Why the Allies Won

by Richard Overy

  In practice the American air forces seldom did anything of the sort. Though their learning curve was shorter than Bomber Command’s, it had to be endured. American bombers launched their first attack in Europe on 17 August 1942, against the giant railway marshalling yard at Rouen, in northern France. Twelve aircraft took off, with the commanding general of 8th Air Force Bomber Command, Ira Eaker, along for the ride. They were heavily escorted by four squadrons of RAF Spitfire fighters. All the bombers reached the target, and approximately half the bombs fell within the target area. All twelve aircraft returned to base. The only casualties were the bombardier and navigator of one aircraft who were showered with glass when the nose of their plane was struck by a pigeon.39

  For the rest of the year the 8th air force confined itself to attacks against French targets which were within range of American fighters. This was however a poor preparation for more distant attacks over Germany, where there could be no fighter cover, and where anti-aircraft artillery was much more densely concentrated. The issue of how well the B-17 could defend itself was hardly proven from the French attacks. On one occasion, the attack on Lille on 9 October 1942, the B-17 crews claimed to have destroyed up to 102 enemy fighters. Since this was 15 per cent of German air strength in western Europe, sceptical eyebrows were raised. A later report reduced the claims to 25 definitely destroyed. The number was in fact two. The spurious claims were used to vindicate the concept of the ‘fighting’ bomber, just as the occasional hit on the centre of the designated target was used to justify the choice of precision bombing. After four months of hard training, the 8th air force was keen to take the fight to Germany.

  By the end of 1942 both bomber forces were poised to mount a much more dangerous and effective campaign than anything they had carried out hitherto. Yet even at this late stage, with large resources mortgaged to the endeavour, it was far from clear what strategy bombing was supposed to support. For much of the autumn and winter of 1942–3 the bombers were directed to attack targets to help in the Battle of the Atlantic, which was reaching its desperate finale. Wave after wave of heavy-bombers all but obliterated the French ports of Lorient and Brest where the German submarine pens were based, without once inflicting serious damage on the reinforced concrete structures that protected the U-boats.40 And while the arguments continued about opening a Second Front in Europe, bombing was generally regarded by the military chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic as a mere adjunct to that greater enterprise, a means of weakening the enemy before invasion. The decision to embark on Torch rather than invade mainland Europe in the foreseeable future, left the bombing offensive in limbo once again, with no clearly defined objective.

  The turning-point for the bombing effort came in January 1943 when Roosevelt and Churchill at last agreed to give priority to the bombing campaign. The decision was taken when the two men met at Casablanca, in Morocco, in January 1943. The meeting was called to decide the basic pattern of western strategy. The location was Roosevelt’s doing. Churchill had travelled all over the world in his months of premiership. Against the advice of his staff the President wanted to match him, by making a trip of his own. Not only that, but he insisted on going by plane, the first time he had flown since becoming President in 1933. His personal adviser, Harry Hopkins, recalled that his boss ‘was sick of people telling him it was dangerous to ride in airplanes’. He left Washington by train on 9 January, and flew from Miami in the famous Pan-Am Clipper flying boat, first to Trinidad, then to Brazil. He was so excited by the experience that ‘he acted like a sixteen-year-old’. From Brazil there followed an exhausting eighteen-hour flight across the south Atlantic, arriving in Bathurst (now Banjul), capital of the Gambia. A crudely converted C-24 army transport took the presidential party the last seven hours of the trip, flying, on Roosevelt’s insistence, high over the Atlas mountains. Once in Casablanca he was driven in a limousine, with windows blacked-out with mud for extra security, to a comfortable villa, 50 yards from Churchill’s.41

  At Casablanca the two leaders agreed to postpone the Second Front, almost certainly until 1944, and to continue with the Mediterranean strategy of attacking what Churchill called the ‘soft underbelly’ of the Axis ‘crocodile’. To bridge the now widening time-lag between Torch and the invasion of northern Europe the two leaders agreed to intensify the air campaign with the ‘heaviest possible bomber offensive against the German war effort’. Though neither leader expected bombing to bring Germany to defeat on its own, the task it was allocated at Casablanca went well beyond anything yet asked of it. On 21 January the Combined Chiefs-of-Staff issued a directive to the air forces to bring about ‘the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened’.42 The go-ahead was given to see what bombing could do; a high priority was given to the production of the tools for the job. The two leaders touched at Casablanca on the issue of atomic weapons, though no decision was taken, and precious little information was exchanged about the progress of what was now largely an American project. But Roosevelt had in prospect a weapon that made his call for the ‘unconditional surrender’ of the Axis powers, first publicly announced at the final press conference at Casablanca, appear more than mere rhetoric.

  * * *

  In postwar arguments about the morality of bombing a great deal has always been made of the unequal nature of the contest between bombers and defenceless civilians, and there is no disguising the fact that the collapse of German civilian morale was one of the objectives agreed when the Combined Bomber Offensive was launched at Casablanca. But the actual combat was not between bombers and ordinary people, but between bombers and the defensive forces of the enemy, the fighters and anti-aircraft fire. When the bombers streamed into Europe, their crews knew that they had to fight their way to the target and fight their way back. They sat in uncomfortable, surprisingly noisy, vulnerable aircraft, cold and cramped. They had to avoid heavy anti-aircraft fire from the massive concentration of fifty thousand anti-aircraft guns in the German defences; with the constant refinement of the Kammhuber Line and German fighter tactics they faced periods of brief but fierce engagement with an enemy who held all the advantages of timing and manoeuvrability. On the return flight poor weather, fuel shortages, or damage from anti-aircraft fire added to what hazards the enemy could still supply. If it now seems disingenuous of surviving crewmen to claim, as they often do, that they were too absorbed with battle against the elements and the enemy to think of those they were bombing, each bombing mission was a military confrontation with a statistically increased risk of death the more missions each crewman flew.

  When the Combined Bombing Offensive began in 1943 the German forces had the upper hand. They had compelled RAF Bomber Command to fly at night; they exacted a high toll from the attacking forces; and after a few months even the advantages of Gee were lost when German defenders took counter-measures to jam the radio signals on which the system relied. The heavier Allied attacks became, the greater was the concentration of fighters on the German home front, and the more sophisticated was their equipment. By the spring of 1943 70 per cent of German fighters were in the western theatre of operation, leaving a much smaller force facing the Red Army. Night-fighters were equipped by 1943 with airborne radar known as ‘Lichtenstein’, which protruded from the nose of the aircraft like stunted television aerials. The new equipment allowed them to hunt the bomber streams in large packs rather than in ones or twos. When British scientists found a way of jamming this radar, a new mechanism – ‘SN2’ – was introduced with even greater success.43 Over the target area itself the German air force employed single-engined fighters at night, using a tactic known as ‘Wilde Sau’ (‘wild sow’). Attacking bombers were illuminated by searchlights and flares, and in the artificial pyrotechnic glare the fighters gunned down the silhouettes.

  In practice German successes reflected the weaknesses
of the attacking force. German defences provided at best a thin and brittle shield. Hitler was hostile as ever to the idea of defence for its own sake. He refused to release additional aircraft for the campaign against the bombers in the summer of 1943. He urged the air force Commander-in-Chief, Hermann Göring, to meet like with like, terror with terror. In the autumn of that year he ordered a fresh bombing assault on Britain, Operation ‘Steinbock’, in the belief, expressed to one of his generals in July 1943, that ‘the English will stop only if their cities are knocked out, and for no other reason’.44 The growth of a fighter defence force in the Reich, and the diversion of large quantities of anti-aircraft artillery to protect German industry, was achieved piecemeal, in defiance of the Führer’s preferences. If the German air force had been able to prepare the defence of Germany more thoroughly and extensively the Combined Bomber Offensive might well have been stopped in its tracks.

  As it was, the resumption of mass attacks on the Ruhr by Bomber Command in the spring of 1943 had only mixed results. The accuracy of the RAF’s attack was improved greatly by the introduction of two new navigational aids, ‘Oboe’ and ‘H2S’, during the course of 1943. The first was a target-finding device, with two fixed radio beams along which the special Pathfinder aircraft would fly to the target, where they dropped flares to guide in the bombers. Its range was limited to the nearest German targets because of the curvature of the earth. The second device was altogether more sophisticated. It was an airborne radar device which freed the bomber from reliance on ground control stations. By using radar pulses reflected from the ground below, H2S permitted blind-flying in cloud and industrial haze. It was fitted in a small number of Pathfinder aircraft which led the bomber streams to the target. Both devices were employed from the beginning of 1943, but they took time to perfect. Not until 1944 did the radio and radar war swing firmly the Allies’ way. What success Bomber Command enjoyed in its area attacks in 1943 came from the simplest of tactical innovations, the introduction of a device that jammed German radar almost completely, known by the nickname ‘Window’.

  Window consisted of huge quantities of small strips of aluminium foil dropped from bomb bays to smother German radar with false information. A few hundred strips simulated the radar image of a Lancaster bomber. Thousands of strips rendered radar unusable. The device was first dreamt up by a young government scientist R.V. Jones, but its employment was bitterly resisted on the grounds that its use not only compromised the whole radar research programme, but also would allow the Germans to retaliate in kind. The argument was only resolved at a meeting with Churchill in June 1943, in which it was finally agreed that the saving of Bomber Command lives outweighed the risk to British radar. A month later, Window was employed for the first time, with devastating effect, against the North Sea port of Hamburg.45

  The attack on Hamburg on the night of 24–5 July, with the unfortunate codename Operation ‘Gomorrah’, was launched as German forces began the slow retreat from the carnage at Kursk. In the first attack 791 bombers were sent with instructions to jettison packets of Window at one-minute intervals. The defences were thrown into confusion. Only twelve aircraft were destroyed. Bomber Command returned with increasingly deadly loads on the 27th and the 29th, and their offensive was supported by attacks from the 8th air force by day. The overall loss rate was reduced to only 2.8 per cent, well below the losses sustained in other area attacks that year. But on the ground a terrible toll was exacted. The combination of high-explosive bombs and large numbers of incendiaries overwhelmed the emergency services in the city. The fires raged unchecked for two days. Gradually they merged together, creating a heat of greater and greater intensity. The fierce heat sucked in the surrounding air, working like giant bellows on the cinders of the city. The fiery storm devoured everything in its path. When the heat died away almost three-quarters of the city had been destroyed and forty thousand of its inhabitants consumed in the inferno. One million were rendered homeless. The glow from the fires could be seen 120 miles away. ‘We all entertained the idea of an apocalypse,’ wrote one eye-witness a few weeks later. ‘The events of our time suggested it.’46

  As the stream of wretched, incredulous refugees spread out into the neighbouring provinces, a widespread panic gripped the German public. Though the destruction of Hamburg was not the turning-point of the air war, not decisive in any general sense, it shocked the German leadership. ‘It put the fear of God in me,’ Albert Speer, Hitler’s Armaments Minister, confessed in his memoirs. Three days after the attack he told Hitler that the destruction of another six cities on the same scale would bring armaments production ‘to a total halt’.47 The Luftwaffe Chief-of-Staff, Hans Jeschonnek, was deeply affected by a tragedy beside which ‘Stalingrad was trifling’. Two weeks later, following a destructive attack by Bomber Command on the German rocket research station at Peenemünde, Jeschonnek shot himself.48

  Speer’s fears proved to be unfounded. There were few other major cities within range of the Oboe apparatus that had not already been attacked heavily that year. Moreover, despite the temporary shock produced by Window, which took the German night-fighters back to where they had been before radar, German forces quickly adapted to the new situation and once again began to inflict higher and higher losses on Allied bombers both by day and by night. When Bomber Command turned its attentions to the German capital from September onwards, its loss rates began to reach unacceptably high levels. In the raids in the early autumn, 14 per cent of the attacking force were destroyed or damaged. The slow attrition of Bomber Command strength was an expensive drain on production and trained crews. It took its toll on the morale of the Command. The long and dangerous circuit to Berlin and back gave the defending forces a much greater opportunity to find and intercept the bombers. The new H2S navigation aid proved much less effective as a means to accurate bombing than had been expected, because the radar gave only a very general picture of the ground below. Out of 1,719 bombers sent to Berlin in the first wave of attacks only 27 dropped their bombs within 3 miles of the target centre.49

  The fortunes of Bomber Command reached their lowest point in March of 1944. The last attack on Berlin on the night of 24 March cost the bomber force a loss of almost 10 per cent, and extensive anti-aircraft gun damage to the returning planes. The German defenders had adopted a new and lethal tactic. One or two controllers kept in contact with the entire night-fighter force which could then be directed as a whole towards the bombers once their route and target were visually confirmed. On some nights British radio jammers succeeded in talking over the German controllers and directing the fighters to the wrong town; on some occasions they played recordings of the Führer’s speeches to apoplectic pilots, who were forced to circle round in an aerial no-man’s-land. But such a ruse was very hit-and-miss. On the night of 30 March it failed entirely. Some 795 bombers were sent on an unusually direct route to bomb Nuremberg. Instead of the expected haze there was a clear moonlit night; the bombers left a conspicuous condensation trail. The German controller was able to call in night-fighters before the bomber stream had even reached the German frontier. On the long run towards Fulda, north-east of Frankfurt, the night-fighters fought a spectacular running battle with the bombers. In all 95 bombers, 11 per cent of the force, failed to return. The German authorities claimed their ‘greatest success’. Harris gloomily contemplated what amounted to the defeat of his Command. In April he warned the Air Ministry that such casualty rates could not be sustained for long. He urged ‘remedial action’.50

  The fortunes of 8th air force in 1943 were no less chequered. For much of the year the force was still in the process of building up its organisation, manpower and bomber strength. Where Bomber Command could routinely organise attacks with five or six hundred aircraft, most American attacks involved fewer than half this number. From June some of these attacks were at last directed against targets in Germany. The 8th air force stuck to its guns over bombing precision targets by day. It was planned to give priority to German air force ind
ustries and their chief suppliers, but in practice most attacks were directed at a wider range of targets in northern Europe where the force could enjoy fighter cover. When American bombers began to penetrate deep into German air-space they came up against the same problems afflicting their night-bombing partners.

  The first such attack, against the Focke-Wulf aircraft plant at Oschersleben, south of Berlin, saw the loss of fifteen out of 39 bombers. On 17 August American bombers made the trip right across Germany to attack the Messerschmitt aircraft works at Regensburg and the ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt, which produced half Germany’s requirements of bearings, a component vital in aircraft manufacture. The force of 376 B-17s set off from England with a heavy escort of fighters which took them as far as the German border. The German fighter defences were alerted. A swarm of three hundred hovered over Frankfurt along the path of the bombers. There followed a ferocious air battle, the greatest yet seen over German soil, which left sixty B-17s destroyed (19 per cent of the attacking force) and over a hundred damaged, for the loss of 25 German fighters.51 For the first time bombers were brought down by German air-to-air rocket fire.

  Loss rates on such a scale were insupportable. Yet two months later, in the hope that repeated attacks would render the revival of ball-bearing production impossible, the daylight bombers returned. The Schweinfurt battle of 14 October 1943 was a victory for the Luftwaffe. Almost three hundred B-17s left Britain in two separate streams, 30 miles apart. The escorting fighters left them at Aachen, and almost immediately the German fighter forces pounced. Rocket fire, air bombing from above the bomber stream, and heavy cannon fire broke up the bomber formations. Then the fighters hunted in packs, waiting for the injured or straggling prey before moving in to the kill. They had perfected their tactics. Although 220 bombers managed to reach Schweinfurt, and to inflict heavy damage, the force lost sixty bombers and suffered damage to a further 138. These were catastrophic losses. The 8th air force suspended attacks into Germany. The Combined Bomber Offensive reached a critical impasse.