Of all the terrible new weapons that gained their baptism of fire in World War I, the one that most captured the popular imagination was the bomber. Although its actual importance was negligible during the 1914-18 conflict, it inspired a ghastly vision: the mass destruction of cities by a rain of bombs in a future war. The public was not alone in entertaining this apocalyptic view. Some military theorists also came to believe that the advent of the airplane had revolutionized warfare and that bombers would win the next conflict with little or no aid from other forces. They referred to this cataclysmic form of warfare as strategic bombing.
STRATEGIC BOMBING
A raid by 14 German Gotha aircraft in London in June 1917 had a special impact on British appraisals of the potential of strategic bombing. It had this effect even though, by later standards, it inflicted few casualties - 162 persons killed and 432 wounded. Other raids of limited scope followed until May 1918. Together they helped convince some British leaders that in the future, large formations of long-range bombers would be able to pound an enemy into submission.
This notion gained its strongest support in the fledgling Royal Air Force, which came into existence as a service independent of both the army and navy in April 1918. The RAF's first chief of staff, General Hugh Trenchard, became an outspoken enthusiast for strategic air power during the 1920s. In America, General William ("Billy") Mitchell also championed the cause of strategic bombing during the same period, but he was less successful in gaining acceptance of his ideas. There was no independent air force in the United States; the army and navy retained their own air arms and tended to regard Mitchell as an irresponsible visionary.
The man who many later credited with having the greatest influence on the theory of strategic air power was the Italian general Giulio Douhet. In a book that appeared in 1921, Douhet preached that bombers held the key to victory in a future war. He visualized bombing raids that would paralyze industry and civilian morale and make continued resistance impossible. But his influence may not have been as great during the 1920s and 1930s as is commonly believed. A complete English translation of his work did not appear until 1942 in the United States and 1943 in Britain.
Although a German translation of Douhet appeared in 1935, theories of strategic bombing played little role in the Luftwaffe's approach to aerial war. To be sure, General Wever, the first German air chief of staff, saw the need for a large force of long-range bombers and pressured the Dornier and Junkers aircraft firms to develop prototypes of such planes, but his death in 1936 ended progress in this direction. Instead, his successors devoted themselves to the creation of a tactical air force that would work closely with the army in its Blitzkrieg operations. Certainly, the Luftwaffe performed well in this role in the early campaigns of World War II. But its failure to develop a strategic bombing force was one factor that contributed to the futility of Germany's effort to knock Britain out of the war in 1940.
Even in Britain, where enthusiasm for strategic bombing ran highest, the RAF made little progress toward the development of an adequate bomber force prior to the war. This was due in part to the government's reluctance to provide the necessary funds. Disagreement also developed over the type of bomber that should be produced. As the war approached, the RAF still had a preponderance of light bombers that were unsuitable for strategic bombing. It also became obvious that Britain needed a strong fighter-plane force to defend the country against German air attacks. The simpler design of fighter planes also made it possible to produce them more quickly than the larger and more complex bombers. In 1939, the government gave priority to the creation of 18 new fighter squadrons, a decision that played a vital role in the RAF's victory over the Luftwaffe the following year.
When the war started, Britain was clearly at a numerical disadvantage in bombers, compared to Germany. This contributed to the realization that the RAF would be unable to inflict serious damage on German cities for the foreseeable future. British leaders concluded that it would be better to avoid provocative raids that might result in heavier retaliatory strikes on British cities. Nevertheless, the government went ahead with plans to develop four-engine long-range bombers. It had ordered prototypes of the future Stirling, Halifax, and Lancaster bombers as early as 1937. Although these planes were not available when the war began, they would devastate Germany later in the conflict. And despite this slow development, strategic bombing enthusiasts never slackened in their faith regarding the war-winning potential of heavy long-range bombers. Their single-minded approach led them to downplay the benefits to be gained from the creation of a tactical air arm that would work in close support of the army and navy. The British and German air forces thus approached the war with completely different philosophies.
The RAF exponents of strategic bombing also greatly underestimated the difficulties that lay in wait for bombers. They thought in terms of precision raids in daylight and assumed that it would be relatively easy to find and destroy targets. To say the least, this was wildly optimistic. Indeed, accurate navigation to targets and the ability to hit them, if they were reached, proved difficult when World War II began.
In the early stages of the conflict, neither Germany nor the Western Allies engaged in any large-scale raids on the cities of their chief opponents. To be sure, the Luftwaffe attacked Polish cities, especially Warsaw, and later destroyed the center of Rotterdam. But both of these operations were, to some extent, extensions of the German doctrine of tactical support for the army.
British air activity during the period of the "phony war" consisted primarily of dropping leaflets over German cities at night and infrequent daylight bombing attacks on naval targets. The most ambitious of the latter raids occurred in December 1939. Twenty-two Wellington bombers attacked enemy shipping along Germany's North Sea coast. But the two-engine Wellington's inflicted little damage, and only seven of them made it home. Heavy losses in other daylight attacks on similar targets led to a decision in April 1940 to restrict bombing to nighttime raids.
During the Battle of Britain, Germany, of course, attempted to carry out a strategic mission with a tactical air force. It failed either to destroy the RAF Fighter Command, the vital prerequisite for an invasion, or force Britain out of the conflict through bombing attacks alone. When German aircraft dropped a few bombs on London in August 1940, they caused little damage. But Churchill ordered a retaliatory strike on Berlin, and during the next few days, RAF Bomber Command carried out five raids on the German capital. They inflicted negligible damage. Indeed, only 29 of the 105 bombers that participated in the first raid actually found Berlin, a clear indication of the difficulties of aerial navigation. But the raids fulfilled their major mission: to make a gesture of Britain's willingness to strike back.
They also had an unexpected result. Hitler's anger over these violations of the sacred German capital contributed to the Luftwaffe's shift away from attacks on Fighter Command bases to direct attacks on London. The ensuing raids against the British capital and other cities during the next few months represented the most prolonged bombing assault in history up to that point, even though their results were disappointing.
German raids on cities also helped eliminate whatever squeamishness British leaders might still have harbored regarding the bombing of German cities. But the same problems persisted - an inadequate striking force as well as the technical problems of navigation and precision. An extremely inaccurate raid by 134 bombers against the railroad center of Mannheim in mid-December provided ample evidence of the lack of precision. Still, Bomber Command was the only British weapon capable of acting offensively against Germany.
During 1941, the British clung to the belief that they could carry out successful precision raids. But indications of woeful inaccuracy continued to mount. By the fall of that year, British air leaders, including Chief of the Air Staff Sir Charles Portal, came to the conclusion that area bombing offered the best opportunity to direct a decisive blow at Germany. This would involve striking at the center of German cities in an effort to inflict such heavy damage and casualties that enemy morale would crack, forcing an end to the war.
Portal was a true disciple of Trenchard and had directed Bomber Command prior to assuming the RAF's top post in late 1940. A man of great intelligence, efficiency, and capacity for work, Portal struggled with a shortage of aircraft at first, but he ultimately presided over a vast wartime expansion of the air force. This growth made possible the adoption of the strategic bombing policy in which he so strongly believed. Portal and other RAF leaders downplayed the failure of the Luftwaffe to break British morale in 1940-41. They attributed this in large part to the absence of strategic aircraft. To avoid a similar mistake, they visualized the creation of a British force of 4,000 heavy bombers capable of destroying Germany's will to resist within six months. They also assumed that enemy fighters would not be able to prevent night attacks any more than RAF fighters had stopped German night raids in 1940-41.
But Churchill doubted that area bombing would secure the desired result and warned that the Germans might improve their defenses against night attacks. He contended that only daylight bombing against industry held the possibility of real progress. This would only be feasible, however, if the RAF sharply reduced the size of the German fighter-plane force. In other words, control of the air was the key to a meaningful strategic bombing campaign. Unfortunately, the RAF could not accomplish this with its Hurricane and Spitfire fighters, which lacked the range to penetrate deeply into Germany. Moreover, the RAF staff believed that available technology made it possible to develop new long-range fighters capable of escorting bombers over Germany in daylight.
Churchill's fear of stronger enemy defenses proved prophetic. Improved radar enabled the Germans to detect the approach of British aircraft and direct night fighters to the attack. Luftwaffe aircraft now also used a precise short-range radar that allowed them to find their targets much more easily. British losses mounted, but the results of their bombing did not improve.
BRITAIN TAKES THE OFFENSIVE
Despite growing doubts about the potential of strategic air power, its supporters won out. Churchill found his own pessimism countered by the glowing optimism of his chief scientific adviser, Lord Cherwell, and the air staff opted for a policy of area raids against cities in February 1942. The appointment of Air Marshal Arthur Harris to the post of commander in chief of Bomber Command that same month provided the final ingredient. During World War I, Harris had served as a bugler in the army before joining the Royal Flying Corps and winning the Air Force Cross for bravery. He now became the high priest of strategic bombing.
Described as "ruthless, relentless, remorseless," Harris approached the war with total devotion to the principle of breaking civilian morale through 1,000-plane raids that would lay waste city after city. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary in the following months and years, "Bomber Harris" never faltered in this belief. He worked tirelessly to build up a huge force of four-engine bombers capable of carrying large bomb loads of ever-increasing destructiveness. His efforts were enhanced by the development of Gee, a radio device that aided navigation and enabled bomber crews to identify their targets with greater accuracy. Bomber Command also enjoyed access to a vast stream of useful information from Ultra. This intelligence proved useful in regard to the strength, location, and intentions of German fighter forces. It also provided details about weather over Germany and the enemy's radar system.
The first step in Harris's intensive campaign began in late March 1942, when 234 bombers attacked the German Baltic port of Lubeck. This raid featured the RAF's first use of large quantities of incendiary bombs, which destroyed the city's center, including many beautiful medieval buildings. But the attack resulted in little damage to either the port or industry. Raids against another Baltic port, Rostock, followed on four consecutive nights in April. Once again, incendiaries wiped out the medieval beauty of the old city but had a negligible impact on military targets. These assaults so enraged Hitler that he resorted to Luftwaffe attacks against a number of lovely historic English cities - Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York, and Canterbury.
In late May, the bomber offensive took a huge leap into the realm of destructiveness when Bomber Command carried out the first 1,000-plane raid against Cologne. Again, this massive force devastated the center of the city but had little effect on outlying industrial areas. The attackers lost 40 aircraft. Two days later, over 900 planes struck the great industrial city of Essen in the Ruhr, but heavy cloud cover prevented serious damage. Thirty-one bombers failed to return. Later that month, a force of comparable strength bombed the North Sea port of Bremen, but again bad weather conditions reduced the impact. The Bremen mission was the last of this scope until 1943. These raids had failed to break civilian morale.
Despite the disappointing results of these raids, British support for strategic bombing escalated during 1942. The number of planes involved and the tonnage of bombs dropped helped fire the imagination of leaders and common people alike, as did an increase in the number of four-engine Lancasters, by far the best British bomber. Other promising developments included improved navigational capabilities and the use of Pathfinder, a force of planes that preceded the main body of bombers to find and illuminate target areas with flares. On a more ominous note, however, German fighter-plane production rose from 3,744 in 1941 to 5,515 during 1942.
THE AMERICANS JOIN IN
With America's entry into the war, the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) loomed as a new and potentially powerful addition to the bombing offensive. The first units of the U.S. 8th Air Force arrived in May 1942 and began operations in August. Their contribution remained limited at first because American bomber strength was relatively small. U.S. planes did not penetrate beyond France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. But America possessed the capability to increase its bomber force drastically and also had two fine aircraft - the B-24 Liberator and, especially, the B-17 Flying Fortress. Both were four-engine heavy bombers that bristled with machine guns.
In contrast to their British allies, American leaders rejected area bombing of cities aimed at breaking civilian morale. They much preferred precision bombing of industrial and other military targets, using the superior Norden bombsight. Unfortunately, precision bombing required raids during daylight hours, which greatly increased danger to the attacking planes. But the Americans believed that their heavily armed formations of bomber group combat boxes could defend themselves alone against enemy fighter planes. They also expected to hit their targets much more accurately than the British. It soon became evident that they were overly optimistic on both counts. German fighter pilots inflicted heavy losses on U.S. bombers. Like the British before them, the Americans also found that their raids were far less accurate than they had anticipated. Unlike the British, they persisted in raiding targets in daylight.
This approach dominated the thinking of the man who commanded the USAAF, General H. H. Arnold. One of America's pioneer aviators, Arnold had learned his flying from the Wright brothers. He became head of the Air Corps in 1938 and laid the groundwork for the vast wartime expansion of U.S. air power. Although Arnold's nickname "Hap" reflected a sunny personality, he was deadly serious in his belief that air power held the key to victory. His efforts had helped earn the air force equality with the army and navy, although technically it remained attached to the former. The first commander of the 8th Air Force, General Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz, and General Ira Eaker, who succeeded him in late 1942, were also longtime fliers. Together they set an endurance record when they remained aloft for almost 151 hours in 1927. They also shared an intense faith in daylight strategic bombing.
Ultra proved especially helpful to the USAAF's efforts. Daylight precision bombing required much more information on targets than did Bomber Command's nighttime area raids. Ultra also gave an accurate picture of damage inflicted and the progress of German repairs.
Roosevelt and Churchill agreed at the Casablanca conference in January 1943 that Allied air forces would continue both approaches to strategic bombing. This would be referred to as Operation Pointblank, the CBO - Combined Bomber Offensive, or "Round the Clock Bombing." American precision attacks would seek to destroy German industry, while RAF area raids would concentrate on undermining civilian morale. Starting in March and continuing until July, the British blasted the industrial cities of the Ruhr. These raids, known collectively as the Battle of the Ruhr, caused widespread destruction but did not seriously impede German industrial production.
THE DESTRUCTION OF HAMBURG
By far the most devastating and horrible raids in this phase of the war took place during the period from July 24 to August 3, 1943, with Hamburg as the target. Almost 800 RAF bombers delivered the first attack on the night of July 24-25. Many factors conspired to bring ruin to Germany's greatest port and second largest city. The night was clear, the target was well marked by Pathfinders, and a new device, called Window, badly confused German radar signals. Window consisted of strips of tinfoil (chaff) that bomber crews dropped in bundles at intervals of one minute. So successful was this device that only 12 aircraft failed to return. The bombers dropped high-explosive, incendiary, and newly developed phosphorous bombs on Hamburg, causing widespread destruction.
Far worse disasters lay ahead for the stricken city, however. American bombers added to the devastation in the next two days, even though they suffered heavy losses from German fighter attacks. The greatest horror came on the night of July 26-27. The previous raids had virtually paralyzed Hamburg's firefighting capabilities. When RAF bombers returned to rain another deluge of incendiaries and phosphorous bombs on the city, they started innumerable fires, which all converged to start a firestorm. A 1 1/2-mile-wide column of superheated air rose 8,000 feet into the sky, sucking in the air from the surrounding area and suffocating thousands of people. The conflagration's intense heat turned air raid shelters into ovens and literally baked alive thousands of persons who had taken refuge in them. Temperatures rose to over 1,000 degrees Farenheit, and winds reached nearly 300 miles per hour.
But of all the hideous forms of death that the citizens of Hamburg suffered, the most terrible fate befell several hundred who were spattered by showers of phosphorous. Phosphorous clings tenaciously to any surface it touches, including human flesh, and continues to burn as long as it remains exposed to oxygen. Even when smothered by sand or water, it flares into flame again once the cover is removed. Many victims of this horror threw themselves into the Alster River, where they had to choose between slowly dying in agony from flaming phosphorous or drowning.
A fifth attack followed on the night of July 29-30, and a final one took place on August 2-3 as a sort of melancholy postscript to this orgy of destruction and death. In all, the raids wiped out nine square miles of the city and killed at least 60,000 persons. Another 750,000 found themselves homeless.
Bomber Command struck at many other German cities during 1943, culminating in a series of 16 devastating raids on Berlin that began in November and continued until March 1944. But all of the terrible raids of 1943 and early 1944 had relatively little impact on Germany's productive capacity, and despite the horror that gripped the country after the Hamburg raids, they failed to destroy civilian morale. Once the initial shock wore off, the German people steeled themselves to their fate. There was little else they could do.
Even more discouraging to the British were the increasing losses that their bombers suffered in the raids after Hamburg. The Germans developed an improved airborne radar, which was not subject to jamming by Window, as well as new night-fighting tactics. These innovations once again restored the balance in favor of the defense. To make matters worse, the Germans increased fighter-plane production during the first half of 1943, reaching a peak of 2,316 a month by June. This accomplishment was largely due to techniques employed by Albert Speer, the minister for armaments and war production, including remarkably quick repair of bombing damage and dispersal of industry. German industry also concentrated on production of just two types of fighter - improved versions of the Me 109 and the newer Focke-Wulf 190.
The U.S. 8th Air Force, to its credit, recognized the need to destroy the German aircraft industry, and during 1943 concentrated its attacks primarily on targets related to the production of fighters. They did succeed in reducing German aircraft production to some extent during the second half of the year but suffered heavy losses in the effort. The most disastrous of these raids occurred in October, when 291 Flying Fortresses attacked the ball bearing factory at Schweinfurt in central Germany. Repeated German fighter attacks from head on destroyed 60 bombers and damaged 138. It was now clear that daylight bombing could not succeed unless large numbers of long-range fighter planes escorted the bombers. Until late in 1943, Allied fighters such as the P-47 Thunderbolt lacked the range to penetrate deeply into Germany. Luftwaffe fighters simply waited until the escorts had to return to their base and then pounced on the bombers.
THE ALLIES REGAIN THE UPPER HAND
The answer to the Allied dilemma came in the form of a fighter escort plane with vastly increased range - the formidable P-51 Mustang. Although the P-51 had been available since 1940, the USAAF had rejected the plane at first because of its underpowered engine. Now equipped with a new high-performance engine, it proved to be the finest prop-powered fighter plane of World War II. It was superior to German fighters in speed and maneuverability and could now escort bombers to Berlin.
From April to September 1944, the Allies gave top priority to aerial attacks in support of the cross-channel invasion. To accomplish this, they diverted heavy bombers from their strategic mission to aid the medium bombers and fighter bombers of General Lewis Brereton's U.S. 9th Air Force and Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham's British 2nd Tactical Air Force. Their chief targets prior to the actual landings were the French railroad network and bridges leading to the projected landing site. These raids snarled the communications system so badly that when the invasion began, the Germans found it extremely difficult to move reinforcements and supplies to the beachhead. Once the Allied armies gained a foothold on the French coast, the air forces provided tactical support by attacking a multitude of targets at the front as well as in the German rear.
Brereton had been MacArthur's air commander in the Philippines and a central figure in the controversy over the destruction of most of the American planes on Luzon soon after Pearl Harbor. He was the architect of the "bridge-busting" campaign prior to the invasion. Coningham had served as a fighter pilot on the western front during World War I and had been RAF commander in North Africa as well as leader of Allied air forces in Sicily and Italy. He believed strongly in close cooperation between air and ground forces but often quarreled with General Montgomery, who looked down on the RAF's contribution. General Elwood ("Pete") Quesada, who had gained prominence as a fighter commander in North Africa, served under Brereton as leader of the 9th Tactical Air Command. Quesada was a much more avid believer in close support of ground troops than Brereton. He quickly won the admiration of army officers for his cooperative attitude and the brilliant success of his operations.
Meanwhile, the Germans concentrated on the development of new weapons that they hoped might turn the tide against the Allies. One of the potentially most useful of these was the Messerschmitt 262 jet-propelled fighter. It had been undergoing trials since 1942 and by the summer of 1943 was ready for mass production. With a speed in excess of 500 miles per hour, the Me 262 would have outclassed every Allied fighter, including the Mustang. It might have forced the Allies to abandon their mass bombing raids on Germany.
But Hitler thought in terms of offensive rather than defensive weapons. Despite the protests of General Adolf Galland, commander of the Luftwaffe's fighter arm, he insisted that the plane be converted into a fighter-bomber. Galland later commented that "one might as well have given orders to call a horse a cow!" Hitler hoped that large numbers of these aircraft would smash the Allied cross-channel invasion when it came. But the Germans did not complete this conversion until after the Allies had successfully landed on the French coast. Even then, the aircraft were available only in small numbers. Finally, in September 1944, Hitler allowed some of the Me 262s to be used as fighters. By then it was much too late, and there were too few of them to make an impact. This revolutionary plane never became a real factor in the war. The British had been working on a jet aircraft, too, and it actually became operational shortly before the end of the war in Europe.
A week after the Allies began their cross-channel invasion on June 6, 1944, Hitler unleashed the first of his "vengeance weapons" against Britain. This was the V-1, a pilotless jet-propelled plane with a warhead containing a ton of high explosives.
During the next few weeks, the Germans launched thousands of these "buzz bombs" from sites along the channel coast against London and other British cities. Hitler sent an even more terrifying weapon, the V-2, against Britain from launching sites in the Netherlands, starting on September 8. The V-2 was an actual rocket and also carried a one-ton warhead. It reached a speed of 3,600 miles per hour upon reentering the atmosphere and could not be intercepted. Both the V-1 and V-2 were terror weapons as well as means of gaining some measure of vengeance for Allied bombing raids against German cities. Hitler hoped that they might have a decisive impact on the course of the war, but even though they killed almost 9,000 persons, their effect fell far short of expectations. The V-2 also proved exceptionally costly and diverted precious resources from the production of fighter-planes badly needed for the defense of the Reich.
The V weapons did succeed in forcing the Allies to divert a large portion of their bombers to attacks on launching sites. Although these raids may have delayed the V-1 attacks for three or four months, they did not prevent the eventual onslaught. Raids against launching sites continued, but the Germans switched to smaller sites that were even more difficult to hit. Gradually the Allies came to realize that the only real remedy for V weapon attacks was to overrun the launching sites.
During the summer of 1944, a difference of opinion developed among Allied leaders over bombing targets. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, the deputy supreme commander in Europe, favored raids on the German communications network. The great success of such attacks in France prior to the cross-channel invasion convinced him of the value of this approach. But General Spaatz, the commander of all U.S. strategic air forces in Europe, believed that raids on Germany's oil supply would be even more effective. Spaatz had already directed American bombers to attack oil objectives during the spring of 1944. General Nathan Twining's U.S. 15th Air Force, now commanded by General James Doolittle, the hero of the 1942 raid on Tokyo, sent its bombers against German synthetic oil plants in May. These raids increased in frequency after the cross-channel invasion and had a definite effect on German oil production. They were so successful that British bombers also began to strike at oil targets.
But the really crucial phase of the bombing offensive began in November 1944 with the establishment of oil plants as first-priority targets and communications as second-priority. Raids against synthetic oil production, coupled with the Soviet capture of the Ploesti oil fields in August, caused an alarming drain on German oil stocks. Although Speer's ceaseless efforts resulted in some improvement, the overall trend was critical for both the Luftwaffe and the army. The Luftwaffe found it more and more difficult to obtain fuel for training flights, which sharply reduced its ability to put fighters into the air. This, coupled with the growing domination of the Mustang fighter, gradually resulted in Allied supremacy in the skies over Germany.
The assaults on German communications targets developed more slowly, but in February and March 1945, these operations became shatteringly effective. The flow of raw materials to German industry diminished to a trickle. With the Soviet capture of eastern Germany's major industrial area of Upper Silesia in February, German dependence on the Ruhr became far greater. But raids on communications, along with RAF attacks on the Ruhr itself, virtually paralyzed the area's ability to produce war materiel. By April, Allied bombers were hard-pressed to find suitable strategic targets and devoted their efforts to tactical support of the ground forces that were overrunning Germany.
But terror raids continued to figure prominently in the bombing offensive. Not only Bomber Command but the USAAF as well took part in devastating attacks on major German cities, including Berlin, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Leipzig, and Munich. This wave of destruction culminated in a series of tragic raids on the beautiful city of Dresden. Renowned for its glorious Rococo architecture, Dresden had previously escaped devastation and contained little of strategic importance. The city's prewar population of 630,000 had increased dramatically with the influx of over 200,000 refugees fleeing from the Red Army, which had already penetrated eastern Germany. Several factors contributed to the decision to strike against Dresden. Churchill favored an attack as a means of impressing Stalin with the awesome power of Anglo-American air might as well as a demonstration of Western determination to cooperate with the Soviet offensive. As an almost untouched urban center, Dresden also provided Allied leaders with a tempting target in keeping with the policy of smashing enemy cities.
On the night of February 13-14, over 800 British bombers dropped huge quantities of incendiaries and high-explosive bombs on the city, creating a hideous firestorm similar to the one that tormented Hamburg a year and a half earlier. If this were not enough, 300 American planes rained additional devastation on the flaming target the following day, and 200 more U.S. bombers struck again on February 15. Over 35,000 persons died in the raids. Little remained of the once lovely city.
WAS IT ALL WORTHWHILE?
The Allied strategic bombing offensive has remained one of the most controversial episodes of World War II. Over 400,000 German civilians lost their lives as a result of attacks on targets within the Reich's pre-1938 borders. At least another 400,000 suffered injuries. By comparison, Britain lost only 65,000 civilians to German bombing attacks. Allied bombs destroyed 30 to 80 percent of 50 major German cities. But the price was high: 40,000 Allied planes destroyed and 160,000 airmen dead. Did all the destruction and slaughter visited upon Germany's cities really affect the war to an extent that justified such drastic measures? Did the results offset the heavy casualties suffered by Allied bomber crews?
Raids on German industry clearly did not destroy the Reich's ability to produce war materiel during 1943-44. In fact, German aircraft production rose from the previous high 10,898 in 1943 to 25,285 in 1944. Tank production also increased sharply. But, without Allied raids, Germany would have possessed the potential to increase production even more. Allied bombing cut Germany's projected output of tanks by 35 percent and aircraft by 31 percent in 1944. The bombing offensive also forced the Germans to divert fighter aircraft from the various fronts to defend the Fatherland and left them no choice but to concentrate on production of fighters at the expense of bombers. Indeed, bomber output dropped to only 18 percent of Germany's overall aircraft production by the end of 1944. This clearly reduced the threat of bombing attacks on Allied ground forces. By 1944 Germany had diverted one-third of artillery production to antiaircraft guns, an action that left its army at a huge disadvantage in firepower. As many as two million men who might otherwise have seen combat against Allied troops also had to serve in antiaircraft crews and civil defense roles. Allied bombing attacks on the French rail and road networks prior to D Day also contributed significantly to the success of the Normandy invasion.
Despite the benefits of direct attacks on industry, are bombing of cities certainly failed in its major purpose - to destroy German civilian morale and the will to resist. Nevertheless, it did weaken morale and created an atmosphere of great sorrow and insecurity among German civilians. Obviously, a steady menu of death, destruction, and fear must take its toll.
It was not until the Allies focused on oil and communications targets late in the conflict that strategic bombing really had a paralyzing effect on Germany's ability to wage war. But by that time the outcome was no longer in doubt. It is possible that concentration on these targets earlier might have shortened the struggle, but such an approach was not feasible until the advent of long-range fighters in large numbers for escort duty. These were not available until early 1944. Without such escorts, large-scale raids deep into Germany against oil and communications targets would certainly have resulted in losses as prohibitive as those suffered in raids on cities.
Ironically, despite the infinitely greater emphasis on strategic bombing, tactical air power in support of ground troops probably made at least as significant a contribution to victory. But it, too, was sometimes guilty of overkill as in the massive attacks on Cassino and the French city of Caen. These raids actually caused more difficulty for the advancing Allied troops than for the German defenders. They created so much havoc that Allied tanks and supply vehicles could not penetrate through the huge mounds of debris that clogged the streets of the devastated towns.