Question about Allied bomber tactics

[williamp]

Very much an armchair historian, so please excuse me if this is a bleedin' obvious answer but...

I read that the Germans, when bombing the Uk airfields during the battle of britain used to start at a higher altitude then necessary, and then gently descend whn on thre bombing run. This would allow them to greatly increase the speed, and thus be in and out much quicker, allowing less chance for flak to hit and more speed to head home.

Did the allied forces ever use this tactic? I can imagine it would be problematical with a large formation, but not impossible, with clear instructions and navigation points?

[J Urby]

While i don't know the answer, i suspect non! Especialy when the RAF and USAF were bombilng Germany. Logically, the Luftwaffe had a greater distance to fly towards the target while over friendly (ie occupied) territory, thus burning off fuel weight and enabling a higher cruise to target and the escape dive to the south east coast to escape would not be that far. The Allies however, taking off from the east of England would not have had too much extra fuel to burn off if they were to reach the far targets and, while climbing all the time towards the target, would have been lower initially due to fuel weight. They would have been in FLAK range from initially crossing the continental coast until back over the English Channel/ North Sea. So, 1. Either that lived with the risks (although i suspect the put greater planning into tactical evasion of AAA (more fuel)) or 2. The evasive distance to safe airspace would be too great given esp as FLAK would be more accurate at lower altitudes. Does this make sense?:\

[4Greens]

For a quick brief get hold of a book by Len Deighton "Bomber". Its a novel but very accurate on tactics. It is a great read anyway.

[PLovett]

Concur with 4Greens
When I started reading this thread I was going to suggest exactly the same thing. Curses, beaten to the punch. :O
However, I can give an example that Deighton cites. That is bomber crews were desparate for height and would drop one stage of flap in the cruise, ride the uplift that it would cause then raise them again, hopefully 50' to 100' higher and continue to do so again and again. Must have been hell on the crew during the process but better than an 88mm up the fundamental. :\

[7gcbc]

The definitive books (at least for me) that deal with this sort of stuff are written by a delightfully erudite english farmer called Martin Middlebrook.

If you have any questions as to routes, tactics, box formations, alternatives, sweeps, dispersion, fightercover, alt, crew, creep and even payloads (for alternatives) on the allied side, and pretty much the same on the German side then Middlebrooks books such as :

The Schweinfurt and Reisenburg raid, The Berlin Raids, The Nuremberg raid, and the Hamburg raid (or campaign)

His attention to detail, whist not making it seem like a latin class is wonderful.

I have all of his books and won't lend them for a cent!, you should however be able to pick them up off amazon , and pengiun are currently reprinting some, which reminds me I must pick up a copy of the "Convoy"

[Saab Dastard]

I doubt that any USAAF bomber crews would have done so when using the Norden bomb-site. The key was to maintain constant heading, altitude and airspeed (as far as it was practical!) while on the bomb-run.

[waco]

I believe that during the early years of the war bomber crews operated independantly. That is to say, they were given a target but it was left to the crew to plan there own route and bombing altitude.

I believe that during this period some crews did adopt a tactic similar to the one described.

Further details can be obtained from various books but "Enemy Coast Ahead" by Guy Gibson describes bomber tactics during the early part of the war very well.

[682al]

I agree with Waco.

Bomber crews had much greater freedom in planning their approach and attack in the early war years. For example, an experienced crew might loiter just outside the target area until another aircraft was coned by searchlights, then try to sneek in while the defences were occupied in trying to shoot the other bloke down.

I've also read of the gliding attack, where the engines are throttled back, and the aircraft is descending - this was thought to confuse radar controlled Flak guns.

John Bushby wrote a good account of these early tactics in his autobiographical Gunner's Moon.

[Conan the Librarian]

Change of altitude was propitious for many a WW2 flyer (esp recon as a singleton, or so I am told) but when within the "Stream" at night I doubt that anyone would really believe they had the spatial freedom to do it. The Norden or RAF SABS bombsights (617, 9 (?) sqn) swere working at their limits as it was, so I doubt that other than individual action, that height change was done often. However, I would love to be proved wrong.

Conan

[Vfrpilotpb]

If you take notice of the many film shots taken on actual Bomber missions both with the Brits and the US, you will clearly se that on 99% of all mass raid the A/c were layered, and flew on pre set routes that were always given to the crews at their pre-op briefing, they had a way in and a way out to certain points after which on the return legs they did have a little freedom of choice(or nesessity due Flak, fighters or damage etc), having watched many hours of these newsreels type shots it is quite plain to understand the tension that built up in the minds of the crews.

It must also have been very frightening to find yourself at the bottom of the multi layer of big bomber raids and be slightly out with your time over target, or worse the guys above you being straight above you over the target.

An old friend of mine now long since departed was a tail gunner in Lancasters and after much coaxing and gentle talking about that conflict he told me that he physically wet himself when he saw bombs from higher Lancs in the stack dropping and passing his turret no more than 20 to 30 feet away and seeming to get closer as they fell.

A lot of people now in our modern times are very quick to judge and rubbish the way things were done during that terrible conflict, it was done how it fitted the bill at the time, I have a great deal of admiration for
those people who took part, being a child of the late forties I have been fortunate enough to meet many whilst they were still fairly young and well able to recount in great detail how they did things, today we wouldn't do it their way, but at that time even the really top brass had no real time knowledge of what was then modern warfare.

Tail gunner Clifford Hacking my now passed away friend, had a solitary existance on active service despite being one of the crew, he found great difficulty in talking about it afterwards, and could be seen to be emotionally drained after he had talked to me, there are less and less of these brave men around, I feel that we have not really understood what happened to their minds at all

Vfr

[Onan the Clumsy]

I read a book once (a collection of stories edited by Martin Caiden perhaps) and in one of them he recounts the tale of a B24 whose crew got the idea that after the drop, the defenses would be tracking the bomber stream along a set course at a known altitude. They figured if they could descend to as low as possible, they not only would gain airspeed, but also put themselves where the defenses were not expecting them to be.

Unfortunately they got bouced and the tale was one of a low level chase across occupied Europe, dodging between buildings and supposedly at one point passing under power lines :ooh:

If this is a true story, it lends credence to the theory that after the eggs were dropped, there was a certain amount of freedom to do as you wanted.

Personally though I would have thought it would have been better, defensively at least, to stay with the herd. After all the aircraft were designed to fly in formations and bring an aggregate of firepower to bear on any attacker.

[PLovett]

vfrpilotpb

Your post reminded me of a photo of a B24 with its left wing in the process of being totally sheared off. The caption states that the aircraft had just taken a direct hit from AAA.

However, closer inspection of the photo shows a bomb in the process of taking the wing off. It had been hit by a load dropped from a higher aircraft.

That was in daylight. Imagine the tension of being in something like a Stirling knowing that there were Lancasters or Halifaxes above you.