Re: B-17's flew missions over wartime Europe

"Walt" <Walterm140@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:80238325-864c-4139-b0c2-12df6204f842@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Let's get the full efffect:

Laughter breaks will be required.

'The British inflicted grievous and bloody injuries upon us' said
Milch after the war, 'but the Americans stabbed us to the heart.'

--"Bomber Command" p. 408 by Max Hastings

Note by the way, the air forces are not mentioned, just the nationalities.
However with the poetic stab in the heart, it is assumed to mean the
Luftwaffe since the Red Army destroyed most of the German Army
and the RN most of the Kreigsmarine. And then only specific parts
of the Luftwaffe, given its ground attack and bomber arms were
largely deployed where the USAAF could not attack them easily.

Just ignore the facts like the Luftwaffe losses in the Battle of Britain
of so many pre war pilots had a real effect over the course of the war.
Since the Luftwaffe did not exist for about 15 years it was very short
"middle management", the sorts of roles those pre war trained people
would fill.

Think for example if then Colonel Kammhuber had been captured
by the British instead of the French in 1940.

I presume the stabbing is supposed to have been done by the B-17 with
lance attachment.

See also Milch, 23 February 1944

"Everyone should pay a visit to Berlin. It would then be realised that
experience such as we have undergone in the last few months cannot
be endured indefinitely. That is impossible. When the big cities have
been demolished it will be the turn of the smaller ones."

If Milch is right about stabs he is right about area attacks, use both or
neither quote. Remember Milch's opinion is always good in Walter's
world, like his long battle against the He219 and his many feuds
with senior Luftwaffe and aviation industry figures.

"In the course of the year 1943 the accent of the Reich defense
shifted more and more toward action against daylight raiders. Even
though numerically the British were still stronger than the Americans
and were undoubtedly a great trial for for the civilian population, the
American precision raids were of greater consequence to the war
industry. They received priority attention over the British raids on
our towns."

--"The First and the Last" p. 178, Adolf Galland

The chief of the day fighters worrying about the day battle. Just ignore
the large rise in the day and night fighter strengths which show's
Galland's words to be incorrect.

Galland, First and Last page 167

"After Hamburg in the wide circle of the political and
military command could be heard the words "The war
is lost"" One quote proves all, correct?

By the way if the day bombers did receive priority, how
come there were those diversions of day fighters into
the night fighter force in the second half of 1943?

JG300, 301 and 302 to be precise?

'The Americans' attacks, which followed a definite system of assault
on industrial targets, were by far the most dangerous.

It was in fact these attacks which caused the breakdown of the
German armaments industry. The attacks on the chemical industry would
have sufficed, without the impact of purely military events to render
Germany defenseless.

--Albert Speer"

By the way how did the US strikes cause the breakdown of the
u-boat building, tanks, steel? Given the USAAF rarely went
near them. The reality was the transport plan was the way the
allies finally started to really hurt the German economy, and
the plan required and used all types of allied air power, from
all the allies.

Speer is a favourite for the one quote proves all people, as
he has quotes for all occasions.

"It must also be stated that the now frequent night attacks are more
effective than the day raids as heavier bombs are being used and
extraordinary accuracy achieved"

Speer to Hitler 19 January 1945.

Speer was receiving reports of the bombs that hit.

Hunt for that one quote, silly isn't it?

Speer for example can be quoted to support many cases, like
by Harris,

"In Speer's opinion Bomber Commands night attacks were often the
decisive factor in putting out of action the largest and most important
of the enemy's synthetic oil plants, "owing to their greater effectiveness"
he (Speer) said "night attacks caused considerably more damage than
day raids" and these night attacks by Bomber Command were what he
(Speer) considered "more effective in their results than the day attacks
by reason of the fact that the superheavy bombs caused shattering
damage to these plants".

--"Luftwaffe War Diaries" p. 355 by Cajus Bekker.

" 'By the narrowest of margins, the strategic air offensive failed to
smash Germany's economy by this one method of attack,' wrote the
economist Professor
Milward. 'The most successful operation of the entire Allied
strategic air warfare was against Germany's fuel supply,' wrote
Galland of the Luftwaffe. 'Looking back, it is difficult to understand
why the Allies started this undertaking so late....' Thus the Allies
threw away success when it
was already in their hands,' wrote Speer, of the slackening of the oil
offensive as far back as the summer of 1944. "Had they continued the
attacks of March and April with the same energy, we would have quickly
been at our last gasp."

--"Bomber Command" p. 389 by Max Hastings.

Note yet again Walter's selective use of quotes, there were no oil
raids in March and April 1944, apart from the 15ths raids on
Ploesti in April. So the above quote is either wrong or talks about
1945 the raids that were going on then, which is a different topic
to the raids of mid and late 1944.

'Despite all the terrible destruction of German cities, despite all
the hardship and death it brought to the civilian population and
industrial workers--whose ordeal was now often worse than the
soldiers at the front--it was not,as we have seen, area bombing
by night that struck the vital blow at German survival.

This mission was accomplished to a far greater extent by the
selective and precision bombing of the American Eighth Air Force in
daylight. By careful choice of target, this first blocked the bottle-necks
of armaments production, and finally brought the whole German war
machine to a standstill."

--Luftwaffe War Diaries, p.340 by Cajus Bekker

The Luftwaffe war diaries is one of Walter's favourite books, note
the quote from page 355 which says there was no systematic
attack before May 1944, with the first attacks on oil installations.
So apparently we have to ignore all 8th Air Force raids before this
as part of the "careful choice of target", in a book which ends its
coverage in June 1944.

Walter has posted this quote many times without noting the basic
objections, like why no mention of the 15th air force, why no mention of
the 9th and 2nd tactical air force, why no mention of Bomber Command
strikes on oil and transport? How can the heavy bombers be considered
to be doing precision bombing? The 8ths target list until the oil
and transport plans were mainly the finished product factories,
the aircraft assembly plants, strikes on rubber and ball bearings
could not or were not followed up. The 8th did not strike in a
sustained way at production bottlenecks, that is key raw and semi
raw products except the oil campaign, where it provided part of
the effort along with the 15th and Bomber Command. The 8th had
a key part in this campaign in 1944, less so in 1945. Walter should
tell us all what materials the German armaments production ran
out of thanks to the 8th air force, steel?, ball bearings? what?

Instead perhaps the way the allied air forces severely damaged
the transport system in western Germany might be mentioned
as the way industrial output was hurt and the attacks on oil
firstly hurt the Luftwaffe by reducing avgas supplies and then
later went after the fuel the army and navy used.

See the book The Collapse of the German War Economy 1944-45,
Allied Airpower and the German National Railway by Mierzejewski.
It documents the decline of the German Rail system in late 1944
and early 1945 to the point where it could not even supply its own
locomotives with coal, where special derail gangs were formed
with quotas of cars to derail each day to clear congestion. Where
the German economy was collapsing, mainly due to the transportation
strikes, the canals, the railways and the oil. How the stocks were
run down and weapons that were made were stuck at the factories.
Tables give an idea of the run down in coal production. The book
makes the case the marshalling yards were the key.

See also A Forgotten Offensive: RAF Coastal Command Anti
Shipping Campaign 1940-45 by Goulter. In particular the last
chapter on the economic effects of cutting off most of the
Scandinavian iron ore trade in late 1944, it helped but the
Germans had stocks to keep going for a while. The tables give
the decline in steel production. If ever there was a sustained
strike against a vital raw material it was the anti shipping
operations against the ore ships from Narvik.

"After a survey of of Luftwaffe officers for "American Heritage",
Carl Sulzberger found agreement with one German flying officer that "There
is no doubt that the Americans harmed us most. The Russians were
negligible
as far as the home front was concerned, and we could have stood the
British
attacks on our cities. But the American devastation of our airfields,
factories, and oil depots made it impossible for us to keep going."

--"A Wing and a Prayer", p. 384 by Harry Crosby.

Note the USSBS states it was not
the devastation of airfields and factories that caused the
problem but the run down of transportation, the links between
the factories, airfields etc. In 1945 for example repairing oil
plants could be a waste of time since the transport links to
them were so badly damaged.

Remember when in trouble look for a junior officer who tells you
that you had the most effect. Note the transport plan was apparently
a failure, as was bombing synthetic oil refineries.

Also note the attacks on
oil refineries apparently had no effect, only the depots were
hurt, and that campaign did not start until June 1944 according
to the USSBS, and by the end of September 1944 the USSBS
has the RAF, with 3,300 tons of bombs, ahead of the USAAF
with 1,600 tons. So if the depots were the key the RAF was
the one turning it, not the USAAF.

"The message was a statement from Hans Fay, a German test pilot who
had landed his twin-engine ME 262 jet at an American field. Fay was
quoted as saying, "The American Air Force has shortened the war by
years as well as decided its outcome...Only bomber attacks during
daytime have crippled and destroyed our industry....Bombing attacks
on cities did not exert a profound influence on
German morale. This was true even on the devastating bomb carpets."

-- "Forged In Fire" p. 480 by De Witt S. Copp

Yes a test pilot would be an economic expert, not to mention have
a major strategic insight and accurate knowledge of Luftwaffe losses.
It is fascinating to note that apparently the war was shortened by years
by the USAAF, I wonder how they Red Army is going to be delayed
that long.

In 1944 the 8th dropped 38,531.6 tons of bombs on the German
aircraft industry, production went up for most of the year, a further
12,936.6 tons on AFV industry targets, similar result. Transport
targets were the biggest strikes, 125,165.2 tons, v weapons
28,962.7 tons, oil 56,964.3 tons, targets of opportunity 10,439.8
tons, tactical targets (excluding fuel dumps) 34,529 tons, airfields
58,638.4 tons, industrial areas 25,960.1 tons (5,416.1 visually,
the rest mainly using H2X), this is out of 429,065.3 tons of bombs
dropped.

Apparently the transport strikes failed as well, since the expert
quoted above does not mention them.

"Over Kiel we run into heavy flak from our own guns. The shooting by
the Navy is unfortunately so good that we are considerably disorganized.
I observe the Yank bombing. They dump their load right on the German
shipyards. I am impressed by the precision with which those bastards
bomb: it is fantastic."

--"I Flew for the Fuhrer" by Heinz Knoke

Yes folks, the disorganised fighter formation under ground fire has pilots
watching the bombing rather than reforming or attacking the bombers.

Why, one German observer called the RAF accuracy "extraordinary."
(See the Speer quote above)

Hunt for that one quote, silly isn't it?

The Germans are on the record clearly - saying that the USAAF hurt
them much worse than the RAF did.

Walter has managed to find a quote from Milch, Galland, Speer, then
comes a German author, a test pilot, a fighter pilot and a survey by an
American asking for agreement the Americans did the most damage,
with the problems outlined above.

These become "The Germans".

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.


.

Loading