WalterM140 wrote in message ...

Bomber Command did so poorly in the war and cost so much blood and
treasure to accomplish so little, that I suppose it is no wonder that some of
the non-US posters want everything thrown into this blanket "area bombing"
definition.

No actually. People note visual bombing of Germany was a minority
of the 8th's strikes even in 1943, visual bombing in good visibility
even less. People note the contradiction between claiming the oil
campaign was so good and the RAF was so bad when the German raid
reports make it clear the RAF raids were more effective. People note
the double standards used when Walter compares the RAF to USAAF.

What they can't discount is that the Germans began re-deploying their fighter
force back to Germany to deal with the B-17s when the 8th AF was running raids
with only a few dozen bombers, with no escort, and only in visual conditions.

Let us see now, the claim is now all the redeployed to Germany only,
none to France or Holland, correct?

None of those fighters tried to intercept the escorted missions over
France, nor react to the significant increase in allied day bomber
raids on France and the low countries in 1943 correct? Day Bomber
sorties up from 1,794 in 1942 to over 14,600 in 1943.

Last time Walter ran this line his list included the training units as
proof of the concentration. Note he keeps telling us about these
moves but does not provide a list of units and dates. He will
eventually define few dozen as well, it seems to be at least 8,
or just under 100 bombers.

By the way when the 8th air force was running raids of hundreds
of aircraft the Luftwaffe was using day fighter assets, the JG300
series units, as night fighters. Under Walter's rules of logic it
shows bad things about the USAAF, as opposed to everyone
else's rules of logic which state it shows bad things about Walter.

To most people the night fighter use in daylight and day fighter use
at night show improvisation and a Luftwaffe high command largely
misusing its assets, for Walter night fighters in daylight is the only
part considered, it fits the fiction.

At the end of 1942 the night fighter force was 5 Geschwader controlling
15 gruppen, except some of the gruppen were still staffel size, by the
middle of 1942 there were 6 operational Geschwader plus 1 training
unit controlling 22 gruppen, 18 of which were in the Reich.

The Germans reacted to the increasing pressure by day and night,
by beefing up the defences then firstly defeating the unescorted day
raids and then defeating the night raids. The allies then struck back.
The way the air war fluctuated, no absolutes.

The Germans were having their night fighter aces engaging the 8th AF as early
as February, 1943.

After the early death of an expert pilot the rules were changed to have
the inexperienced crews used. The fact 20% of night fighters did not
have radar in mid 1943 was a factor in using them. So was the heavy
armament on the Do217 night fighter version.

And when did the RAF run its first 1,000 plane raid? Six months previously.

As people can see Walter simply refuses to actually look at the history,
the fact the 1,000 plane raids were special one offs using training and
other command's aircraft to obtain the numbers. A proof of concept,
one the USAAF was happy to share in. Walter is now going to show us
all the Bomber Command 1,000 plane raids done before 1944, that is
using the aircraft assigned to the operational units only. Otherwise he
can start telling us how bad the USAAF was for having over 800 heavy
bombers in Britain in July 1943 but only using a maximum of around 300
at a time. (In October 1944 the heavy bombers on hand topped 1,100).
The rest of us understand the concept of reserves, training units and
serviceability levels. Harris used all three to put together his three 1,000
bomber raids in 1942, if this is to be considered normal then the 8th
stands condemned for not sending 1,000 bombers to Schweinfurt in
October 1943. Silly isn't it?

Here's the deal, although it's galling to some:

Here's the quote, though it is not saying what Walter wants it to say.

'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
there is a quote on 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
effective 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.

I have another question, why does Walter never mention
Bekker makes it clear his Luftwaffe War Diaries ends in
June 1944? Which is clearly relevant to conclusions about
the bombing since most of the bombs dropped on Germany
happened after that date.



And it wasn't done by area bombing either. Area bombing was ineffective, and
this was known well before the end of the war.

Which explains why the 8th air force kept doing it and, as expected
in winter weather, did most of such bombing in the 1944/45 winter.

But Bomber Command was kept at its Sisyphean task by the almost criminally
incompetent Arthur Harris until the very end.

Translation Walter has convicted Harris, the messy evidence side of
things is irrelevant.

In the last 4 months of 1944, according to the USSBS the 8th air force
dropped 50% of its bombs through 8/10 or thicker cloud (15% in 8 or
9/10, 35% in 10/10), in the same period Harris says 46% of Bomber
Command bombs went on "towns". Walter condemns Harris even
though he was doing (just) slightly less area bombing than the 8th.

In case you are wondering in 8 and 9/10 cloud the 8th managed 1% of
bombs within 1,000 feet, in 10/10 cloud 0.2% in these 4 months, the
within 0.5 mile figures are 7.3% and 1.2% respectively.

This was during the time period the USSBS found the RAF was more
accurate on average when dropping bombs on three large oil plants it
examined in detail.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.