piglet <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Speaking of horrendously poor accuracy the British Royal Air Force
> calculated that only 1% of their bombs landed within a mile of the
> intended target. I once met a RAF WW2 navigator/bomb aimer who said some
> nights their designated target was the letter "R" - meaning where R was
> within the word BERLIN on their charts. He later flew with Mosquito
> pathfinders using Gee/Oboe navaids and H2S RADAR so although his bomb
> placement improved he seriously doubted the accuracy of main force that
> followed.
>
> piglet
The RAF quickly shifted to area bombing by night. Quote:

"In 1942 Bomber Command received a new aircraft � the Avro Lancaster � and
a new leader � Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris. Accepting that
precision bombing was proving impossible, the War Cabinet sanctioned 'area
bombing' � the targeting of whole cities to destroy both factories and
their workers. It was judged necessary to defeat an enemy that seemed on
the brink of victory. Harris believed it could win the war and gained much
public support when he sent 1,000 bombers against Cologne."

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/raf-bomber-command-during-the-second-world-
war

I forget who, but one Nazi said after such a raid words to the effect, "If
we get another raid like this, we will collapse." They received many more.

The bombings clearly did not weaken citizens morale. However, they did
disrupt the food, ammunition, and fuel supply. Nazi logistics and planning
were so poor that it didn't take much to make it worse.

Germany responded by distributing aircraft production to small isolated
shops. By the end of the war, Germany had many planes, but few pilots and
no fuel to fly them.

Germany had to pull back 88 mm anti-aircraft from the eastern front to
combat the bombers. This severely affected the defense against the
Russians. However, special tactics allowed the bombers to evade the AA fire
by changing altitude and/or course randomly. The shells rose about 1,000
feet per second. The planes flew at 30,000 feet, so it took the shells 30
seconds to get to their altitude. By the time they arrived, the planes were
not there.

It must be remembered that Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding was responsible
for the early warning system that saved England during the Battle of
Britain. He should not be confused with Harris.

Bombing accuracy improved during the war. RAF Mosquitoes were famous for
low-level daylight raids where they would hit specific buildings. By the
end of the war, B-29's could place their bombs within hundreds of feet of
their target. The first A-Bomb was against Hiroshima and was dead on.

The flash and heat from the bomb was seared into the structures. They could
triangulate these effects and show the bomb exploded at the exact altitude
and location they had planned. The gate posts of a clinic were directly
under the explosion and were driven into the ground by the force of the
explosion. A nearby concrete building had the roof tiles blown away, and
the metal framework was bent in s way that showed the direction of the
explosion.

I visited Hiroshima years after the war. They had left some of the
buildings in place as memorials. The grass of a nearby park had been
removed for some reason. As you walked on the rubble, you could identify
teeth and broken jawbones of the victims, and pieces of bones from the
skeletons.

There were a lot of them

--
MRM