by Bill Yenne
On January 27 the Eighth Air Force made its first attack on targets within Germany, albeit with fewer than the one hundred bombers promised by Eaker. The primary target, plucked from the top item in the hierarchy of targeting priorities, the naval yard at Wilhelmshaven, would be hit by fifty-three heavy bombers while two others diverted to Emden.
Hughes and others may have been impatient with the ineffectiveness of the attacks on U-boat pens, but the strikes against shipyards within Germany meant hitting the insidious submarines at their more vulnerable source. On February 2, an attempted second attack on Germany was aborted because of weather, but the Eighth Air Force returned to Wilhelmshaven on February 26. Thus began the off-and-on campaign against the shipyards that would continue through 1943.
The German shipbuilding industry, which was in the midst of increasing the proportion of its resources devoted to U-boats, was far more vulnerable to attack than the reinforced concrete pens. Reconnaissance photos showed that the attacks on the shipyards were reasonably effective. They were also a good example of cooperation between the Combined Bomber Offensive partners, as the RAF carpet-bombed the same areas that the Eighth Air Force struck during the day.
As the American bombers began reaching targets within Germany, they met more determined Luftwaffe resistance. While Luftflotte 3 (Air Fleet 3), charged with the air defense of occupied Belgium and France, had fewer than two hundred interceptors, attacks against Germany brought the Eighth Air Force into contact with the Luftwaffenbefehlshaber Mitte (Air Command Central), an organization with substantially greater resources for Reichsverteidigung (“Defense of the Reich”) operations. Inside the Reich, targets were well defended, and losses would often be heavy.
Over the coming weeks and months, Luftwaffenbefehlshaber Mitte used a variety of weapons and tactics against the bombers. The standard Luftwaffe single-engine fighters, such as the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the newer Focke-Wulf Fw 190, were encountered, but so too were twin-engined Messerschmitt Bf 110s, which were more commonly used as night fighters against RAF Bomber Command raids.
These interceptors used Egon Mayer’s head-on attack tactic, but also another method, pioneered by Oberleutnant Heinz Knoke in March 1943, that of dropping bombs on the bombers, even as the Americans were lining up to bomb ground targets. Indeed, the Luftwaffe’s Jagdgeschwader 11, formed in 1943 as a Reichsverteidigung air defense unit, routinely used air-to-air bombing with 250kg bombs. Meanwhile, larger aircraft, such as Ju 88 bombers, started attacking the Americans from beyond the range of their defensive machine guns, using Werfer-Granate 21 rocket launchers to lob 21cm Nebelwerfer 42 air-to-air rockets.
One of the simplest and most effective Luftwaffe tactics was to gang up on individual bombers. They often picked the low-hanging fruit of aircraft that had strayed out of formation, but frequently they beset the lead aircraft, ganging up on them with a dozen or more fighters, under the theory that this would disrupt the formation. Sometimes it did, but the American pilots were drilled repeatedly to maintain the integrity of their formations no matter what.
The experience of being attacked by the Luftwaffe was hellish. As one Flying Fortress pilot mentioned in a debriefing, “The German fighter raked us the length of the Fortress’s belly. It was like sitting in the boiler of a hot-water heater and being rolled down a steep hill. The right wing was shot to hell. There were holes everywhere. A lot of them were 20mm cannon holes, and they tear a hole you could shove a sheep through. The entire wing was just a goddamn bunch of holes.”
At the same time, anti-aircraft fire from the 88mm long-range guns in flak batteries near the targets in both France and Germany was improving in its accuracy and effectiveness, and also began exacting a toll on the bomber formations, which strictly maintained their tight box formations during their bomb runs. While the close formations made the bombers easier targets for the flak batteries, they actually served to protect the bombers from interceptors by allowing the bomber gunners to use interlocking fields of defensive fire against the Germans. Bomber pilots frequently used the phrase describing the black puffs of exploding shells as a carpet “thick enough to walk on.”
During March, there were further raids against the shipyards in Wilhelmshaven, as well as in Vegesack, a northern suburb of Bremen, forty miles to the south, on the Weser River, both of which built U-boats.
These missions continued to alternate with strikes against the facilities in France that housed and serviced the U-boats. Though electricity and water supply into the U-boat pens was interrupted, the damage done in the latter attacks was primarily to the surrounding cities, impacting the French civilian population and the workforce employed at the pens, rather than the pens themselves.
As the Kreigsmarine’s Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, the man in charge of the U-boat operations, told a meeting of the Reich Zentrales Planungsamt (Central Planning Office for War Production) on May 4, “The Anglo-Saxons’ attempt to strike down the submarine war was undertaken with all the means available to them. You know that the towns of Saint-Nazaire and Lorient have been rubbed out as main submarine bases. No dog nor cat is left in these towns. Nothing but the submarine shelters [into which all essential facilities had been moved] remain.”
During the first five months of 1943, American bombers put 70 percent of their anti-U-boat tonnage on yards rather than pens, inflicting serious damage on the yards in seven out of a dozen major attacks. Post-strike analysis of the effectiveness of the raids showed that they had cut the monthly output of the shipbuilding industry from sixteen U-boats to fewer than eight, although the shipyards were able to repair the damage more quickly that the photo interpreters realized.
When weather obscured the U-boat targets, the Eighth Air Force alternated with attacks on the rail network across northern France and northwestern Germany. These were not done in sufficient volume, with large enough numbers of bombers, to do any lasting damage, but they did disrupt rail transportation for short periods of time. Though construction crews were able to repair the damage and get trains running within a few days of the attacks, the work did tie up considerable manpower, which could not be used elsewhere. Naturally, any locomotive or railcar that needed to be replaced would divert resources away from building tanks or other vehicles.
Despite apparently good results, the Eighth Air Force was still not operating up to the levels that Eaker had promised at Casablanca. They were still unable to put one hundred bombers out on any given day during February or March. The numbers of mission-ready aircraft were not increasing as quickly as anticipated. Through April, the Eighth Air Force operated six heavy bombardment groups, four of Flying Fortresses and two of Liberators. Meanwhile, two Flying Fortress groups, the 2nd and the 99th, which had been earmarked for the Eighth Air Force, were diverted to the Twelfth Air Force, while the Liberators of the 308th Bombardment Group were sent to the Fourteenth instead of the Eighth.
The total number of Flying Fortresses and Liberators listed as being on hand in the ETO in February were 186 and 69 respectively. Because of combat losses and other damage, the numbers of B-17s was actually less than the total of 234 that had been on hand in October 1942. At the same time, the average daily combat strength of the Eighth Air Force stood at only 74 “operating combinations” (combat crews and aircraft).
Naturally, the number of crews was as important as the number of aircraft, and even the limited operations during the dead of winter had taken a toll. Through January, only twenty replacement crewmen arrived to take the places of sixty-seven who had been lost, and at the same time the Combined Bomber Offensive was taking the Eighth Air Force into Germany, some of the heavy bombardment groups were reporting that attrition had reduced their total crew strength by half, a fact that had a detrimental effect on operations—as well as on the morale of other crews.
As General Anderson wrote in a March 2 memo to General Stratemeyer at USAAF headquarters, until the total number of heavy bombers and crews reached six hundred, the best that the VIII Bomber Command could
do was “nibble at the fringes of German strength.”
The RAF still viewed the sluggish buildup of American heavy bombing capacity with as much, or more, alarm as their Combined Bomber Offensive partners. In a series of memos to Hap Arnold, Air Chief Marshal Portal tactfully described the Eighth Air Force operations as having been “strikingly successful,” but complained in an understated way that “my one fear is that their efforts may be curtailed or even brought to a standstill by lack of numbers.”
Numbers not seen by Portal, or indeed by most operational people at the front-line fields in East Anglia, were the huge numbers of aircraft entering the pipeline at the source. The American aircraft industry was growing exponentially, and the flow of new aircraft was on the verge of suddenly becoming a torrent. Having produced 1,412 Flying Fortresses and 1,164 Liberators in 1942, Boeing, Consolidated, Douglas, and Vega would build 4,179 and 5,214 of these respective heavy bombers in 1943. This flow would hit East Anglia in early summer and become a tidal wave by the end of the year.
As Arthur Ferguson points out, “It was not until May that the Eighth Air Force began to acquire the strength appropriate to its mission.” The total of six heavy bombardment groups that were operational with the Eighth Air Force doubled by the end of May. During that month, the arrival in England of the 94th, 95th, 96th, 351st, and 379th—and the reversion of the 92nd from training status—greatly enhanced to Eighth Air Force’s ability to get large numbers of aircraft over the target. The total number of heavy bombers in the ETO increased from 255 in February to 705 by the end of May.
At the same time, the numbers of fighter escorts also increased. Through most of April, only the 4th Fighter Group, flying Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, had been available, but two additional groups were on line by the end of the month and capable of routinely escorting the bombers.
On April 17, the Eighth Air Force had finally been able to put more than one hundred heavy bombers over Bremen. This mission marked a milestone of another sort as well. By May, the wheels were in motion for a major shift in strategic direction, specifically a gradual refocusing of the Combined Bomber Offensive from the U-boat campaign to the German aircraft industry.
When he went to work at the EOU on Berkeley Square in March, Charlie Kindleberger’s primary function had been to study the German aircraft industry and to plan missions against it. The April 17 Bremen mission targeting the Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau facility was significant insofar as the Eighth Air Force had sent its largest mission to date to target the aircraft industry.
It was also with a certain irony that the specific product being targeted was the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter, when the mission saw the bomber force badly mauled by those same German fighters. Though the bombers left the enemy factory half-destroyed, the Eighth Air Force lost sixteen aircraft shot down and forty-six damaged.
The heavy American losses on April 17 stemmed from the enemy’s having come to expect Bremen as a repeat target, and from improved coordination and intensity of defensive action, both on the ground and in the air. Initially, Luftwaffenbefehlshaber Mitte put up as many as 150 interceptors, flying through their own anti-aircraft fire to attack the American lead bombers head-on in an effort to break up the formations as they entered the target area.
When it came to fighting the heavy bombers, the Luftwaffe assigned points to fighter pilots for disrupting the formations. While only the actual destruction of an enemy aircraft, an abschuss, counted toward a fighter ace’s aerial victory tally, points assigned for breaking up a formation, a herausschuss, and for endgueltige vernichtung, the “final destruction” or “finishing off” of a damaged enemy aircraft, also counted toward awards and decorations. A pilot might receive a single point for the abschuss of a fighter plane and three points for shooting down a four-engine bomber. It took three points for an Iron Cross First Class, and forty points for a Knights Cross. Under the practice that existed in 1943, but which was phased out later, a herausschuss involving a four-engine bomber netted two points.
Though breaking up the formations on the final bomb run was usually unsuccessful, the fighters always regrouped and hit the bombers again as they emerged from the target area and headed toward England. Employing the usual tactic of picking stragglers from the periphery of the formation, the interceptors harassed the formations all the way to the North Sea.
Within a month, the Eighth Air Force fighter groups were able to put up a sufficient number of P-47 Thunderbolts to successfully defend against such situations. The bomber crews came to appreciate, rely upon, and praise their “little friends,” as they called the escorting fighters. The only limiting factor was the range of the fighters. Even with auxiliary fuel tanks, the Thunderbolt could only accompany bombers to targets in northern Germany that were no farther than 475 miles from their bases, but they could always cover them on their way out or for the last leg of a trip home.
Also during May, the large influx of new USAAF crews and aircraft changed the complexion of the Combined Bomber Offensive. The Eighth was gradually beefing up its numbers in the face of RAF criticism. Whereas it had taken the Eighth Air Force eight months from its first mission to finally mount a hundred-plane mission, it took less than a month to go from that point to launching two hundred bombers on a single day. In a memo to Hap Arnold, Eaker called it “a great day for the Eighth Air Force. Our combat crew availability went up in a straight line from 100 to 215…. If the groups prove to be superior in combat to the old ones, it will scarcely be a fair fight!”
One may assume that Arnold understood that Eaker was speaking with irony.
Also worth an exclamation point by this time was the improved bombing accuracy, which had long been promised, but which had been slow to develop. Since March, the Eighth Air Force had been using automatic flight-control equipment (AFCE) to increase precision through the use of an autopilot to control the aircraft during the bomb run.
As Arthur Ferguson points out, “The few seconds immediately before the bombardier released his bombs obviously constituted the critical moment in the entire mission, for it was then that the bombardier performed his final sighting operation. So it was essential that the aircraft should be held as nearly as possible to a steady course without slips, skids, or changes in altitude, and that the pilotage be as free as possible from the influence of flak and of attacking fighters. Perfection of this sort was impossible even with the best of pilots. With those produced by the hasty training program into which the AAF had been forced it could not even be approximated.”
AFCE had been tested in 1942 to mixed reviews, but by the spring of 1943, the bugs had been worked out. During the attack on Vegesack on March 18, a lead bombardier using the AFCE successfully led the 305th Bombardment Group to drop 76 percent of its ordnance within a radius of one thousand feet of the aiming point.
Meanwhile, even as the decision makers were finally considering the suspension of the attacks on the U-boat pens for which Dick Hughes and others had been lobbying, these targets were the recipients of hundred-plane raids during May. On May 17, 118 heavy bombers targeted Lorient, while on May 29, the Eighth Air Force ended the month with a 147-bomber mission against Saint-Nazaire.
The May 17 mission contained a milestone moment for the Eighth Air Force. In one of the B-17s flying that day was the first Eighth Air Force heavy bomber crew to complete their full quota of twenty-five missions, and hence to be qualified to return home. The aircraft was the famous B-17F commanded by Captain Robert Morgan and nicknamed Memphis Belle. Assigned to the 324th Bombardment Squadron of the 91st Bombardment Group, the aircraft had been the subject of a USAAF documentary film entitled The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress. The film was directed by William Wyler, who had just won the Best Director Oscar for the 1942 film Mrs. Miniver. During filming of the documentary, Wyler flew a number of live combat missions aboard the Memphis Belle and other aircraft, and his cinematographer had been killed when another Flying Fortress was shot down.
Morgan and his crew subsequ
ently flew the Memphis Belle back to the United States, where they would participate in war bond tours, and where Wyler’s film—released in 1944 by Paramount—would dramatically publicize the dangerous work being done by Eighth Air Force crewmen.
NINE
POINTBLANK
Since January 1943, as William Wyler had been gathering footage for his film, the Eighth Air Force was building up its strength and testing the waters of operations inside Germany. They had been doing so under the general outlines of the preliminary Combined Bomber Offensive targeting plan that was contained in the Casablanca Directive. Meanwhile, the Combined Chiefs of Staff had been developing a more formal plan that would succeed the Casablanca Directive and be implemented on June 10, marking the “official” beginning of the Combined Bomber Offensive.
The origins of this official plan dated back to December 9, 1942, when Hap Arnold decided to have someone in his office come up with a document that went beyond AWPD-42 in addressing the issue of strategic targets, and which addressed targeting scientifically and systematically.
Arnold had ordered Colonel Byron Gates to empanel a “group of operational analysts under your jurisdiction to prepare and submit to me a report analyzing the rate of progressive deterioration that should be anticipated in the German war effort as a result of the increasing air operations we are prepared to employ against its sustaining sources. This study should result in as accurate an estimate as can be arrived at as to the date when this deterioration will have progressed to a point to permit a successful invasion of Western Europe.”
Originally called the Advisory Committee on Bombardment, it was later known more vaguely as the Committee of Operations Analysts (COA). Its form and function were similar—arguably duplicative—to those of Hughes, Kindleberger, Rostow, and the EOU team, but while the EOU was in a secret location in London, the COA was located within reach of Arnold’s own headquarters. While the EOU existed for ongoing operational requirements, the COA theoretically existed to provide Arnold with a onetime single USAAF plan that could ultimately be integrated into the joint directive succeeding the temporary Casablanca Directive.
