Target Berlin – The Forgotten Soviet Bomber Raids on Hitler’s Capital

Target Berlin - The Forgotten Soviet Bomber Raids on Hitler's Capital

ALMOST FROM THE start of the Second World War, Berlin was in the crosshairs of Allied bombers. Beginning with the first British raid on the Nazi capital, launched on Aug. 25, 1940, through to the last attacks before VE Day, RAF Bomber Command dropped an estimated 45,000 tons of ordnance on the city.

Air Operations Against Japan, (1942–1945)

On May 14, 1945 472 B-29s attacked the area in and around the Mitsubishi engine factory at Nagoya. Two nights later, another visit to Nagoya devastated another four square miles of that city. On May 23 and May 25, Tokyo was hit again. Although these two Tokyo raids had cost 43 B-29s, over 50 percent of the city had now been destroyed.

Alarmed at the increasing B-29 losses, a change of tactics was ordered. In an attempt to confuse the enemy defenses and to lure Japanese fighters into an air battle in which many of them would be destroyed, high-altitude daylight attacks were temporarily resumed. On May 29, 454 B-29s appeared over Yokohama, but this time they were escorted by P-51 Mustangs from Iwo Jima. In the resulting dogfight, 26 Japanese fighters were destroyed against the loss of four B-29s and three P-51s. Thereafter, the Japanese hoarded their surviving fighters for a last-ditch effort against the inevitable invasion force, and the air defense of cities became a lesser priority. By June of 1945, Japanese interceptors were seen much less frequently and the B-29s had free reign over all Japanese airspace.

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Despite widespread awareness about the vulnerability of the Japanese home islands to air attack—reinforced by the results of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo on 18 April 1942—U.S. plans for an air war against Japan remained vague until well into 1943 because of American limitations in resources and technology.

The development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress changed this situation. Eventually, more than 1,000 of the long-range aircraft were deployed in the Twentieth Air Force under the direct control of the Army Air Forces commander, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, subdivided into the XX and XXI Bomber Commands. Under pressure to get results from his expensive very-heavy bomber program, he fielded the new aircraft even before testing had been completed.

In June 1944, B-29s from Major General Kenneth Wolfe’s XX Bomber Command began bombing Japan from China as part of Operation MATTERHORN. The campaign was plagued by logistical problems that got worse when Japanese troops overran advanced Allied airfields in China. Arnold replaced Wolfe with the USAAF’s premier problem-solver, Major General Curtis LeMay. However, even he could not make MATTERHORN a success. Arnold’s greatest hopes for an airpower victory over Japan rested with Brigadier General Haywood “Possum” Hansell’s XXI Bomber Command, which began operations from the Mariana Islands in November 1944. Hansell was one of the architects of the precision-bombing doctrine, but his operations also had little success.

Poor facilities, faulty training, engine failures, cloud cover, and jet streams at bombing altitudes made precision methods impossible. Hansell seemed unwilling to change his tactics, however, and Arnold feared that he would lose control of the heavy bombers to Allied Pacific theater commanders without better results, so he consolidated both bomber commands in the Marianas under LeMay and relieved Hansell.

LeMay instituted new training and maintenance procedures but still failed to achieve useful results with daylight high-altitude precision attacks. He decided to resort to low-level incendiary raids at night. Although area-firebombing went against dominant Air Forces doctrine, flying at low altitude reduced engine strain, required less fuel, improved bombing concentration, avoided high winds, and took advantage of weaknesses in Japanese defenses. LeMay’s systems analysts predicted that he could set large enough fires to leap firebreaks around important industrial objectives. His first application of the new tactics, Operation MEETINGHOUSE, against Tokyo on the night of 9 March 1945, produced spectacular destruction and was the deadliest air raid of the war.

Once enough incendiaries were stockpiled, the fire raids began in earnest. Warning leaflets were also dropped, which terrorized 8 million Japanese civilians into fleeing from cities. When General Carl Spaatz arrived in July to take command of U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, including the Eighth Air Force redeploying from Europe, and to coordinate strategic air operations supporting the invasion of Japan, he had a directive to shift the air campaign from cities to transportation. But there was too much momentum behind the fire raids, sustained by operational tempo, training programs, and bomb stockage.

By the time Spaatz arrived, naval carrier strikes were also hitting key industrial objectives in Japan. More important, a submarine blockade had crippled the Japanese economy, the Russians were about to attack Manchuria, and Spaatz maintained direct command over the 509th Composite Group of B-29s specially modified to carry atomic bombs. Directed by Washington to deliver these weapons as soon as possible after 3 August, Spaatz ordered the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These different elements combined with the incendiary campaign to comprise the series of blows that produced Japanese surrender.

As with the atomic bomb, there is still debate over the effects and morality of the firebombing raids. LeMay’s bombers burned out 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed at least 300,000 people, and wounded more than 400,000. His 313th Bomb Wing also sowed 12,000 mines in ports and waterways, sinking almost 1 million tons of shipping in about four months. LeMay remained convinced that his conventional bombing could have achieved victory by itself. LeMay, his tactics, and the legacy of the atomic bombs would be a primary influence in the shaping of the new United States Air Force.

References Hansell, Haywood S. Jr. Strategic Air War Against Japan. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980.

Lesson in terror

“It is probable that future war will be conducted by a special class, the air force, as it was by the armored knights of the Middle Ages.” BRIGADIER GENERAL WILLIAM “BILLY” MITCHELL WINGED DEFENSE, 1924

By 1918 there was a solid weight of opinion in the Allied countries calling for a bombing offensive against Germany, and frustration among political leaders at the military’s failure to deliver it. In April 1918, Britain created the world’s first independent air force, the Royal Air Force, to replace the army’s Royal Flying Corps and the navy’s Royal Naval Air Service. It was intended, among other things, to help give Britain more effective air defences, and to promote a strategic air offensive against Germany. The Independent Force of bombers was set up in June to carry out this offensive. Meanwhile the French commander-in-chief, Marshal Henri Pétain, called for a fleet of heavy bombers to “paralyze the economic life of Germany and its war industries by methodical and repeated action against principal industrial cities…”. In 1918 the Allies had the de Havilland-designed Airco D.H.9 and excellent Breguet Br.14 as day bombers and the Handley Page O/400 and Caproni biplanes and triplanes as night bombers. The Handley Page, although nothing like as big as the German R-planes, could carry a maximum bombload of 900kg (2,000lb), and formed the backbone of the Independent Force. Other heavy bombers, including the French Farman Goliath and the British Vickers Vimy, were under construction in 1918 but arrived too late to see service.

In the summer and autumn of 1918, formations of up to 40 Allied bombers flew raids deep into Germany. Predictably, bad weather and unreliable aircraft limited the effectiveness of the bomber offensive. But civilians in cities such as Frankfurt and Mannheim were taught the terror of air-raids that had already been experienced by inhabitants of Paris and London. Allied airmen were always under orders to aim for precise targets, such as factories or communications centres. But Allied political leaders were keen to affect civilian morale. The British Secretary of State for air, William Weir, told Hugh Trenchard, the commander of the Independent Force, not to be scrupulous in respect for civilian life: “If I were you,” he wrote, “I would not be too exacting as regards accuracy in bombing railway stations in the middle of towns. The German is susceptible to bloodiness, and I would not mind a few accidents due to inaccuracy.”

In fact, the air commanders were generally more sceptical about strategic bombing than the politicians. Trenchard knew he was supposed to use his force to bomb German cities and factories, but more often he directed it against tactical objectives such as airfields and communications centres behind the front. The same is true of US General Billy Mitchell. Both Trenchard and Mitchell later became advocates of strategic bombing, but they devoted themselves in the last months of the war to the tactical use of airpower.

The evidence of World War I was that, at current levels of technology, strategic bombing could neither seriously disrupt industrial production nor significantly weaken a population’s will to fight. Bombing was costly and inaccurate. Its chief positive effect lay in forcing the enemy to divert resources to air defence.

The building and operation of large bomber aircraft was nonetheless an important step in the progress of aviation. Bomber aircrews had accumulated extensive experience of long-distance flight and night flying, and the large aircraft they flew carrying bombs could, with relatively small modifications, carry passengers or freight instead. Strategic bombing in the Great War helped pave the way for the development of commercial aviation – as well as the devastation of Dresden, Tokyo, and Hiroshima.

Strategic Bombing – Europe

Strategic bombing may generally be defined as air attacks directed at targets or systems capable of having a major impact on the will or ability of an enemy nation to wage war. Airpower proponents have touted strategic bombing as a unique war-winning capability and have used it to justify independent air services.

When World War II began, only two nations had a coherent and committed strategic bombing program: Great Britain and the United States. Although most states with advanced militaries had interest in powerful airpower, continental concerns, resource limitations, or misguided procurement policies hindered most aspirants to powerful long-range bombing forces. Only relatively protected naval powers such as the United States and Britain could afford to focus so much attention on strategic bombing, lured by the strong political appeal of its promise of quick victory at relatively low cost. Both efforts had roots in the experience of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in World War I, when Sir Hugh Trenchard developed tactics and policies for the world’s first independent air service and when talented subordinates such as Hardinge Goulburn Giffard, 1st Viscount Tiverton (subsequently 2nd Earl of Halsbury) pioneered target analysis for morale and material effects to assault the foundations of the German war economy. Although airmen in both countries became aware of the ideas of Giulio Douhet during the interwar years and used them to support arguments for strategic airpower, Douhet had little impact on the evolution of the RAF or the U.S. Army Air Corps.

The RAF continued to pursue Trenchard’s ideal of a massive aerial offensive, assisted by politicians who were willing to fund an aerial deterrent instead of large expensive land armies that could become involved in more bloody continental wars. However, targeting priorities remained vague, and the war would soon reveal the large gap between claims and capabilities.

The Americans took a different approach that can be traced back to Tiverton’s precedents. Although the subordinate army air service’s primary mission remained ground support, a group of smart young officers at the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) developed a theory of precision daylight bombing of carefully selected targets in the industrial and service systems of enemy economies. Pinning their hopes on the capabilities of new aircraft such as the B-17 Flying Fortress, these airmen expected unescorted self-defending bombers to destroy vital nodes of the enemy’s war economy that would grind it to a halt.

Bombing examples before and during the early days of World War II—in Spain and China and even the German Blitz on London—appeared to demonstrate the ineffectiveness and drawbacks of indiscriminate attacks on cities and to support the superiority of precision tactics. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the army and navy for munitions estimates for a potential war in 1941, many of those ACTS instructors had joined the Air Staff in Washington. They soon developed a plan called AWPD/1 that envisioned a precision bombing campaign as a key component of the American war effort. When a larger plan that included AWPD/1 was accepted, the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) finally had a justification for pursuing its own independent strategic bombing. They also found it difficult to put theory into practice.

Early British attacks moved from a Tivertonian focus on key systems like power plants or oil to a more Trenchardian reliance on widespread morale effects. Daylight raids proved deadly for RAF Bomber Command, revealing critical deficiencies in the number and quality of their bombers. Operations shifted to the nighttime, but the August 1941 Butt Report concluded that only about one in five aircrews were bombing within five miles of their intended targets. Adapting to the reality of their capabilities, in February 1942 Bomber Command was directed to attack area targets—that is, cities—with the objective of undermining German civilian morale, particularly that of industrial workers. Under the direction of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Command built up its strength and obtained better aircraft, especially Halifax and Lancaster four-engine bombers. On 30 May 1942, Bomber Command mounted the first “thousand bomber raid” on Cologne, and in July 1943 it achieved the first bombing-induced firestorm against Hamburg, killing about 45,000 people. However German night defenses also adapted. When Harris decided to mount a full-scale assault on Berlin in late 1943, the Luftwaffe shot down so many British aircraft, and bombing results were so disappointing, that the utility of the whole night area campaign was brought into question.

Meanwhile, the Americans had also encountered difficulties. At Casablanca in January 1943, Allied leaders had agreed to a Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) of round-the-clock attacks. It was rather poorly coordinated, but it did allow each air force to pursue its preferred approach. The most significant USAAF strategic attack of that year was General James Doolittle’s July 1943 attack on Rome from North Africa, which heavily damaged the marshaling yards, limited collateral damage with impressive accuracy, and contributed to the fall of Benito Mussolini’s government. Elements of the Eighth Air Force began bombing the continent from England in August 1942, although they did not fly deep penetration raids into central and eastern Germany until a year later. Losses among unescorted B-17 and B-24 “Liberator” bombers were horrendous, especially during attacks against ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt in August and October 1943. Although the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy joined the daylight campaign in November 1943, the Americans were unable to sustain such attrition. By the end of the year, such deep attacks on Germany were suspended, and it appeared that the Luftwaffe was on the verge of winning the strategic air war in Europe.

Everything changed, however, with the advent of the Allied long-range escort fighter, most notably the P-51 “Mustang.” In mid-February 1944, the U.S. Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF) began their “Big Week” attacks against German aircraft factories. The air battles that ensued decimated the Luftwaffe, and by the time of the D-day landings in June, the Allies achieved air supremacy over France and air superiority over Germany. The escort fighters began by sticking close to their bombers, but they proved most effective when they were released to sweep against enemy aircraft in the air and on the ground. Because of the American adoption of radar-directed bombing methods through overcast skies, the Germans had little respite even in poor weather, and their losses were increased by many accidents. Although the strategic bombers had an initial priority to operations in support of the coming invasion, Allied airpower had built up to the point that USSTAF commander General Carl Spaatz could begin sustained attacks against oil targets in May. By the fall of 1944, Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht operations were severely crippled by fuel shortages, and concentrated attacks against transportation networks further limited German mobility and economic activity.

During this period, Harris resisted diversions against “panacea targets” such as oil and remained committed to “dehousing” German workers. However, British bombers did sometimes assist with attacks on oil and transportation targets, and their larger loads of bombs could cause considerable damage. The RAF greatly improved its ability to navigate and bomb at night or in bad weather, and it usually achieved greater accuracy than the Americans under such conditions. Even in clear weather, precision bombing did not approach the image often portrayed in the press of bombs dropping down smokestacks. Usually, all aircraft in the B-17 and B-24 formations dropped their loads together, with intervals set between bombs so they would fall a few hundred feet apart. The pattern therefore covered a wide area. As USSTAF strength increased and targets became scarcer, planners became more tolerant of civilian casualties, adopting less accurate radar-directed bombardment methods in bad weather and hitting transportation objectives in city centers.

At least in Europe, American air leaders remained committed to attacks aimed primarily at economic and military targets instead of at civilian morale, a policy that sometimes caused friction with their British allies. There were also differences over bombing in occupied countries, where the British were particularly sensitive to political repercussions. The Americans were willing to bomb any Axis factory regardless of the nationality of the workers, whereas the British preferred to strike any German anywhere. The British also favored heavy attacks on the capitals of Axis allies in the Balkans, although the Americans successfully blocked what they saw as an inefficient and ineffective diversion of valuable airpower. Debates about the relative success and morality of RAF and USAAF bombing have continued to the present day.

The differing national approaches also played a role as the war in Europe approached its end, and both air forces sought an aerial death blow to finish the war. The British plan, codenamed THUNDERCLAP, was based on shattering morale by destroying Berlin. That major assault was conducted by the Eighth Air Force on 3 February 1945. Allied concerns about assisting the Soviet advance helped produce the firestorm that devastated Dresden 10 days later. The corresponding American plan, code-named CLARION, aimed to awe the German populace with widespread attacks on targets in every village. It was eventually changed into primarily a transportation assault because of concerns for efficiency, public image, and even morality. The controversy in Great Britain over the Dresden attack was one factor in the suspension of the strategic air war against Germany in April, although it was not as important as the simple fact that Allied bombing forces were running out of suitable targets.