.

Number of Allied personnel killed in action involved in strategic bombing was also very high, nearly comparable to the number of deaths in the Western front.

It's possible if not probable that the total number of Western Allied KIA might have been smaller if strategic bombing were never attempted during the war. German munition production would have been perhaps 10-15% higher during the last 16 months of the war, the German army would be 10% larger, meaning that overall the size of opposing forces and the firepower employed against western allied soldiers in the Italian and Western fronts might have been 10-15% higher. Allied casualties at the front might have been 10-15% more intense, which would mean an extra 25,000 KIA in the western and Italian fronts if the war lasted as long as it did, compared to about 100,000 KIA involved in strategic bombing. And without the manpower wasted in the aircraft factories (3 million people worked in aircraft factories in the US, UK and Canada, many if not most involved in making strategic bombers) and in the strategic branches of the allied airforces, Allied ground forces could have been stronger as well, by a factor of perhaps 40-50% in Italy and the Western front, winning the war sooner as the force correlation would have favored the allies to a greater degree than historically did (as Germany would have to reduce the number of divisions in the eastern front with a bigger army in the western front, so both fronts would have collapsed faster than they did historically).

Against Japan, well, Germany defeated and occupied Poland, a country not much weaker than Japan in overall warmaking potential, and lost 16,000 KIA. US casualties in an invasion and occupation of Japan would probably not be that much higher (even if we factor the lower fighting power of US army, it wouldn't make that much of a difference) than that and Japan lacked the explosives and powder supply to equip their army with enough firepower to cause many casualties. In 1944, Japan's production of explosives and powder was 8% of Germany's and in 1945 the Japanese economy was collapsing from lack of raw materials as it was under US blockade, it's means of producing munitions were tiny and Japan would have been forced to surrender without any physical attack on the island due to lack of chemicals to be used in producing agricultural fertilizer which would result in mass starvation.
Do any of your statistics measure the effect of bombing on productivity? Cities were bombed because of the inherent inaccuracy of bombing so industrial targets were hit incidentally. As Bomber Command grew more accurate, it became more discriminating.
There were types of targets. Bombing of cities was different from bombing the aircraft industry, the steel industry or the transportation system. The Allies intentionally bombed cities besides bombing strategic military targets.

Here is the distribution of Western Allied bomb tonnage dropped during the war by target:

http://www.wwiiarchives.net/servlet/act ... e/113/55/0

So called "industrial areas" are cities. So 25% of all bomb tonnage dropped by the Western Allies during the war was wasted on bombing civilians. The bombing of transportation system probably killed far less civilians but apparently was more effective on damaging the German war economy.
Last edited by Guaporense on 11 Jan 2015, 23:00, edited 1 time in total.
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#20

Post by Guaporense » 11 Jan 2015, 22:32

ljadw wrote:Other exemple of the inaccurateness of air attacks in wwii :

operation Paula : on 3 june 1940 the LW attacked French air bases and Citroen factories in Paris ;result : 252 dead and 654 wounded (80 % civilians)
This is not an example. Where is the inaccuracy?
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#21

Post by ljadw » 12 Jan 2015, 07:54

If air bases and factories are attacked resulting in more than 700 civilian casualties,this is proving that accuracy was a fable .

In april 1943,the USAAF attacked factories in the town of Mortsel (near Antwerp) resulting in 900 dead .

Michael Kenny
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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#22

Post by Michael Kenny » 12 Jan 2015, 08:05

Guaporense wrote:
Against Japan, well, Germany defeated and occupied Poland, a country not much weaker than Japan in overall warmaking potential, and lost 16,000 KIA. US casualties in an invasion and occupation of Japan would probably not be that much higher
Slim wrote ‘Most nations boast that their Army would fight to the last man and the last bullet, the only one that did was the Japanese army’.

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#23

Post by ljadw » 12 Jan 2015, 08:08

In 1940 the Germans attacked railway stations and marshalling-yards in several Belgian cities:result : hundrerds of civilian casualties and few damage on the railway stations/marshalling yards.

The same happened in 1943/1944 when the Allies attacked : lots of civilian casualties and few damage

ONE exemple :in 1943,the marshalling yards of Merelbeke (near Ghent) were attacked : 428 civilians were killed and the day after the marshalling yards were operating again .

Precise bombardments were impossible,the only possibility was "overkill" and in a lot of cases,even this failed .

And now,70 years later,the situation is not much better .

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#24

Post by ljadw » 12 Jan 2015, 08:12

dshaday wrote:Hi


See page 120 of http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/pdf/b ... in-ww2.pdf

"For example, using "GEE," the first radar navigational aid (which became available in March 1942), Bomber Command of the RAF, in attacks on towns in the Ruhr, could drop approximately 50 per cent of its bombs within five miles of the aiming point and 10 per cent within two miles. This meant that only 5 to 10 per cent of the tonnage dispatched could be dropped on a town the size of Essen and only two to three per cent on the Krupp works within Essen. Thus, economy required that attacks be aimed at the city center, ensuring that the maximum tonnage of bombs would fall somewhere on the target.*"

* U.S.S.B.S.,Area Studies Division Report (Item #31 for European War), pp. 3f.


That is, to be economical with bombs, the city centre was chosen as the point of aim by the RAF. Since Essen – and not Krupp- was the target. Civilian casualties are not considered. This is different to choosing the Krupp works as a point of aim and accepting civilian casualties because of the known, poor bomb spread. Especially if you can actually “see” and target the Krupp plant (which is what I refer to as precision bombing).

Regards

Dennis
The USSBS report is debunking your conclusions :if only 2/3 % of the bombs could be dropped on Krupp this means that one could not see and target Krupp,thus no precision bombardment .

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#25

Post by ljadw » 12 Jan 2015, 08:21

It is wrong to say,as is doing Guaporense,that US ground forces could have been stronger,if manpower was not "wasted" in aircraft factories : US ground forces were strong enough (some 12 million) and most remained in the US because of transport problems,besides 3 million men working in the aircraft industries is not the same as 50 additional divisions: maybe US did need an additional 50 (or more ) divisions,but this was impossible,given the lack of time :it would take an additional time to train 50 additional divisions,who would remain in the US,and there were not enough officers/NCO for these divisions.

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#26

Post by ljadw » 12 Jan 2015, 09:04

The argument of "only" 16000 US KIA if there was an invasion of Japan is a non sequitur:it was the duty of Truman as commander in chief to do everything in order that there would be no 16000 US KIA.

Besides,every day the Japanese were murdering US POW and they planned to murder them all.It was the duty of Truman to do everything in order that this would not happen .

The Germans started the area and terror bombings in WWI/the Japanese in China,they have no reason of whining .

Someone who is talking about Allied terror bombing is comparing the Allies to the criminals of 9/11 .

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#27

Post by dshaday » 12 Jan 2015, 10:08

Hi ljadw
ljadw wrote: The USSBS report is debunking your conclusions :if only 2/3 % of the bombs could be dropped on Krupp this means that one could not see and target Krupp,thus no precision bombardment .
The report is not debunking my point. I am making a subtle pint.
The radar system was used because the RAF bombed at night. They did not even bother to look for the Krupp factory because of the known bomb dispersion. Instead they aimed for the easiest point that was economical for their use of bombs (the city centre). They did not even try precision bombing to put maximum bombs on Krupp. They decided that Essen was the target instead (people and all). This was my point.

At least the USAF made some sort of effort to "see' the target (when possible) and bomb it instead of the city centre. They did not do this all the time of course.

Regards

Dennis

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#28

Post by Kurfürst » 12 Jan 2015, 11:39

Michael Kenny wrote:Not in WW2. The accuracy and weather problem was such that area bombing was the same as precision bombing. No one could destroy a factory without destroying everything around it. You can use whatever euphemism you like but area bombing was the only game in town.
This is incorrect. By using effective blind bombing aids and the willingness the actually aim at specific targets, good results could be obtained. The Luftwaffe for example managed to bomb down the Spitfire factory in Southampton during 1940 with good accuracy. It wasn't of course possible all the time, but it was manageable. It is also true that initially (roughly 1939-1942) Bomber Command was incapable of precision strikes, but following that it had good navigation aids, but it continued to misuse them for generic saturation of cities and civilian dwellings.

"During the Battle of Britain, concerted efforts were made by the Luftwaffe to destroy the main manufacturing plants at Woolston and Itchen, near Southampton. The first bombing raid, which missed the factories, came on 23 August 1940. Over the next month, other raids were mounted until, on 26 September 1940, both factories were completely wrecked,[40] with 92 people being killed and a large number injured; most of the casualties were experienced aircraft production workers."[41]

One of the main criticism laid down by Max Hastings (and by the USAAF during the war) at Bomber Command is exactly that it continued this pointless and wasteful mayhem well after it had the means to actually had the means to do serious damage to the German war industry.

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#29

Post by Michael Kenny » 12 Jan 2015, 12:16

Kurfürst wrote:
This is incorrect. By using effective blind bombing aids and the willingness the actually aim at specific targets, good results could be obtained.
Like at Coventry?

The quote you introduced

"During the Battle of Britain, concerted efforts were made by the Luftwaffe to destroy the main manufacturing plants at Woolston and Itchen, near Southampton. The first bombing raid, which missed the factories, came on 23 August 1940. Over the next month, other raids were mounted until, on 26 September 1940, both factories were completely wrecked,[40] with 92 people being killed and a large number injured; most of the casualties were experienced aircraft production workers."[41]

Is from this Wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire

I see mention of a raid that 'missed' and 'other raids' that also must have missed or the final one that 'wrecked ' the factory would not have been needed. As you say 'It wasn't of course possible all the time' is there any chance of you could give us the number of failed 'precision bombing' attempts on the factory?

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Re: The Allied Terror bombings

#30

Post by Michael Kenny » 12 Jan 2015, 14:00

Here is a map of 2 later raids on Southampton with 712 of the bombs plotted.

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/wp ... tz-map.jpg

from this page

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/20 ... -years-on/

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