Largest Strategic Mistake(s) Made By The Allies

Kai is right on the matter. I think that something which worked even better than the Allied strategic bombing offensive was the destruction of communication lines rather than war material factories, and this was made mainly by fighter-bombers and light-bombers. The attack on fuel depots and refineries worked quite well, but the rest of that oil could not reach the front because of damaged railways, lack of locomotives and dangerous motorways.

Or am I making things up again?

 

Fighter-bombers and light bombers would not be able to operate effectively without aerial superiority. As far as I can see, the bombing campaign forced the redeployment of fighters from the Western and Eastern fronts and so deprived Germany of fighter strength and therefore aerial superiority over their battlefields - facilitating the action you mention by lighter aircraft.

 

But the even worse problem was the German fighters (Me 109, FW 190) to be pretty inefficient against the Mustangs, right?

 

Greenjacket is on the mark. The Allied air offensive was needed at whatever the cost. bombing industry and oil reserves was of the utmost urgentcy. it was readily apparent that the Luftwaffe could shell out almost death blows to the US bombers during 1943 and early 1944 until enough P-47 and P-51 Mustangs with long range fuel tanks could come to their aid and render protection to and from the target back to the isle. And yes to Knightmove. The raising of the Luftwaffe to contend with Allied fighters both US and British and try to come out victorious. Not to be in the mid half of 44 till wars end. Only because of the heavy bomber missions both day and night could the Allies gain that stronghold of land in France, Italy and the Reich to have forward bases for the fighterbombers of 9th and 12th AF to strike the smaller but no less important targets of MT, communications and crossroads........

~E

 

How was air superiority achieved over Germany and over battle fields (in the West)? When more advanced and in more quantity fighters were introduced. It was those fighter bombers the ones who killed German so-much-needed pilots and destroyed a lot of planes - in ground and air - achieving air superiority by doing so, allowing its bombers to hit their targets without losing 1/3 of the attacking force. It was fighter-bombers the ones which destroyed German logistics and its very forces during the fighting in the West.

So, I really do not see your point about the bomber offensive from diverting most of Germany's air power to defend the Reich. It was the case from 1942 onwards - when the Allied air offensive became stronger and when Germany had already lost the war in the east, where everything was decided.

So, in my view, those 70.000 young men's lives were FAR TOO MUCH for the contribution they made.

 

where do you get this info that the jabos were the scourge of everything. It was literally the creme de le creme of the Luftwaffe wasted at 29-33,000 feet against US bombers and fighters in the year of 1944 that brought the Reichsverteidigung to a screeching halt not the fighter bombers. You can go look at the kills-claims of the 8th AF fighter for example.......and I have quoted the 352nd fg as an example on many occasion on these boards the last three years .

Literally the Air offensive by heavy bombers had to be done by both RAF and US crewmen.

 

anothe little notation. The 8th AF 353rd fighter group which was first assisting the US heavies in air escort were the first to perform strafing duties on German supply columns and this was right before the Normandie battles. This was not with bombs or rockets but with .50 cal. they were not designated jabos at the time. Successful they were and when the Luftwaffe would not come up in force the 8th AF's P-51's and P-47's "went to ground". The 9th AF performed aid to the US armor and ground troops with the goal to eliminate the noted communication centers and rail and raod crossings. these were the jabos.......

 

I always hesitate to get embroiled in Strategic Bombing threads....

The main strategic lesson of the airwar, finally grasped by the Americans - was that command of the air was vital. The P-51 with Merlin engine and droptanks paved the way. Without the heavy bomber attacks, the Luftwaffe would not have risen in sufficient numbers - as happened with the RAF's 'tip-and-run' raids of 1941/42.

Fighter-bombers and mediums could not deliver sufficient weight of bombs against communication targets and were also very vulnerable to light flak which the Germans used with great effect.

One of the real tragedies of the Bomber war was that lessons were learned the hard way and technological advances always seemed to come just too late. The only, truly effective, precision 'big' bombing was done by 617 with Wallis' bombs, delivered in daylight from high altitude, but requiring a sky totally Luftwaffe-free. By then, it was too late for these weapons to have a significant effect on the wars' course.

 

Martin,

as I´m not that familiar with the allied side I was wondering if you could tell something of the damage caused by the big bombs on German U-boat pens and the V-weapons sides. Got any figures on how much "allied blood" was saved by these actions? Or other figures related to these attacks?

 

Erich, I read and re-read your posts and I don't see your point...

I am not saying entirely that the Allied heavy bombers offensive was useless. Just that its achievements do not correspond with the ammount of losses it held.

Though I'll give the Air Allied offensive the credit that it delayed the development and building of modern U-boats until early 1945 instead of early 1944, which did have a HUGE impact on the war effort. But again, there's always the Red Army rolling over in the east...

 

Kai - that's a 'tall order' !

I'll have to answer in little pieces starting with the most significant action - the 'Peenemunde Raid' of 17/18 August 1943 directly aimed at Germany's V2 programme.

560 aircraft dropped 1,800 tons of bombs on Peenemunde. Although not as destructive as was hoped, the raid was generally agreed, by Speer, Dornberger and Goebbels, to have set V2 development back by at least two months - as Professor R V Jones later pointed out, 'very significant months'.

The 'big bombs' did not come into the picture until mid-1944 with the first strike against U-Boat pens occurring on 5th August. Earlier, 19th June saw the first 'big bomb' used against a V-weapon site - the liquid oxygen store at Watten.

Possibly two of the least-known 'Tallboy' raids which may have saved a large number of Allied lives were the 14th & 15th June raids on the E-Boat pens at Le Havre and Boulogne which came about as a direct result of the Slapton Sands disaster. An estimated 130 E-Boats were sunk or damaged beyond repair.

[ 02. December 2003, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: Martin Bull ]

 

But werent underground groups doing similer amounts of damage as well though.

 

I don't think so. Underground groups were very valuable in passing information and intelligence back to London, but hadn't the capability to inflict serious, large-scale damage on well-defended and secure installations.

 

But did not the underground sabatoge German Tanks and whatnot.

 

Depends where you are talking about.

By 1944 there was a very active 5th column movement in the Occupied territories in the East, in occupied Ukraine and Russia. There were funded, equipped and supplied by the Red Army who would arrange massive drops of supplies and equipment to partisan groups.

However the main effect of partisan groups was to damage communications and transportations. There are no stories about partisan groups encountering organised German forces and surviving. Military sabotage of tanks and vehicles was rare simply because it was incredibly dangerous and the Germans became very good at preventing such things. They also employed savage bands of SS and local recruits to hunt down these partisan brigades, with considerable success.

In the West, the French resistance is one of the greatest myths of the Second World War. It did exist of course, and did some very impressive things right before D-Day to transportation and communication lines. It also was excellent at providing information, documents and even allied pilots and escaped prisoners passage to the UK.

However, ever attempt at large scale armed resistance was crushed, major sabotage was incredibly rare and the resistance tended to spend most of its time killing collaborators rather than Germans. Membership in the French resistance went up by about 7000% in the weeks before the invasion of Normandy, and by the end of the war everyone sported a resistance badge. But in reality, during the dark years of 1940-1943, the resistance was small and disorganised, though certainly devoted. After June 1941 the communist organisations joined the French resistance, and their impact increased, but the Germans never saw the French resistance as a significant threat, easily controlled by careful intel and the vast number of French Collaborators.

I recommend recent France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 , by Julian Jackson, Occupation: the Ordeal of France 1940-1944, by Ian Ousby, and two excellent works by HR Kedward, In search of the Maquis, and Resistance in Vichy France.

Also, if you can, Le France des Annees noires, by Azéma and Bédaria, and the massive series Le grande histoire des Francais sous L’occupation by Henri Amoureux, or La Délation sous l'occupation, by André Halimi.

(I did my Doctoral thesis on the first year of resistance in occupied France)

 

Martin but what about direct raids against U-boat shipyards and certain plants that produced U-boat parts? You mentioned something about liquid oxigen factories being hit - which directly affected the V2 programme and maybe, type XXIII U-boats fuel supplies...

And about sabotage; it was very rare - as Vermillion said - that organised partisan groups affected such production places and certainly, workers also didn't sabotage things inside the factories, due to the high quality levels controls of the German industry. However, attacking communication and supplies in ambushes, were more than vital for German defeat in WWII, besides diverting numerous forces to fight the partisans.

 

The 'big bombs' which Kai was asking about were never used against U-Boat production facilities; only U-Boat pens.

Earlier large raids ( certainly that on Hamburg, which badly damaged Blohm & Voss' yards ) affected U-Boat production. The Watten LOX plant had in fact not gone into production & its' products were only destined for V-weapon use.

 

Thank you very much, Martin! I asked because I read in C. D. Bekker's "Defeat at Sea" that Speer and Dönitz were hoping to launch the first type XXI U-boats by May 1944 so they could start operating in June or July as the lattest. But the Allied attacks slowed the production one year! So, at least in that aspect, the air offensive could have changed the course of the war in the west.

And I checked, type XXIII U-boats didn't even use liquid oxigen as fuel, but oxigen peroxhide.

 

Another interesting statistic - due to Anglo-American air raids, between July-December 1944 the number of railway waggons available to to the Reichsbahn fell from 136,000 to 87,000. By February 1945 there were only 28,000.

These figures from Duffy, 'Red Storm On The Reich ' ( London 1991 ).

 

So now, I'll have to eat my words for sure... Thanks for that, Martin!

No, really. Thanks for posting those cyphers.

But I still do believe that 70.000 men killed is FAR TOO MUCH...