Closing the Ring (73 page)

While the British were at last succeeding in wrecking the Ruhr munition centres, the American Fortresses were meeting with serious opposition from German day fighters, and General Eaker soon realised that if his plan was to succeed he must first defeat the German Air Force. In the greatly improved state of the U-boat war, a change in the priorities of targets was accepted by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. In a directive known as “Point-Blank,” issued on June 10, 1943, they amended the Casablanca decisions so as to give first emphasis to the attack on the German fighter forces and the German aircraft industry.

On July 24/25, the very heavy British attacks on Hamburg began. Hamburg was beyond the range of “Oboe,” and the fullest use was made of the blind-bombing device of H
₂
S, which was carried in the airplane and did not depend on signals from home. This instrument gave an outline of the main ground features on a screen in the aircraft which resembled a television screen of today. The picture was particularly good where the land was broken up by water, as it is in the dock area of Hamburg. Bomber Command had been gaining experience of H
₂
S since its first use in January, and for the assault on Hamburg an additional device called “Window,” which we had long held in reserve, was used for the first time. As is explained in an earlier volume, this simply consisted of strips of metallised paper dropped by the bombers. A cloud of such strips, tuned to the German wave-length and weighing only a few pounds, looked like an aircraft on the enemy’s radar screens, and thus made it very difficult for either their night fighters to be guided to our bombers or for the anti-aircraft guns and searchlights to be aimed at them.

The four attacks against Hamburg from July 24 to August 3 caused greater destruction than had ever been suffered by so large a city in so short a time. The second attack delivered such a concentration of incendiary bombs mixed with high-explosive that there arose a fire tornado which raged through the city with a terrifying howl and defied all human counter-measures. The air battle of Hamburg has been described by many Germans as “the great catastrophe.” Speer himself admitted after the war that he had calculated that if similar attacks had been delivered in quick succession against six other major German cities it would have led to a breakdown of war production. Germany was saved from this fate in 1943 partly because H
₂
S was found to be difficult to use, even for area bombing, if there were no prominent water features within the target, and partly because of the resolute defence put up by Germany’s ever-resourceful night fighters.

Our third great air onslaught of 1943 was upon Berlin. It lasted from November 1943 to March 1944. If this great industrial
centre could have been paralysed like Hamburg, German war production as well as morale might have been given a mortal blow.

Bomber Command pressed home its attacks with undaunted courage and determination in the face of fearful difficulties. The weather was appalling, and most of the bombing had to rely on the radar eye of H
₂
S. The night photographs taken by the bombers at the moment of bomb release showed nothing but clouds. The same disappointment befell the daylight flights over Berlin of the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. We knew from the admissions of Germans themselves that great destruction was being caused, but we could not judge the relative success of our sixteen major attacks by comparing the photographic evidence of each. We had to wait until March 1944 to obtain photographs clear enough for the damage to be assessed. It fell short of what had been achieved at Hamburg.

Meanwhile, the United States Eighth Air Force, in its assault on the enemy’s fighter forces and aircraft industry in accordance with the “Point-Blank” directive, was enduring increasing losses at the hands of the German day fighters, which met them with mounting strength and efficiency. The culmination was reached on October 14, 1943. In their attack on the ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt, which were vital to the German aircraft industry, the Americans had sixty of their large Fortress aircraft destroyed out of 291. It was thereafter accepted that unescorted daylight bombers could not gain air superiority over Germany, and their offensive was suspended until long-range fighters could be produced to cover them in sufficient strength.

Something very like a dispute arose upon whether the British Bomber Command should attack Schweinfurt by their own methods. In the end it was decided that the attack should be made by both air forces in daylight and in darkness. The American Eighth Air Force, aided at last by the long-range fighters for which they had waited a long time, attacked with 266 bombers by daylight on February 24, 1944, and on the same night Bomber Command sent 734 aircraft. Here was a really combined offensive directed towards the common aim.
Unfortunately, the discussion had lasted so long that this tremendous attack was robbed of much of its effectiveness. Warned by the American daylight attack four months earlier, Speer had dispersed the industry.

*  *  * *  *

Prolonged and obstinate technical argument on the policy of night or day bombing, and generous rivalry in trying out the opposing theories with the utmost sacrifice and heroism by both the British and American Air Forces, reached its climax after the last attack on Berlin. On March 30/31, 1944, out of 795 aircraft dispatched by British Bomber Command against Nuremberg, 94 did not return. This was our heaviest loss in one raid, and caused Bomber Command to re-examine its tactics before launching further deep-penetration attacks by night into Germany. This was proof of the power which the enemy’s night-fighter force, strengthened by the best crews from other vital fronts, had developed under our relentless offensive. But by forcing the enemy to concentrate his strength on defending Germany the Western Allies gained the complete air superiority which they needed for the approaching cross-Channel invasion.

*  *  * *  *

All this time the Americans were intent on bringing their Fortress bombers into action by day as soon as they could be protected by fighters of sufficiently long range to seek out and destroy the enemy fighters in the air or come down and attack them on their airfields. After long delay this vital need was met. First the Thunderbolt, then the Lightning, and finally the Mustang gave them day fighters which had auxiliary fuel tanks and a radius of action which was increased from 475 miles to 850. On February 23, 1944, there began a week of concentrated bomber attacks by day on the German aircraft industry. The American long-range fighters at last mastered the enemy’s and the day bombers delivered precision attacks without undue interference or loss.

This was a turning-point in the air war against Germany. From now onward the United States Eighth Air Force was able to bomb targets in Germany by day with high accuracy and ever-increasing freedom. Germany, through her loss of air superiority by day, exposed her vitals to our strategic offensive. The German night fighters, with the cream of their pilots, remained formidable till the end of the war; but this, by lowering the standard of the day fighters, aided the new developments in the American Air Force, and in 1944 daylight air superiority over Germany was gained. By April, new measures of deception and new tactics to confuse the enemy’s defences enabled the British to resume their full-scale night offensive against German cities. The United States Eighth Air Force, having got the measure of the enemy’s day fighters, was ready to complete this offensive “round the clock.” Such was the position at the advent of “Overlord.”

*  *  * *  *

The ever-growing preponderance of our air attack on Germany received an appreciable reinforcement from the new explosive power given to our bombs. This arose as an incident in our anxious discussions in 1943 about the threat of the rockets and the doodlebugs. Those experts who were taking the more gloomy view of our danger made a number of pessimistic assumptions in comparing the effect of our bombs in Germany with the expected effects of rockets in England. German houses, they said, were very much stronger than English houses, so that we might expect twice as many to be destroyed per ton of explosives in England as in Germany. In stating this case, they incidentally took for granted that the enemy bombs were nearly twice as powerful as the British, since the Germans mixed aluminum powder with the high-explosive. Lord Cherwell pointed out this statement to me, and I ordered a searching inquiry to be conducted under his guidance. The results astonished everyone concerned.

Prime Minister to Minister of Production
    12 Oct. 43

I recently invited Lord Cherwell to inquire into and report on
the relative efficiency of the high-explosives used by the German and British forces respectively. His preliminary report had shown the undoubted superiority of the German explosive charges.

The Chiefs of Staff strongly recommend that we should change over to aluminised explosives without waiting for the result of further trials. I agree. Pray let me have a report in the course of the next week of what this change will involve.

The question of how this state of affairs has been allowed to arise should be the subject of an inquiry held under the authority of the Minister of Defence. Pray propose three members, with reference. The whole matter is to be kept most secret.

  Action was taken accordingly. It appeared that in the early days, when aluminum was scarce, it had been decided to use all the aluminum powder which could be spared for making depth-charges, and that this custom had persisted, although aluminum had now become more plentiful. Orders were immediately given to improve our explosive—in the first place in our heavy bombs—by adding aluminum powder, and their efficiency during the whole latter half of the war was thus increased by about half as much again. I thought these revelations deserved the attention of my colleagues, and sent out the following in February 1944.

A
LUMINISED
E
XPLOSIVES

17 Feb. 44

At the end of September 1943, during discussions about the German long-range rocket, doubts were expressed about the efficiency of our high-explosives as compared with those of the Germans. The Paymaster-General immediately discussed the matter with the Chief of the Air Staff, and the latter proposed to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, who supported his proposals strongly, that urgent action should be taken to establish the true facts, and that if a substantial inferiority was revealed, the competent authorities should be called upon to give an explanation and a proposed remedy.

2. At the suggestion of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, the Paymaster-General undertook the inquiry suggested, and on October 6 submitted a report to the Chiefs of Staff Committee which clearly
established that our explosives were inferior to the Germans’ and that an improvement, estimated by various authorities as between 40 per cent and 100 per cent, could be made if aluminised explosives were used instead of the existing types. Lord Cherwell recommended that the most urgent possible preparations to change over should be made without waiting for the result of further trials. With this recommendation the Chiefs of Staff Committee and I agreed, and immediate action was taken to effect the change-over.

3. I also appointed a committee, consisting of Sir Walter Monckton (chairman), Sir Alan Barlow, and Sir Robert Robertson, “to consider the report on the efficiency of our blast bombs, to examine the course of our experimental and development work on this subject during the present war, and to report whether, and if so why, there has been any failure to prosecute research to a successful conclusion or to apply the results of that research in practice.”

Briefly, an unfortunate experiment in 1941 gave a misleading result, chiefly owing to the unsatisfactory methods of measuring blast pressures in use at that time. In addition, the impression that in any event no aluminum could be obtained discouraged those in charge from repeating the experiment until midsummer of 1943. It was only when the Paymaster-General’s attention was drawn to an alleged superiority of German explosives, as stated above, that the necessary impetus was given to turn the lessons of fresh experiments to account.

4. There is no doubt that the power of aluminised explosives is very much greater than that of the types which were being used earlier, and I have thought it right to bring to the notice of my colleagues the important service rendered by the Paymaster-General in calling attention to a most unsatisfactory state of affairs, which might have continued for some time, with serious detriment to our war effort, unless he had intervened.

This episode shows how useful it is in great organisations to have a roving eye.

*  *  * *  *

It is difficult to say to what extent German war economy and armament production had so far been damaged by the Anglo-American bomber offensive. Bomber Command’s three great area battles of 1943—the Ruhr, Hamburg, and Berlin —had created widespread havoc and caused consternation and alarm throughout Germany, and especially in the minds of the German leaders. But they were able to use factories and forced labour from the occupied countries, and under the brilliant control of Speer these were mobilised with extraordinary speed and efficiency. The morale of the people in the bombed cities, though severely shaken, was not allowed to degenerate into a nation-wide panic.

In the reports submitted to Hitler, which must of course be taken with reserve, it was claimed that German armament production was doubled in 1942. Remembering our own loss of output under much less severe bombing, this assertion is difficult to credit. The Germans admitted that production was almost stationary in 1943, and this is evidence of the increasing power of Bomber Command. In the spring of 1944, the Allied strategic bombers were required for “Overlord,” and the weight of attack on Germany itself was inevitably reduced. But by now we were the masters in the air. The bitterness of the struggle had thrown a greater strain on the Luftwaffe than it was able to bear. By being forced to concentrate on building fighters, it had lost all power of strategic counter-attack by bombing back at us. Unbalanced and exhausted, it was henceforth unable to defend either itself or Germany from our grievous blows. For our air superiority, which by the end of 1944 was to become air supremacy, full tribute must be paid to the United States Eighth Air Force, once it gained its long range fighters.