Nuremburg Raid
 

With the Nav aids available early in Bomber commands campaign hitting the right town was probably about as good as they could do. Navigation by Astro and dead reckoning with unreliable Met information was likely to be inaccurate.The idea they could choose which sort of house to hit is ludicrous.

Last weekend, I visited Wurzburg in Germany, which was (and is again) a Baroque jewel, with some 67 magnificent churches within its' boundaries, and was of minimal target value. This was bombed by 5 Group Lancasters on the night of 16 March 1945, and was possibly one of the last major 'city' raids.

There is an information centre close to the old Main bridge, which graphically recalls the raid & subsequent c.2000'c firestorm which consumed some 5,000 civilians & c.90% of the city; the last of the rubble was cleared away in 1964. Wiki has quite a good article on the raid.

The bravery & sacrifice of our Bomber Command crews is without question or stain; we who view these tumultuous events through the safe & comfortable telescope of time have no right to pass judgement on these brave young men, who were fighting for their lives, and, ultimately, ours.

We may, however, question the policies of the day; Harris should have been stopped at the end of 1944. This was a complete failure of the Command chain, right up to & including Churchill. Whilst his earlier BC leadership was exemplary, he eventually was fighting his own private war.

HB

Ex and others,

I'd like to be clear - what Bomber Command did in 42 and 43 was, in my view, a justified part of 'total war'. If all they could do was hit a city, then hitting cities was what they had to do.

The issue is that the RAF (Harris) went back to a truly Trenchardian view of air warfare and became convinced that area bombing would win the war by breaking civilian morale. (Whether this move was driven by quantitative and objective analysis, blind faith or a realisation that they could not survive by day, but could not find a small target at night, is a matter for the historians).

Churchill had a better grasp - he just wanted to hit the Germans as hard as he could with whatever he had while waiting for the US to build up their war fighting economy.

By late 43/early 44, the divergence in war aims led to the problems we've discussed in this thread. Harris wanted to keep pounding the living areas of the cities to rubble, convinced that he would win the war without the need for ground combat. The Alled High command wanted to focus on German industrial targets to directly weaken their war effort prepare the ground for invasion.

The raids on cities late in the war are, to use Max Hastings' phrase, 'resistant to being placed in context'. Wurzburg is an example of those raids.

But to be clear - I certainly don't think BC crews were expected to be able to choose 'which sort of house' they hit. We have no right to judge them for their actions from this range. I also think that BC crews were astonishingly brave and deserve huge respect for the war they fought.

But the reason the BC offensive of WW2 still generates discussion is that it talks to the 'air power' theories of today. If we (the West) come to believe that we can prosecute our national aims and defend our national interests by dropping high explosive on foreign lands with minimal risk to life, instead of putting troops in harm's way, I (for one) fear that we're more likely to do so.

I fought a (small) war 30 years ago. Our young people have fought a few more (bigger) ones since then. I'd like them to be less going forward.

Best Regards as ever

Engines

A slight deviation, there is an obit in today's DT of the lead navigator on Mosquito low-level precision daylight attacks.

The Mozzie was so effective and its loss rates much lower than the main force. Why didn't we use even more of the wooden wonders?

QuickiWiki:

Mosquito B MkXVI:
Bomb load 4,000lb/Vmax 361kn @ 28,000'/Range 1300nm.

Lancaster MkI:
Bomb load 14,000lb/Vmax 250kn (174kn cruise)/Range 2,200nm.

HB

HB, the only thing relevant there is the range. A 4000lb bomb on target is more effective than 14000lbs in the target area.

The 14000lb bomb load, including incendiaries etc, would be far more effective in executing Lindeman's advice. Destruction of factories, and necessarily only one or two per raid would not have had quite the same effect in diverting war effort to defend the Reich.

Also, I guess, night bombing has a quality all of its own with terror of the dark adding to the effect. You can just imagine their looking at moon phase and cloud cover and fearing the worst.

Agreed, PN. The Mossie was indeed an amazing aircraft - the first MRCA, I feel.

There is a guy in NZ who is scratch-building new Mosquito airframes (thankfully, with modern adhesives). Can't wait to see a Mossie in the air again!

HB

Yep, Certain marks of Mossie could carry a 4000lb bomb, but with the exception of GEE, bugger all else in the way of navigation equipment other than that used for DR (until late 1944, the only Navaid that would work deep in Germany was H2S, Oboe and GEE and GEE-H were limited in range to the Ruhr). Plus the old cookie wasn't a weapon that could be aimed with any accuracy and all of the deep penetration raids into Germany by Mossies were done at high level. The main role of the Mossie was to scoot off and bomb some other part of Germany that wasn't being attacked by the main force, just to draw off the German Night Fighters. The main force heavies on the other hand dropped the Cookie and what ever else they were carrying (normally 4lb Incendiaries) in one go, so that the Cookie blew the roofs of the buildings so that the 4lb bombs could start the fires. Yes the Low level Mossie attacks were very successful, but none of them were against targets deep in Germany.

From today's obit:

31 Jan 43 Reynolds and Sismore led a small force of Mosquitos on the RAF's first daylight bombing attack on Berlin. (1100 miles round trip and as far into Germany as you really needed to go) . Crossing the Elbe at low level they climbed to 25,000 feet and arrived at exactly 11am when Goering and Gobbels were about to start a speech. The raid could be heard on the German radio that was to broadcast the speech live.

It did not say but one would guess they were VMC for the bomb run.

The 4000lb cookie was indeed a blast bomb and could be delivered from as low as 50 feet as attested by German Intelligence reports. Equally they could make precision attacks using smaller bombs. What they could not do was get the same weight of bombs on the target area as the main force, even allowing for many of the main force bombs not being in the target area.

For high speed low level ingress their nav kit was no different from the Canberra a decade and two later.

(thankfully, with modern adhesives)

What, you don't like your aircraft held together with cheese?

Cheese? Or am I missing something?

Bones, yes.

MOM used to have a tin of Croid in his tool box. Used to bring it out from time to time, boil it up in a can of water. I don't think he ever used it all it lasted so long.

Cheese
 

PN

Wasn't it Casein Glue they used which is made from milk? Its good stuff but I doubt it was much good in the tropics.

ACW

ACW, I see from the net that you are correct and that they switched to formaldehyde in the tropics.

You are right that the wet didn't do them a lot of good. The Hornet was also wooden construction but metal clad.

Mind you the tropics didn't do a lot of things much good. A Victor was grounded and sealed with bodge tape before they decided after a few months to fix it and recover it. When they opened one hatch the organ loft was full of fungii.

Many years ago there was a short piece in Straight and Level (Flight International) which I wish I had kept which made a bombing effectiveness comparison between the modern Tornado force and the RAF bombing strength in WW2.

The conclusion was that for the WW2 RAF to be as effective they would have needed a bomber force far larger than was ever fielded during the war.

Maybe a large force of precision Mosquitos would have been a better option.
Training the crews to the standard would probably have been the problem.


While on the subject of "Flight" my other favourite piece again not kept was an advert which read

"Wanted for Enterprise type starship. White paint capable of withstanding warp factor 9"
Often wondered what that was about!!!

Fair question and fine balance. However the number or aircrew per aircraft would have been far fewer 2:7. The number of replacement crews would have been far fewer given a hoped for reduced attrition.

It would be a massive piece of counter-factual history to reconstruct the whole air war campaign on the premise that Mosquitoes replaced the Halifax and Lancaster and that target sets were smaller but hit harder.

As I said earlier, the workforce is a major part of an industrial target set, a part of the set that would not have been hit as hard with precision bombing. Precision targets can be better and more economically defended with point defence than could the large area targets.