I saw a documentary last night which made the claim that Soviet bombers dropped more bombs over Germany than all other allied bombers combined. I know the Soviet role in the bombing campaign against Germany is often left out or understated, but more bombs than than all other allied bombers combined is a statement I find hard to believe. Maybe someone here can shed more light on this?
Actual bombs - maybe. But unlikely. Tonnage - no way. Soviet Strategic bombing was mostly limited to a small number of Pe-8 4-engined bombers. While they have a large tactical bomber force which assuredly did drop a lot o bombs on German soil, I'd like to see how that stacks up against the Western Allies use of both tactical and strategic bombers on a large scale.
DB-3's and Il-4's made up the bulk of the Soviet strategic bomber force during WWII. I guess you can argue if they were strategic bombers or not, but they were the planes the Soviet Union used to bomb Germany. Alongside Yer-2's and other twin-engined bombers. But they must have been real busy to keep up with the British and American bombers, because as far as I know the Soviet bombers weren't produced in numbers comparable with at least the American bombers.
There's no way the Red Air Force dropped more bombs on Germany than did the Western air forces. Royal Air Force Bomber Command and the USAAF dropped thousands of tons of bombs on Germany for six and three years, respectively. I'd like to know how on earth the Red Air Force exceeded that tonnage, or even the number of bombs dropped. It's amazing (and a bit disgusting) what sort of drivel sometimes passes for documentaries nowadays. :roll:
. agree , the soviet air force wasn't structured this way , however I've come across a reference of a soviet bombing raid on Berlin around july 41 could be propaganda for sure but perfectly logical to have ordered one no matter the odds .
That raid did happen. However, as far as I am aware the Soviets did not bomb Berlin again until the campaign to capture it.
I can buy that Soviets dropped more bombs over Germany than the Allied Strategic bombing. The documentary probably didn't specific _where_ the bombs were dropped, so we can assume that it included the Soviet tactical bombers as well that were supporting the ground army. A single IL-2 doing 3 sorties a day drops way more bombs to German soil than a single heavy bomber doing a single sortie once in every 3 days flying from the UK.
As Ricky said though, do they mean actual bombs (not unlikely, especially if small bomblets and rockets are counted) or weight of bombs (I'd consider that unlikely myself). What are they counting as a "Bomb"? Do explosive rockets count as bombs in this reckoning? If so a single Il-2 sortie could drop as many individual "Bombs" on Germany than a Lancaster might be carrying on a long range bombing mission, but a much, much smaller weight of explosives in much, much smaller bombs. The problem with statements like this is without any qualifying details it's hard if not impossible to verify the claim and to be honest makes the statement such as it is meaningless. In any case it's not really clear what point is really trying to be made. To be honest, it does sound a bit like some statistics might be being fiddled by the documentary makers to hint that the Red Air Force had more of a strategic role than was the case.
I seriously doubt this statment even if you count the bombs dropped by Il-2's and other planes in tactical support of ground operations in late war on entire reich territory - including east Prussia and provinces annexed since the beggining of the war (NE Poland, parts of Czehoslovakia and Yugoslavia)
The USAAF and RAF dropped dropped over 1,800,000 tons of bombs on Germany during WW2. If the Soviets had dropped more. I think the German's would have noticed it :roll:
