RAF Bomber Command v Luftwaffe ?

PatsytheNazi

I have skimmed through Max Hastings Bomber Command about the RAF bomber campaign over Germany in WW2 and in it he basically states that it was a failure as the bombs predominately landed on civilians or in empty feilds miles from the target. For example the Butt Report states " Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within 5 miles " And this did not include those aircraft that did not bomb because of equipment failure, enemy action, weather or getting lost.

But was the Luftwaffes blitz on England basically the same or any more effective ?

How do the two compare ?

Morlar

I'd recommend you check out 'The fog of war' the Robert McNamara documentary (on youtube). There is a part in that where he speaks of the USAAF commander Le Mays who in an early study found that a disproportionate number of USAAF bombers also did not reach their targets. From what I recall the conclusion was that the crews were terrified and released their payloads miles early. From what I recall after that there were dire warnings and the commander began to go out in the first plane on each run. After that the accuracy improved greatly.

tac foley

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

I have skimmed through Max Hastings Bomber Command about the RAF bomber campaign over Germany in WW2 and in it he basically states that it was a failure as the bombs predominately landed on civilians or in empty feilds miles from the target. For example the Butt Report states " Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within 5 miles " And this did not include those aircraft that did not bomb because of equipment failure, enemy action, weather or getting lost.

But was the Luftwaffes blitz on England basically the same or any more effective ?

How do the two compare ?

Blitz = 76 consecutive nights = 43,000 civilians died - one million houses destroyed in Southern england and the Home Counties.

Hamburg - on ONE night in 1943 - 50,000 civilians died - 18 square miles of the city destroyed.

You do the comparison.

tac

Morlar

You could question the targetting decisions too.

Of the bomber command raids that resulted in very high german civilian fatalities - this is not all down to bomber crews dropping bombs early.

Many civilian areas were the actual target they were aiming for. Same as in Japan by the USAAF.

Manic Moran

Depends what you're aiming at, really.

If you're trying to hit London, it's a city about 20 miles in diameter. It's kindof hard to miss it, really.

If you're trying to hit a munitions factory, which might be 200m by 300m, it's a bit tougher.

NTM

tac foley

Manic Moran wrote: »

Depends what you're aiming at, really.

If you're trying to hit London, it's a city about 20 miles in diameter. It's kindof hard to miss it, really.

If you're trying to hit a munitions factory, which might be 200m by 300m, it's a bit tougher.

NTM

Hence 'carpet bombing'.

tac

marcsignal

have to consider the aircraft in each case also lads, the difference in load capability between a HE 111 or JU 88, and a Wellington or Lancaster is going to be a factor. The Germans failure to develop a Heavy bomber was a mistake, and the only one that came close later in the war, the HE 177, was a death trap for their own crews in terms of in-flight fires.

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

But was the Luftwaffes blitz on England basically the same or any more effective ?

How do the two compare ?

raids on Germany were more devastating, but bomber command losses were frighteningly high too.

PatsytheNazi

tac foley wrote: »

Blitz = 76 consecutive nights = 43,000 civilians died - one million houses destroyed in Southern england and the Home Counties.

Hamburg - on ONE night in 1943 - 50,000 civilians died - 18 square miles of the city destroyed.

You do the comparison.

tac

Well my conclusion is that Churchill, Bomber Harris and many other fascist thugs should have been hauled up and tried at Nuremburg just like Goering and co were. Indeed I'd say there were a few Germans hung after the war who were guilty of lesser crimes. But then I wouldn't expect anything better from the Brits.

LordSutch

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

RAF Bomber Command v Luftwaffe ?
How do the two compare ?

Question for you Mr Nazi; "If you had been around in 1940, which air force would you have joined (given the choice), the RAF or the Luftwaffe" ?

PatsytheNazi

LordSutch wrote: »

Question for you Mr Nazi; "If you had been around in 1940, which air force would you have joined (given the choice), the RAF or the Luftwaffe" ?

Neither, I'd have joined the Irish army and defended my country.

Empire o de Sun

Morlar wrote: »

I'd recommend you check out 'The fog of war' the Robert McNamara documentary (on youtube). There is a part in that where he speaks of the USAAF commander Le Mays who in an early study found that a disproportionate number of USAAF bombers also did not reach their targets. From what I recall the conclusion was that the crews were terrified and released their payloads miles early. From what I recall after that there were dire warnings and the commander began to go out in the first plane on each run. After that the accuracy improved greatly.

watch Fog of War, really cool documentary. Allot of deamons come with power.

PatsytheNazi

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

watch Fog of War, really cool documentary. Allot of deamons come with power.

Yes I just watched a 6 min clip, very chilling the absoulutely cold indifference and self rightousness. Seems their wasn't much difference between the ' bad ' guys Nazi's/Japs and the ' good ' guys USA, Soviets, Britain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfPwR00HXM0

tac foley

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Well my conclusion is that Churchill, Bomber Harris and many other fascist thugs should have been hauled up and tried at Nuremburg just like Goering and co were. Indeed I'd say there were a few Germans hung after the war who were guilty of lesser crimes. But then I wouldn't expect anything better from the Brits.

And my conclusion, based on what I've read here of your unpleasant little comments, is that you would have felt right at home with Mr Hitler, his policies and his pals.

As for the bombing of nazi Germany, well, at the risk of sounding like bible-thumper, 'As ye sow the wind, so shall ye reap the whirlwind.' You might not like it, Mr nazi, but it's called 'payback time'.

Guess you've never been part of a culture whose people had the almighty crap bombed randomly out of it for 76 consecutive nights without any way of defending themselves. The almost 50,000 dead were happily out of the equation by the time it was all over for a while, but the half million injured were not.

You'd better believe that if Britain had fallen, then 'ould Ireland', with its fine selection of sheltered and easily defendable ports and harbours, would have been next. And if the government of the day had been foolish enough to offer to 'defend' the state, then Dublin/Dun Laoghaire and Cork could have looked like Rotterdam in three days or less. I'd like to hear what you'd have had to say about your nazi pals and their naughty bombs then.

tac

PatsytheNazi

tac foley wrote: »

And my conclusion, based on what I've read here of your unpleasant little comments, is that you would have felt right at home with Mr Hitler, his policies and his pals.

As for the bombing of nazi Germany, well, at the risk of sounding like bible-thumper, 'As ye sow the wind, so shall ye reap the whirlwind.' You might not like it, Mr nazi, but it's called 'payback time'.

Yes, I'm sure the IRA men who bombed Guildford etc had that exactly in their minds when they carried out those terrible atrocities.

Guess you've never been part of a culture whose people had the almighty crap bombed randomly out of it for 76 consecutive nights without any way of defending themselves. The almost 50,000 dead were happily out of the equation by the time it was all over for a while, but the half million injured were not.

As above. ( BTW, the IRA teams that bombed Britain were mainly form the south. Like you say, they would have called it " payback time ".)

You'd better believe that if Britain had fallen, then 'ould Ireland', with its fine selection of sheltered and easily defendable ports and harbours, would have been next. And if the government of the day had been foolish enough to offer to 'defend' the state, then Dublin/Dun Laoghaire and Cork could have looked like Rotterdam in three days or less. I'd like to hear what you'd have had to say about your nazi pals and their naughty bombs then.
tac

If Britain had fallen then the Irish govt would not have resisted a German invasion. They had steam rolled throughout Europe, kicking the ar$e of Britain and France in the process. We would have had to follow similiar small countries like the Danes and Norwegians, it would have been madness otherwise.

But as shown by a recent programme on TG4, as part of the defense strategy, there was two Irish divisions, one based around the border, one in the south east. Both were only to act only in a holding position to delay the enemy for a few days. It was leaked to the British that if they were to invade then we were ging to request the Germans to come to our aid, and likewise leaked to the Germans that if they invaded we were going to request the British to come to our aid. Whether our bluff worked or if the British or Germans ever had any real intntion to invade is conjecture. But one thing I do know was that our neutrality is something we can be proud of in WW2.

FiSe

Comparing incomparable?

When you want pin-point accuracy you'd send some of the medium bombers, which operate in much lower altitudes and thus their bombing is more precise.

Germans didn't have heavy bombers and Heinkels, Ju-88s, Do-217 are regarded as medium bombers, loosely comparable to, let's say, B-25s. These were developed to do exactly what they should do, clear the way for the armour and infantry.
You can't se Mitchells involved in carpet bombing.

jurgenscarl

Thousands upon thousands of American and British aircrews were killed in those bombing raids - most of the heavy four engine bombers were bristling with machine guns and carried as many as 10 men each.
Scores of planes were lost every single day.
The movie Memphis Belle gives a reasonably accurate picture of what it was like to be an airman flying missions over Nazi Germany.
Planes were hit by flak, shot out of the sky by German fighters, crashed in accidents, limped home badly damaged and exploded on landing.
Crewmen wounded by sharpnel and machine gun bullets died aboard their planes long before they returned home.
Occassionally bombs dropped by planes above struck planes below and ripped off wings or tails or blew planes to smithereens.
German fighters often machine gunned men as they descended in their parachutes - if they got out of their machines before fell twisting and tumbling in flames toward the ground.
Germans civilians often killed aircrews before German troops turned up to take off to captivity.
The conditions in POW camps were atrocious.
They were not jolly places like The Great Escape would have you believe.
Any wonder young men in their teens and early twenties who were absolutely terrified didn't lose much sleep over German civilian deaths or the destruction of German cities.
It was war, millions of people were being butchered by the Nazis with the full knowledge and support of a significant portion of the German people.
If their cities were transformed into infernos and that brought the end to war a day sooner, most of the men flying those missions would have thought that was just too bad for the Germans.
It's easy looking back in hindsight.

Fratton Fred

My Mother's uncle, Cyril Weeks, was killed when his plane was shot down returning from a raid. He was a 21 year old navigator.

Apparantly he made it out of the plane OK, but he landed in trees and despite the locals cutting him down and trying to save him, he died shortly after from is wounds. Another of my mother's uncles visited his brother's grave for the first three years ago, six months before he died.

I just thought i would share that with ya!

marcsignal

Morlar wrote: »

I'd recommend you check out 'The fog of war' the Robert McNamara documentary

+1 Good choice Morlar

full version on google video here

http://quicksilverscreen.com/watch?video=50289

.

PatsytheNazi

Fratton Fred wrote: »

My Mother's uncle, Cyril Weeks, was killed when his plane was shot down returning from a raid. He was a 21 year old navigator.

Apparantly he made it out of the plane OK, but he landed in trees and despite the locals cutting him down and trying to save him, he died shortly after from is wounds. Another of my mother's uncles visited his brother's grave for the first three years ago, six months before he died.

I just thought i would share that with ya!

Where was his plane shot down in ? France, Germany or where ?

LordSutch

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

If Britain had fallen then the Irish govt would not have resisted a German invasion. It was leaked to the British that if they were to invade then we were ging to request the Germans to come to our aid,

Treacherous baskets!

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

and likewise leaked to the Germans that if they invaded we were going to request the British to come to our aid.

That's more like it.

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Whether our bluff worked or if the British or Germans ever had any real intntion to invade is conjecture. But one thing I do know was that our neutrality is something we can be proud of in WW2.

I totally disagree with the last sentence, as I think we should have been 100% behind the Allied war effort against the Nazi's.

xflyer

I see the campaign of revisionism and attempted whitewashing of Nazism is still ongoing. To answer the original question even if it was loaded and distorted and intended more as a statement than a real question.

It wasn't as if the Luftwaffe weren't trying to level British cities. They intended to and did quite well with Coventry. But their bombers were essentially tactical in nature not strategic. Early in the war no country had the capablity to bomb entire cities to destruction. They just didn't know it until it was tried. Hitler said:

And if the British Air Force drops two, three or four thousand kilos of bombs, then we will now drop 150,000, 180,000, 230,000, 300,000 or 400,000 kilos, or more, in one night. If they declare that they will attack our cities on a large scale, we will erase theirs! We will put a stop to the game of these night-pirates, as God is our witness. The hour will come when one or the other of us will crumble, and that one will not be National Socialist Germany. I have already carried through such a struggle once in my life, up to the final consequences, and this then led to the collapse of the enemy who is now still sitting there in England on Europes last island.

Well it was National Socialist Germany that crumbled to dust. The man was a fool in the end.

tac foley

Fratton Fred wrote: »

My Mother's uncle, Cyril Weeks, was killed when his plane was shot down returning from a raid. He was a 21 year old navigator.

Apparantly he made it out of the plane OK, but he landed in trees and despite the locals cutting him down and trying to save him, he died shortly after from is wounds. Another of my mother's uncles visited his brother's grave for the first three years ago, six months before he died.

I just thought i would share that with ya!

WEEKS , CYRIL ALFRED Pilot Officer16863727/03/1944 21Royal Air Force Volunteer ReserveUnited KingdomVII. E. 7.HOTTON WAR CEMETERY

tac

Fratton Fred

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Where was his plane shot down in ? France, Germany or where ?

In Belgium, flying back from a raid, not sure where the raid was though.

tac foley wrote: »

WEEKS , CYRIL ALFRED Pilot Officer16863727/03/1944 21Royal Air Force Volunteer ReserveUnited KingdomVII. E. 7.HOTTON WAR CEMETERY

tac

That's the chap. My Uncle Les was the youngest of seven, my Nan the eldest and their Brother Cyril the oldest boy. Les really looked up to his brave older brother (as you would) and was really cut up when he died. When he returned from Hotton, he was telling us the story above and couldn't hold back the tears 60 years later.

I took the family to windsor a few weeks ago and took them up to the Air Forces memorial in Runnymede. My wife was a bit blaise about the whole thing, until she read a note from a lady who had left flowers for her long dead fiance. They had got engaged a few weeks before he died and although she had remarried, she was still carrying a torch for him. She had left flowers to remember the 70th anniversary of his death. when my wife read that and then realised that every one of the more than 20,000 names on the walls (and these are just aircrews with no known grave) had a story behind it, she became quite emotional.

Morlar

xflyer wrote: »

I see the campaign of revisionism and attempted whitewashing of Nazism is still ongoing. To answer the original question even if it was loaded and distorted and intended more as a statement than a real question.

Instead of throwing out blanket accusations why not clarify who exactly and which post contains the 'revisionism and attempted whitewashing' ?

Such generalist insults add nothing to the discussion and just serve to lower the tone in my view.

We are talking about bombing here - RAF Vs Luftwaffe. The RAF bombs were not smart laser guided to 'nazi's' they bombed german cities which contained german civilians. There is nothing 'revisionist' or 'whitewashing' in discussing this freely and openly without dehumanising either side - despite the attempts to describe it as otherwise.

marcsignal

Morlar wrote: »

Instead of throwing out blanket accusations why not clarify who exactly and which post contains the 'revisionism and attempted whitewashing' ?

was wondering that myself ?

Morlar wrote: »

Such generalist insults add nothing to the discussion and just serve to lower the tone in my view.

+1

although in fairness OP, with a screen name like 'PatsyTheNazi', you're not really doing yourself any favours. Nothing personal understand, just that some posters get a little emotional about the 'N' word around here.;)

PatsytheNazi

marcsignal wrote: »

was wondering that myself ?



+1

although in fairness OP, with a screen name like 'PatsyTheNazi', you're not really doing yourself any favours. Nothing personal understand, just that some posters get a little emotional about the 'N' word around here.;)

TBH, I didn't think that anyone would take a name like PatsytheNazi serious........:)

marcsignal

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

TBH, I didn't think that anyone would take a name like PatsytheNazi serious........:)

you'd be surprised the conclusions jumped to here, on occasion

.

FiSe

jurgenscarl wrote: »

...German fighters often machine gunned men as they descended in their parachutes - if they got out of their machines before fell twisting and tumbling in flames toward the ground...
...Germans civilians often killed aircrews before German troops turned up to take off to captivity...

Not trying to be smart arse, but I think that a man on the parachute is a very hard target to hit from a fighter plane during combat. And I'm not quite sure that this was common practice. Nobody wants to be shoot at while hanging on a piece of cloth and -was it Galland?- refused this point-blank to the Hitler when he was requesting that the survivors should be killed in the air by LW pilots.
Civilians were angry on the bomber crews and yes, sometimes, they got their revenge. I've seen very good drama on one of the German channels 5 years ago, called Dresden, worth seeing to see the story of the other side.

Empire o de Sun

If someone had just bombed the craap out of your city and then parachuted down, you wouldn't really be too pleased with them.

Fratton Fred

There were plenty of German aircrews beaten to a pulp in London I believe.

FiSe

There's the story of Czech air crew executed by the locals in Poland, even though they were fighting on their side, in Polish aircraft.
Then, we have similar stories of Polish and Czech pilots in France and in Britain...
From the other hand we have stories of LW pilots protecting RAF/USAF air crews from the mob and I can imagine that something similar happened on the other side of the front too.