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#51
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This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server.
ArtKramr wrote in message ... Subject: B-17's and Strategic Bombing (Was:Was D VII a good plane) From: "Geoffrey Sinclair" Date: 4/18/04 12:15 AM Pacific Percentage of bombs dropped by the 8th Air force using visual sighting, 1943 56.5 1944 41.2 1945 41.5 overall 42.1 Translation, Walter will ignore visual bombing was a minority of the 8ths efforts. You miss the point. Instead of not flying at all during bad weather we flew radar mission . These added to the visual missions dramatically increased our destructiveness.. Your classifying radar missions as not effective fails to recognise that we did double the damage by flying both radar and visual a missions. Hello Art, my problem with the Walter presentation in this case is simple. Would you like only the best results mentioned when it comes to recording the history of what you did? That is the story your descendants will take as an accurate idea of what you did and therefore an insight to the abilities of military campaigns today? I mean ignore the problems of take off, formatting, staying in formation, navigating, finding the target and then bombing it on cloudy days? I did not classify the missions done using non visual bombing as "not effective", like all bombing raids the results could vary dramatically but overall they were less effective because of the lower average accuracy. In the 8ths case visual bombing was a minority of its effort, and visual bombing in very clear weather less again. The 8th had a hard time doing radar bombing, it had the biggest need at the very time the USAAF had shortages of equipment and trained men. If it is allowable to only mention the best results, then presumably it is allowable to only mention the worst results. Walter is right. Walter is rarely right about the heavy bomber campaign. Geoffrey Sinclair Remove the nb for email. |
#52
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Those who talk of the innacuracy of our bombing have never seen Germany in 1945. We left damn little standing. Art, "leaving damn little standing" seems to me to be an indication of inaccuracy, not accuracy... The USAAF started out with an obsession about "pinipoint:" bombing, "putting the bomb in the pickle barrel from 20,000 feet." That was a major reason why, despite horrendous losses, the Americans refused to join the British in switching to night bombing. (Later, of course, the day/night division of labor served other purposes: making more room available in British airspace, keeping the Germans awake around the clock.) The American turn to bombing through the clouds and from very high altitudes was forced on them by circumstances, bad weather over Germany and hellish flak. I think it's fair to say that if the USAAF hit the factory it was aiming at, that *that* was the accident, rather than hitting the farm ten miles away or Switzerland a hundred miles away. As I said, I lived in Frankfurt after the war. It had been rebuilt (more quickly than London!) but there were mural photographs in the railroad station. Out front of the station for several blocks to left and right and a couple blocks straight ahead, there were literally no streets remaining, just acres and acres of stone and rubble. Of course it was the Hauptbanhoff that the bombardiers were aiming at. Yet they never hit it. The one I used for bopping about Germany, covering courts martial at Kaiserslautern and Darmstadt, was the same iron and glass structure that survived all those raids without any damage but broken glass. A thousand feet from the aiming point is a *long* way in a city the size of Frankfurt. all the best -- Dan Ford email: (put Cubdriver in subject line) The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com Viva Bush! blog www.vivabush.org |
#53
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I wondered about that myself. If it was a typo, Dan was consistant!
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#55
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#56
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That is a false and ignorant point of view. We could put a bomb in a pickle barrel form 10,000 feet and I have done it many times. It was 20,000 feet in the boast. Some little difference there In the event, of course, the B-17s found it unsafe to bomb from 20,000 feet and moved up much higher. all the best -- Dan Ford email: (put Cubdriver in subject line) The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com Viva Bush! blog www.vivabush.org |
#57
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Earlier in the posts:
We could put a bomb in a pickle barrel form 10,000 feet and I have done it many times. We could put a couple of 500 pounders or napalm into a suspected truck park in a patch of three tiered jungle without a Norden sight. We did it numerous times at night. But of course it wasn't WWII, those suspected trucks were tough all the same. Rick MFE |
#58
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That without this havoc wreaked largely by the USAAF, RAF Bomber Command could not have operated over Germany at all. Wow! That was an eye-opener of a sentence, as opposed to accurate. Do you realize that during the BoB, Bomber Command lost more men attacking continental targets, including Germany, than Fighter Command lost? From 1940-1945, Bomber Command struck the Reich, including Germany itself, almost without interruption. They were not there because of anything the USAAC was doing! v/r Gordon ====(A+C==== USN SAR Its always better to lose AN engine, than THE engine. |
#59
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I wrote:
That without this havoc wreaked largely by the USAAF, RAF Bomber Command could not have operated over Germany at all. Wow! That was an eye-opener of a sentence, as opposed to accurate. No, it's quite accurate given the correct context, which is after Bomber Command was driven out of most of Germany in the wake of the Battle of Berlin and the 3/31/44 strike on Nuremburg. It's a paraphrase of what Sir Charles Portal said after the invasion. Specifically, Portal said: "But for the favorable air situation created by the Americans, said Portal, ' it is possible that the night blitzing of German cities would by now have been too costly to sustain upon a heavy scale'. Here was a remarkable admission from the British Chief of Air Staff -- that it was only the success of the American air policy which had spared that of Britain from visible and humiliating defeat." --"Bomber Command" p. 387, by Max Hastings Do you realize that during the BoB, Bomber Command lost more men attacking continental targets, including Germany, than Fighter Command lost? Not a very stirring testimony. The context of my note, which perhaps you just skimmed, or maybe I wasn't clear enough, was in the period following the invasion. Walt |
#60
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In the event, of course, the B-17s found it unsafe to bomb from 20,000
feet and moved up much higher. And still, per the Germans, hurt them much worse than the RAF did. Freeman relates in "Might Eighth War Diary" an anecdote where a B-17 box climbed to almost 30,000 feet to get over the weather and still put 20% of its bombs inside a circle of 1,000 foot radius. Walt |
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