The Bombing Offensive of World War Two
08/1940 to 04/1945
In the burning and devastated cities, we daily experienced the direct impact
of war. It spurred us to do our utmost . . . the bombing and the hardships
that resulted from them (did not) weaken the morale of the populace.
Albert Speer - Chief of the German War Economy (Speaking after the War)
In the first months of the war, British strategic bombing (aerial attacks on
the enemy’s industry and infrastructure) was bound by the belief that
deliberate attacks on civilians and private property were illegal and
unjustifiable. By 1945, RAF Bomber Command was obliterating historic
German cities overnight. It was a terrifying transformation in the nature of
war that saw industrial towns across Europe smashed to pieces and
hundreds of thousands of civilians killed.
When Luftwaffe night-bombers unintentionally (and against orders)
attacked London in August 1940, Churchill ordered a retaliatory raid on
Berlin. This caused an enraged Hitler to order intensified bombing of
targets in and around London.
Both sides thus claimed that their attacks on enemy cities were in
retaliation for what had been begun by the enemy. In reality, the bombing
of cities and their civilian population had been a reality of warfare since the
First World War. In 1940, both sides were intent on attacking the enemy’s
economic resources. These were mostly concentrated in cities, and given
the inaccurate nature of bombing in World War Two (especially at night),
this policy would inevitably lead to the destruction of houses and many
civilian deaths.
In February 1942, RAF Bomber Command explicitly began to focus its
attacks on the enemy civilian population, when it shifted from strategic
bombing to the nighttime area bombing of cities, designed to break enemy
morale. Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, the new head of Bomber Command, saw
civilian death (or the ‘dehousing’ of the German workforce) as entirely
necessary. He felt that dispatching 1,000 aircraft each night against
German objectives, destroying great industrial cities in hours, would render
the invasion of Europe unnecessary. He pointed to the Cologne raid of May
1942 as an example of what could be achieved: in one night, 1,046 aircraft
rained more than 2,000 tons of bombs on the city, reducing 13,000 houses
to rubble.
The US Army Air Force, flying raids from British bases from 1942,
remained faithful to the concept of precision daylight bombing (with variable
accuracy). ‘Around the Clock’ offensives began - RAF by night, USAAF by
day. Early daylight raids by the USAAF, without the protection of longrange fighter escorts, could lead to terrible losses. The Schweinfurt raid, an
attack on ball-bearing factories designed to create ‘choke-points’ in
German industry, led to the loss of 77 B-17 bombers, about one quarter of
the attacking force. Such long-distance raids were then abandoned until
1944, when long-distance fighter escorts were available.
In May 1943, RAF Bomber Command was able to pull off one stunning
piece of precision bombing, in the famous Dambusters raids against dams
in the Ruhr Valley, in the German industrial heartland. Although the
economic impact of the raid was negligible, it was a skillful and courageous
operation that had a great impact on public morale.
Meanwhile, area bombing continued. In June 1943, in Operation
Gomorrah, British and American bombers attacked Hamburg day and night
for an entire week; half the city was leveled, and 40,000 were killed. In
January 1944, the RAF pummeled Berlin. On 11 December, 1,600
American planes leveled Frankfurt, Hanau and Giesson. In January 1945,
the USAAF dropped almost 40,000 tons of bombs on Berlin, Cologne and
Hamm, while the RAF hit Bochum, Munich and Stuttgart.
By the war’s last months, virtually every important German industrial town
had been destroyed. Yet the bombing continued. Churchill, convinced that
destroying East German communication centers would aid the Red Army’s
advance on Berlin, authorized the bombing of Dresden. On 13-14 February
1945, the RAF and the USAAF killed around 30,000 civilians in attacks.
The effectiveness of the bombing campaign is still debated. There was
terrible destruction of the German economy, although output still rose
during the war as the economy was geared more and more towards
wartime needs. Public
support in Germany for
the
Nazi regime, and civilian
morale, was not
obviously affected. The
bombing campaign did
force Germany to
devote huge resources
to
the defense of the
homeland, and the
German air force suffered significant losses at the hands of Allied fighter
escorts. The US Eighth Air Force and RAF Bomber Command paid a high
price. Six in ten British bomber aircrew were killed, one of the highest
casualty rates of any service in the war.
The United States 1945 Firebombing of Tokyo
On this day, U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan,
dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of the next
48 hours.
Almost 16 square miles in and
around the Japanese capital were
incinerated, and between 80,000
and 130,000 Japanese civilians
were killed in the worst single
firestorm in recorded history.
Early on March 9, Air Force crews
met on the Mariana Islands of
Tinian and Saipan for a military
briefing. They were planning a lowlevel bombing attack on Tokyo that
would begin that evening, but with a twist: Their planes would be stripped of
all guns except for the tail turret. The decrease in weight would increase the
speed of each Superfortress bomber-and would also increase its bomb load
capacity by 65 percent, making each plane able to carry more than seven tons.
Speed would be crucial, and the crews were warned that if they were shot
down, all haste was to be made for the water, which would increase their
chances of being picked up by American rescue crews. Should they land within
Japanese territory, they could only expect the very worst treatment by
civilians, as the mission that night was going to entail the deaths of tens of
thousands of those very same civilians. “You’re going to deliver the biggest
firecracker the Japanese have ever seen,” said U.S. Gen. Curtis LeMay.
The cluster bombing of the downtown Tokyo suburb of Shitamachi had been
approved only a few hours earlier. Shitamachi was composed of roughly
750,000 people living in cramped quarters in wooden-frame buildings. Setting
ablaze this “paper city” was a kind of experiment in the effects of firebombing;
it would also destroy the light industries, called “shadow factories,” that
produced prefabricated war materials destined for Japanese aircraft factories.
The denizens of Shitamachi never had a chance of defending themselves. Their
fire brigades were hopelessly undermanned, poorly trained, and poorly
equipped. At 5:34 p.m., Superfortress B-29 bombers took off from Saipan and
Tinian, reaching their target at 12:15 a.m. on March 10. Three hundred and
thirty-four bombers, flying at a mere 500 feet, dropped their loads, creating a
giant bonfire fanned by 30-knot winds that helped raze Shitamachi and
spread the flames throughout Tokyo. Masses of panicked and terrified
Japanese civilians scrambled to escape the inferno, most unsuccessfully. The
human carnage was so great that the blood-red mists and stench of burning
flesh that wafted up sickened the bomber pilots, forcing them to grab oxygen
masks to keep from vomiting.
The raid lasted slightly longer than three hours. “In the black Sumida River,
countless bodies were floating, clothed bodies, naked bodies, all black as
charcoal. It was unreal,” recorded one doctor at the scene. Only 243 American
airmen were lost-considered acceptable losses.
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