Inevitable: Why the Schweinfurt-Regensburg Raid Had to Happen
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The Schweinfurt (and Regensburg) raid was a debacle in many ways but it was also inevitable. Since the 1920s, the USAAC/AAF launched itself upon a trajectory that made a mission like this one a given. Let's talk about doctrine, assumptions, and path-dependency.
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- Sources -
Biddle, Tami Davis; Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing 1914-1945, Princeton University Press, Princeton: 2002.
Morris, Craig; The Origins of American Strategic Bombing Theory, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis: 2017.
O’Mara, Raymond; Rise of the War Machines: The Birth of Precision Bombing in World War II, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis: 2022.
USAAF, The Official Guide to the Army Air Forces, Bonanza Books, New York, 1988 (Reprint).
Vlaun, Brian; Selling Schweinfurt: Targeting, Assessment, and Marketing in the Air Campaign against Germany, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis: 2020.
Vlaun, Brian; Selling Schweinfurt: Targeting, Assessment, and Marketing in the Air Campaign against Germany, Maxwell AFB: 2017.
Wildenberg, Thomas; Billy Mitchell’s War with the Navy - The Interwar Rivalry Over Air Power, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis: 2013.
- Timecodes -
00:00 - Disclaimer
00:10 - Why Schweinfurt? Again.
01:13 - The Rise of Strategic Bombing
05:59 - Schweinfurt: The Natural Conclusion
09:06 - Recommendations
11:08 - Reactions to Schweinfurt
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Happy Thanksgiving y'all
Vielen dank! Greetings from Fort Myers, FL. Turkey in the oven.
ATROCITY PROPAGANDA - " Atrocity propaganda is how we won the war. And we're only really beginning with it now ! We will continue this atrocity propaganda, we will escalate it until nobody will accept even a good word from the Germans, until all the sympathy they may still have abroad will have been destroyed and they themselves will be so confused that they will no longer know what they are doing. Once that has been achieved, once they begin to run down their own country and their own people, not reluctantly but with eagerness to please the victors, only then will our victory be complete. IT WILL NEVER BE FINAL. Re-education needs careful tending, like an English lawn. Even one moment of negligence, and the weeds crop up again - those indestructible weeds of historical TRUTH. " - SeftonDalmer (1904-1979), former British Chief of ' Black Propaganda ': Said after the German surrender in 1945 in a conversation with the German Professor of lnternation Law Dr.FriedrichGrimm.
...." Thanks to the terrible power of our International Banks, we have forced the Christians into wars without number. Wars have a special value forJews, since Christians massacre each other and make more room for usJews. Wars are theJews' Harvest, The Jewbanks grow fat on Christian wars. Over 100-million Christians have been swept off the face of the earth by wars, and the end is not yet." - rabbiReichorn, speaking at funeral of Grand rabbiSimeon Ben-Judah, 1869.
@@frogsgottalent1106 The war ended in 1945, it is now 2022, what are you babbling about?
Happy Thanksgiving to you too! Gobble Gobble Gobble!
My Father was a B-24 pilot with the 8th and flew the August and October missions. His plane was so damaged (jammed bomb bay doors, only one landing wheel, 3 engines, tail nearly shot off) during the second raid, they barely made it back. He lost 3 of his crew. I got this from his diary as he would never talk about it. He was 22.
Those boys where hero’s We were saved and liberated by them! Leendert Herman Wassenaar79 Holland
Im glad he made it back!
Yeah and?
Salute from a grateful Dutch man here 🇳🇱
War does not deliver happy stories. And these men were educated under the idea that big boys do not cry. Telling these stories would make them cry. It is good he had a dairy. There he could vent his feelings to keep his sanity so I feel he took a very wholesome approach to deal with these feelings. Only those who were there know the deep sadness that lies in the battlefield.
I met a B-17 top gunner at Oshkosh, I think 1997, who said his first mission was the Schweinfurt raid. I said at least he got the bad one out of the way! He said, nope, they had a Berlin mission which was worse. They lost two engines, one of which could not be feathered and had pegged the tachometer until brought under control, he could see the main wing spar hopping up and down, they were all convinced the wings would snap. No hydraulics, he had to crank the bomb bay doors shut (143 times?) and get back to his top turret, they were down to 15,000 feet by the time they got to the English Channel, some ship was firing at them and the belly turret gunner would not fire back, said he had to conserve ammo, so the pilot banked the plane so he in the top turret and a waist gunner could shoot back, and they did land alright. Some other plane, probably a different mission, buzzed the tower three times because it was their last mission and they were going home, and when it landed, the outer halves of the wings fell down, the spars and top skin had been shot through and it was only the bottom skin holding them on, the pilot was white as a ghost when they got out, collapsed on the ground, realizing how close to death they had been for no reason.
Wow, lucky man. Yes, the missions to Berlin - or rather the whole offensive against Berlin - was a costly affair. The reasoning for it was similar to Schweinfurt, though it was recognized that it needed a continuous stream of attacks rather than single missions. It happened soon after Schweinfurt.
@@MilitaryAviationHistory I've read that Berlin was immune to firebombing because it had too many wide streets and large open areas, and wasn't really an industrial city like Hamburg or Tokyo. But that doesn't make it less of a political target. War sure sucks.
That sounds like it would make a great episode on Mark Felton's war stories! Impressive.
That's a very intriguing story. It's always enlightening to hear these personal stories.
@@neurofiedyamato8763 It was the best thing about going to Oshkosh. Found an F4U Corsair which had apparently just landed. The pilot looked like one of those 40 year old jerks you'd hate to work for, condescending answers to every question ... except for one old geezer. When the old geezer left, I caught up with him, asked him if he'd been a Corsair pilot. Yes, around Guadalcanal, and he and a buddy wanted to get up where the action was, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Their 35 missions were up, they were going back to the States to be instructors, they got drunk one night, stole a jeep, woke up some General in the middle of the night, harangued him about staying in combat ... and ended up as instructors in the States :) That was, I think, 1997, and the veterans were absolutely the best thing about it. They wanted to talk, you couldn't shut them up, and you didn't want to shut them up. I've forgotten most of their stories, but get reminded of them from time to time.
The very well camouflaged Schweinfurt ball bearing factory was mapped by a Norwegian student, Sverre Berg, on his spare time while he was studying at Dresden Technical School in 1940 after Norway was occupied by Germany. On a visit home in Norway he passed this information to the resistance movement in Oslo who promtly sent the information to London. Bergh was then recruited as a spy for the allies and returned to Dresden. Berg later mappet the Peenemunde rocket facility as a tourist on a bicycle. Bergh cooperated with the german spy Paul Rosbaud and Bergh was probably the first spy who sent technical information about the V1 and V2 to the allies. Reading Bergh's memoars, unfortunatly only printed in Norwegian, is like reading a Jamed Bond novel. Here's a google translate from Wikipedia in Norwegian: "In early February 1945, Bergh was on his way to Berlin, but on 7 February he was stuck in Copenhagen because the railway line to Berlin was closed. In order to make it to an important meeting with Rosbaud in Berlin on 9 February, he bluffed the Luftwaffe that he was the courier for a package of important medical material from the Serum Institute in Copenhagen to Berlin. The package consisted of regular salt that was well wrapped and stamped. This is how he arrived with the daily courier plane to Tempelhof. Rosbaud reported that there was no progress in the German nuclear program. At the police station in Dresden, Bergh received a tip that the Gestapo was interested in his papers. On Tuesday 13 February, he had invited his friend Gaby to a good restaurant. At half-past ten the air-raid alarm went off, but very few people cared about the air-raid alarm because Dresden had no military-strategic significance. During his four years in the city, Bergh had not been able to report on current bomb targets. Bergh and Gaby went to the basement of an apartment building, but Bergh did not dare to use the intended shelter, which he believed would not withstand the weight of a collapsed apartment building. Instead, they sought refuge in a corridor with a vaulted brick ceiling. Hardly anyone else survived in the tenement. Dresden burned intensely after the bombing and the heat created such a strong draft that people and cars were dragged into the flames. Most died from lack of oxygen, but Bergh also saw people killed by the air pressure from air mines (blockbusters) - they were often naked because the air pressure had torn off their clothes. Bergh saw people reduced to coal and ash by the intense heat. After the bombing, Bergh and Gaby walked many hours to get away. The stream of fleeing residents Bergh was among was attacked on 14 February by Allied planes with machine guns. Bergh took cover in the road ditch and his shoes were soaked by all the blood that flowed into the ditch. Bergh believed that the bombing of Dresden is a disgrace. In March 1945, he obtained documents showing that he worked for the Red Cross, which ran evacuations with the White Buses. Bergh also received other documents which showed that he worked for the Swedish authorities, and that he was allowed to have his own car and buy petrol. In this way he was able to travel around Schleswig-Holstein and around Hamburg and report on German force movements. After the last visit to Rosbaud in Berlin on 20 April, he made his way north as far as possible from Soviet forces advancing from the east. Part of the drive from Berlin to Hamburg was in no man's land where German and Soviet forces fired at each other over him. In Hamburg he bought a small car and drove north until he supported British forces, which he joined. Together they drove to Flensburg and were there when the last remnants of German central administration headed by Dönitz moved there after Berlin fell on 2 May. At this time there were both German and British military in Flensburg. The German forces in Denmark capitulated on 4 May and Bergh was the first of the Allies to drive across the border to a free Denmark. In Denmark he got Danish plates on his car and got British documents.[4] From Copenhagen he was sent to London and debriefed with Eric Welsh from the British side and Alfred Roscher Lund from the Norwegian side. According to Rosher Lund, Bergh was the first to report on the development of rocket weapons in Peenemünde. In London, Bergh wrote a report on his four years as an XU agent in Germany, the report was on one typed sheet". Sverre Bergh became a US citizen after WW2 and died on April 30th 2006 in Conneticut. He is probably one of the greatest heroes of WW2 that is completely unknown. He was an operational spy in Germany for four years.
Fantastic story, thanks!
Sigma Male… Where’s his statue?
This would make a great movie!
Holy, that's a heck of a story. The descriptions of Dresden are especially vivid. :(
What mattered, was that he was a successful operative. People like him did what they did with no thought of any after war celebrity. They were not afforded that luxury. In fact after the war finished they wanted to resume their lives as seamlessly as possible, like any other combat veteran or civilian casualty. They all wanted to distance themselves from the broken record in their memories that was hard to forget. My father was one such combat veteran from The Royal Australian Navy. My father had a look on his face sometimes of dissociation. I met a guy who had serve with the Waffen SS. He had the same look on his face as my father did. Their experiences turned them both into fatigued, old men, before their time. It robbed them of innocence and youth. Each individual had to bear the weight of their responsibilities, but some were never relieved of it. We celebrate our Norwegian friend, the only way we know how. In our hearts.
My father-in-law was on the Black Thursday raid on Schweinfurt. Years after the war, American veterans of the 2nd raid on Schweinfurt formed a group to gather annually and meet to commemorate the raid and their lost compatriots. In the early 2000s, the German veterans of that battle invited the Americas to Schweinfurt. It was amazing the way former adversaries could share a moment together of camaraderie over their common experience. He's gone now, as are almost all of the survivors of the raid. But for a brief time, they showed us how former enemies could move past the hurts of the past.
I grew up near Schweinfurt, we still have a monument near one of the airraid bunkers, that symbolizes how so big enemys became friends... Never met those veterans there, though. My Great Uncle was a Flak-Helfer (Anti-Air-Gun Assistant), though he barley survived a hit by incendary ammo on there position...
Chris . . . to hear you speak on advertisers. I agree wholeheartedly. Being backed by official organs maintaining the highest in historical analyses is a military historian's comfort zone. It's a real compliment. Good work. I think the Navy made a good choice.
The US Naval Institute is not part of the Navy, so the Navy did not make a "good choice". They are no doubt a very reputable organization but per Wikipedia: "The organization has no official or funding ties to the United States Naval Academy or the U.S. Navy, though it is based on the grounds of the Naval Academy through permission granted by a 1936 Act of Congress."
Wow! This video is one of the best ever on the topic. I’m a retired 2nd generation USAF pilot. My father flew the B-17 with the 8th Air Force. He was shot down over Berlin on his 2nd mission. I wrote a paper while at the USAF War College that basically paraphrased your video. The paper struck some nerves with the faculty and I initially received a B- on the paper. My down grade was due to me quoting Gen. Lew Lyle as saying that after Gen. Doolittle took over the Mighty 8th in 1944, the bombers were to be used as bait, so our fighters could knock out Luftwaffe fighter command before D-Day. You can imagine how this initially went over. I had to provide additional reference sources which included a video recording of Gen. Lyle actually saying that the bombers were to be used as bait for Luftwaffe fighters. This was before the internet, and required a hell of a lot of extra time. After all that, I received an A-, reluctantly. There was a hell of a lot of ineptitude running the USAAF in those days, and yet there are buildings at the US Air Force Academy named after some of those guys. Just sayin’.
Great [compelling] story!👍🏼 Although [naturally] many within the circle now know of the Doolittle plan, what available sources were you able to muster (back then) towards your thesis (regarding the baited bomber plan)? Considering the limited amount of available [reputable] material [then], I'm sure uncovering such findings must've taken quite the toll towards your other ongoing studies. Thanks in advance for your efforts, and I'm sure you must've shed new light over the subject upon your superiors.
@@SharkHustler Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. You bet I shed new light upon the War College faculty. They didn’t like it one bit. Henceforth they referred to me as “the Bolshevik”. I laid low off the horizon for the rest of my time there at Maxwell, and luckily no other controversial issue regards Air Force doctrine or history came up. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there and get back into a cockpit.
Billy Mitchell dare to say in 1924 that planes could sink the almighty battleships. So the cultists of the battleship cult discharged him in 1926 with dishonor. In 1936 he died and in 1941 the prophecy became real.
You're getting better and better! That little trick at the beginning where you answer your video-screen-self is very effective. As was the same scenario in the sponsorship portion. Really well done!
Thanks, Bryce!
My grandmother was adjutant to an anti-aircraft officer in Schweinfurt and there is a museum here where you can see all the anti-aircraft batteries that were in and around Schweinfurt
Im from the area of Schweinfurt. Very interessting video! I dont know exactly if its true but there were a anti air battery south of Schweinfurt in the fields to protect the ball bearing industry. Additionally to this the Germans tried to block the sight of the bombers with heavy smoke over Schweinfurt and ignited a lot of candles in the open field to try to confuse the allied bombers. Unluckily this worked good for some bombers, some missed the field too and heavily bombed nearby villages. 97% of the civilian buildings in Grafenrheinfeld were destroyed. The village is only around 5 km south from Schweinfurt but the Flak batteries and the candle field were in between.
Thanks for another great video. As soon as you said this went back to questions of doctrine dating back to the 20s, six words came to mind, "The bomber will always get through."
In addition, the fact that the target was attacked predictably, and used the same approaches. The length of the flight was extreme, and the bomber's exposure to AA and fighter attacks, ensured a maximum advantage to the enemy, without maximising the effect on the enemy. In short, doctrine had overcome good sense.
In addition, there had been little effort put into increasing the escort range of fighters to provide more protection. It turned out that P47's could have flown most if not all of the way on these missions had they been provided with the drop tanks that were available later in the war. In an extensive series about the P47, Greg's Airplanes and Automobile channel explained that the planes were capable of being fitted with the drop tanks by this time but manufacture of the drop tanks had not been a high priority.
So great to see you new partnership! Been abreast of USNI since 1975. Great video
cool to see this video! I worked for schaeffler in Schweinfurt a couple of years ago, the company that made/makes the ball bearings :)
Very informative video, which is not a surprise with this channel. It helps shed some light on the thinking behind the raid and also a good lesson in the problems with group think.
Group think? It's more "agree or you're going to be stationed in Greenland" think.
Thanks Chris. A very valuable video. Keep it up!
Excellent systems/developmental/historical analysis. Love it
SERVUS. A mega informative video very well done. I live next to Schweinfurt and have heard many stories about the war. And you really told me a lot of new details. Thanks for that. Schöne Grüße aus (greatings from) Schweinfurt.
Always a great video and presentation.
Thank you very much for putting this together. We were pretty serious opponents back then. Now I've got a friend in Germany, and he's a member of my MC club, "The Hog Ridin' Fools. Keep up your good work.
Compelling information and advertising I actually like! Great job!
Two additional books on the subject are Double Strike-The Epic raids on Regensburg and Schweinfurt by Edward Jablonski. And Masters of the Air by Donald Millar. Jablonski also wrote Flying Fortress -The story of the B-17. Masters of the Air covers the Schweinfurt/Regensburg missions as well as the doctrine of daylight precision bombing. All thee are worth reading.
I hadn't realized what a compelling speaker you are until halfway through mini-you's disruptive comments when they finally disrupted my concentration! You should conduct an experiment with the USNI -- main-you say 20% discount with code MAH20 and mini-you hold up a sign saying 25% discount with MAH25. Then reverse them for the next video.
oh you evil, I like it
@@MilitaryAviationHistory I actually placed an order at the USNI a few days ago, and tried using the promo code from a previous video, without success. Does the code work right now, or is it overridden by the 50% off promotion the USNI has till the end of the year on most books ?
Always an outstanding video and presentation.
Very interesting Video. It is always fascinating for me to learn about the deeper how and why something happend. Once again. Doctrin matters. And good, that you are getting better at plugging yourself on all channels :)
Great vid! I have no problem sitting thru a Naval Institute commercial, they are a great organization.
Yes they are!
Another informative video Chris.
I'll never understand why it seems sometimes that the military forgets that no matter what weapon or tactic you come up with your enemy will develop a counter to that weapon or tactic and giving enough time and resources overcome your advantage.
There was lots of over-optimism in "the bomber will always get through" from back when it was assumed strategic bombing would be dropping poison gas on cities, not conventional bombs. When that was the risk/reward calculation, not much thought was put into sustained bombing.
@@Lawofimprobability Strictly speaking, the bomber will always get through was true. The problem was the amount lost in getting through was unsustainable.
@@primmakinsofis614 Well kind of. The doctrine does not say there will be very little losses. The idea was that the losses are worth it because it would insta-stop the war. But... i would say.. that was never to happen. Even if the air-force could eradicate all bearings in the whole of Germany, the war would still go on. Even at that. If allied forces would keep successfully pound the bearing factory in a theoretical scenario where Germany wouldn´t have the possibility to build it up. They would eventually just move the production to places where it couldn´t be bombed. Then they had to go for a new highly strategical product, and it would basically be vacamole, with very high losses. The losses would be worth it.. only if it worked.
@@primmakinsofis614 "the bomber will always get through" It's also a question of - to what end? The idea was that bombers could attack far behind the lines, where there were soft targets and not get bogged down in trench warfare. The problem was that conceptually no one thought about counter-measures and difficulties, such as proximity fuses and bombing through cloud. Then you have bomb shelters and dispersed factories. The British even built an entire secret Lancaster factory with sloped sides (no shadows) with grass on the roof. They regularly moved the fake cows around to fool photo recon. Then there's the effectiveness of actually hitting the target, now that you've found the target, navigated to the right place and avoiding the defences. tl;dr - bombing was a new concept, so they massively overestimated the potential.
Every military understand this, and that is why continuous improvements and new technologies are developed.
I think this may be the ONLY sponsor advert that I rewound to watch again! Danke!
I'm a bit late watching this but I commend you for producing an excellent video on this subject.
Excellent and huge topic, thanks very much for the video, Chris. Would love to see a more expansive treatment, especially on the different approaches to strategic bombing between RAF, USAAF and the Luftwaffe, (that, as you correctly describe, are directly linked to doctrine and mentalities and perceptions decades back, for all three countries), and the differences between expectations, perceptions and realities on the ground - including morale of population affected by the cities' bombing (German and British), real effects on production capabilities and effects on the governments and military leaders perceptions and actions. The attitudes of both British & Americans towards long-range fighters and how these adversely affected the effectiveness of the bombing campaigns is a huge topic by itself too (directly linked to the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission disaster - and to many other missions too). There is so much to learn from that period. In addition to the excellent books you recommend, I would also add these two: - Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War Two, by James Holland and - The Bomber Mafia, by Malcolm Gladwell. Very different between them, they include interesting background info and strategic, operational, tactical, technological and political analysis on these topics, plus personal stories that make for a great read.
excellent well researched content well done
I love the last 30 sec well done Chris! I gotta a book at a great price thx
I believe it was called Douhet's theory of strategic bombing, from author name.
I absolutely love your videos!! Idc how many videos are out there about the Schweinfurt and Regensburg Raids I always try to watch yours! You do an excellent job of explaining everything in great detail!! My Grandpa fought in the European Theater during WW2 but he was in the US Army and was in General Patton's 3rd Army.. I have always been fascinated with the B-17's.. always thought that they were the best and most beautiful Heavy Bomber...I also love the British Lancaster's...❤❤ Both Heavy Bombers were detrimental to winning the Air War during WW2 and of course to bring Germany to its knees!!! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinions about this Raid....😎
My mother thought it was quite strange that I love to watch your videos even on Thanksgiving but I must say Bismark brand new vid with turkey and gravy is a great combo 👌
Schweinfurt was a meaningful target, which is why they took the risk to strike it, instead of taking lower losses on less meaningful targets, because they were to make a difference. Yes, it was too costly becuse the battle plan went awry, but not every battle is won. You take losses even when you win a battle, and when you become averse to losses you sue for peace. The USAAF was at war, and not about to give up at the first setback. It actually took the second costly attack on this target to cause them to take a pause in deep operations and wait for the fighters that were in the pipeline. Our thinking in 2022 seems to be conditioned by the almost antiseptic utility of allied airpower in the last few decades, and we forget that it was a bloody and uncertain business back then, just like most other ways of making war.
True, but there were advocates even in '43 that better target sets were transportation and oil. They were absolutely correct-even with the very late start on those target sets, the effects on the German ability to move and sustain their forces were crippled...
@@grumblesa10 If only foresight back then was as good as 20/02 hindsight is today.
One of the (perhaps unstated) objectives of the air campaign was to destroy the Luftwaffe - and in this the air campaign was quite successful, especially when the escorts were able to accompany the bombers all the way to Germany opening the door to the D Day landings which were mainly unopposed by the Luftwaffe
This is excellent. It is not easy to get beyond the details such as range, armament, bomb load, airspeed, altitude, weather, lack of sufficient coordination, lack of flexibility in executing plans, etc., and get to the fundamental question: Could the problem be in the doctrine? Well-done!
Very well done. The emphasis that you place on the "bomber will always get through" hypothesis, was established doctrinal dogma, in both Britain & the USA. This would latter give credence to statistical analysis, which established it as fact. (without consideration of the loss of aircrew.)
Excellent video! 👍
What would be interesting is a look at how ballbearing production slow down forced changes on design of components of German AFV , I have seen teardowns of later model tanks showing fewer ball-bearings used but tanks still worked as designed.
There's the tank museum KZhead. The guy explains on some tanks they'd remove functionality such as a commander perch rotation as they had no bearings for tanks
Albert Speer's autobiography talks about the ball-bearing production quite a bit. It's years since I read it, but IIRC the allied bombing did wear down German industry a great deal.
Aren't you making an assumption that the Schweinfurt raids actually slowed down ballbearing production? Maybe they did, but maybe they didn't.
Glad you partnered with the Naval Institute Press.
Speaking of Ball Bearings ; a Mentor was a B-24 Crew Member during the War. He often spoke of a "mistaken" attack on a Swiss Ball Bearing Factory. 😉
The real suppliers were in Sweden . . .
@@EllieMaes-Grandad SKS, I think. They purported to 'stay neutral' during the war, but still supplied Germany with bearings and even detained some of our flyers who were shot down.
@@EllieMaes-GrandadSweden's supply of ball bearings to Germany was less important for the germans than Sweden's export of ball bearings to Britain were to the british. The german industry was far more self reliant on ball bearings, while Britain not only produced far fewer ball bearings than they needed, but also of poorer quality, with up to 50 % of the production being unfit for use. So be glad that Sweden exported ball bearings, or Britain would have found herself in more trouble than she did.
@@mrc4912Sweden did stay neutral during the war, with one exception, the Winter War. Sweden declared itself a "non-fighting part" in the war and thus could help Finland immensely, not only with volunteers and materiel (which were greater than all allied help combined), but also with more funds than the entire finnish defense budget. It should also be added that swedish trade with both the allied and axis during the war were agreed upon between Britain, Germany and Sweden, even though Sweden tended to sell ball bearings at a lower price and at greater quantities to Britain, than agreeed upon. Also, the Swedish Ball-Bearing Factory is abbreviated SKF (Svenska KullagerFabriken) and Sweden would detain soldiers and escaped POWs of all nations, though did during the german invasion of Norway smuggle a norwegian infantry division (that had been surrounded with their backs to the swedish border) through Sweden under the guise of "lumberjacks" and into norwegian controlled parts of Norway.
I appreciate your point, but a short-term production loss as inflicted was not a serious problem for the Reich. As with the Swiss, the Swedes did well out of the conflict. @@lavrentivs9891
Excellent piece! My mother’s nephew was lost piloting a B24 over Germany in 1943 : possibly in these raids. I’ve tracked down his base in England & his plane, but I’m so far failing to find details. His base has a museum, but his record there is thin - not even a photo. I hope to add to their collection. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!
The R.A.F. has a Historic Branch that deals with enquiries, a Casualty Records section, and public government archives have squadron operation record logs. So I would imagine there must be similar over there but with presumably different names. Even an internet search on crew names could help - I managed to find the family of the sole survivor of my uncle's Lancaster that way.
My grandfather's family came from Schweinfurt. The raid was the one topic that he would never discuss, despite my attempts (as a teen) to glean info from him about it.
I'm from SW, and we aren't taught about it. It's as if it never happened, and we also don't have public maps for the tunnels under the city. The three big industry companies ( ZF, Kugelfischer aka FAG aka Schaeffler, SKF are under tunneled and from some with knowledge about it, connected via tunnels. Even as a normal employee it's treated as a sacrilege to enter these tunnels and they're heavily guarded
Und dann gibt es noch den schuttberg wo sich manche Fragen warum der so heißt
My 1480 relative was the Mayor of Swineford. My heritage of the Hiester family brought me here. Interesting
@@duhrensohn2565 Sind das nicht sogar zwei oder drei Schuttberge? In jedem Park einen ? Ich wohn schon seit 15 Jahren nicht mehr da :D
@@glurak888 But there is a public museum that is quite educating about the entire WW2 Period of Schweinfurt.
Thank you fir the wonderful video. Greg’s p47 video about the purposeful blocking of external fuel tanks for fighters makes the lose lost from the bomber mafia even more angering
_Greg’s p47 video about the purposeful blocking of external fuel tanks for fighters makes the lose lost from the bomber mafia even more angering_ The problem is his claim is wrong. There was no such blocking. Things certainly weren't developed as quickly as they might have been for various reasons, but they were not officially blocked. The P-47 could go a long way, but in order for it to do so you had to hang a lot of external fuel on it, far more than was needed by the P-51. If you look at the cruise charts in the Pilot Flight Operating Instruction manuals, the P-51 attained a much higher air miles per gallon than the P-47.
@Primmakin Sofis ... why is Greg's Airplane claim wrong ... he stated the P47 was designed to carry drop tanks .. the drop tanks were available... but the army air force chose not to use them and chose not to escort the bombers .. By doctrine.. they chose not to escort
@@primmakinsofis614 Interesting! ... I've often questioned this (drop-tank) supposition for many years myself. If I may inquire, from what available source[s] did you happen-upon your findings? Thanks in advance for your efforts.
My Grandfather flew one of the bombers in this mission. He went on to retire as Lt. Colonel.
Lucky Grandad!
With all that said, now I have a voice with an American aviator accent in the back of my head repeatedly saying something like "Kentai Kessen!" So each military has its own version of "Let's just do this, one final hard push and we win..."
Sehr guter Content Chris, keep it up 😄
Thank you
Some lessons, like trying to headbutt a brick wall or sending bombers on unescorted missions can be learned only thru pain.
Your 20/20 hindsight is breathtaking.
@@Caseytify And your 20/20 hindsight about 20/20 hindsight etc...
Well, no. Intelligent people can learn through the experiences f others. It was clear before the first us raid that losses would be devastating.
Greetings from Regensburg! There was a very interesting strike coming this way together with the August Schweinfurt raid. Would be glad to hear about the B17s leaving from England, bombing Regensburg and landing in North Africa one day, on your well researched channel!
Solid content
Chris, no one seems to have asked this: What, in your opinion, explains why the U.S. Army Air Corps commanders seem to have discounted the results of the Battle of Britain when they ordered heavy daylight bombing by unescorted bombers in southern and eastern Germany? Yes, hindsight is always 20-20, and I've read that the Americans thought that the combined defensive firepower on the B-17s, combined with armor and self-sealing gas tanks, would be enough to beat back the Luftwaffe. On the other hand, the Germans flew their bombers only about an hour over enemy territory during daylight, they had fighter escort, and Fighter Command was only shooting .303 MGs at them in 1940. They also only flew daylight raids over England for about a month; and nevertheless, Fliegerkorps 2 was mauled. Fliegerkorps 5 quit trying to attack Britain after just one attempt. Based on that recent history, wouldn't a more prudent U.S. Army Air Corps commander have tried shorter-range raids just outside fighter cover before sending their whole force so deep inside Germany? What if they'd lost the entire 8th Air Force on one raid? I'd love to hear your opinion.
seems interesting im going to give it a watch
Very good video. I think the other key part of US thinking (perhaps driven by the amount of money sunk into it) is the Norden bombsight and its purported ability to hit a pickle barrel. Add that to the "bomber always gets through" and you can see why the pre-war thinking results in schweinfurt. More interesting is the learning phase afterwards which to me seems pretty effective.
I live in S.E. Arizona, and met a man who flew in this dissaster. I asked him, if when the flight leader said over the radio, "...You are on your own!!" to the flight, if that was a terrible thing to say. He told me that 'Cane' was calked 'Killer Cane", not because he was a warrior,but because of his lack of leadership got so many killed. He said right after going home,his plane and crew was lost when a 109 flew into the cockpit.
Schweinfurt is 21 km away from my place. My Grandmother (97) told me, she saw the flames of the burning city on the horizon... it must have been hell... just because of ball bearings... also a sad chapter of the war, was the bombardment of Würzburg.
Ouch 130 bombers in 2 days ? I didn't know it was that many I thought it was "only" 60 or so which while bad enough 130 planes is 1300 men lost either dead or captured. though I assume many lost planes were write-offs but I also imagine many men were wounded or killed on planes that came back to base.
Not consecutive days, though. The first raid was in August, the second in October. The single most costly day in numerical terms was the 6 March 1944 raid on Berlin on which 69 bombers were lost to enemy action, with another 3 written off after returning and 1 which crashed on take off. In percentage terms, the losses on the two Schweinfurt raids were among the worst of the entire daylight bombing campaign.
@@primmakinsofis614 yes, the Berlin raid had far more bombers.
I wish you would do a video regarding "Big Week" or *"Operation Argument"* where the RAF & USAF used to use bombers as bait for for the Luftwaffe fighters. There arent enough videos out there that really dig into the meat and potatoes of what went on and the sacrifices of all the bombers and their crews made. It was a silly idea and both the RAF and USAF suffered pretty heavy losses... Casualties... RAF: 131 bombers USAAF: 226 heavy bombers, 28 fighters Over 2,000 aircrew killed or captured Luftwaffe casulties: 262 fighters, 250 aircrew killed or injured, including nearly 100 pilots KIA --- I heard about "Big Week" from a commenter on another video talking about the allies using bombers to bait out the last of the Luftwaffe fighters towards the end of the war so that P-51s could reduce their numbers. I honestly thought it was a one off operation but upon googling it, It seems that it was something that was done throughout the war, not just at the end of it. The lives of the bomber crews and equipment that were sacrificed wasnt worth it at all.
Interesting analysis of a form of self-reinforcing cognitive bias that permeated air offense strategy. Glad I watched this. It seems possible that frustration with strategic target bombing ultimately gave rise to the likes of the incendiary attacks on urban targets like Dresden and Tokyo.
There is an excellent audio book on the air corps internal debate on precision vs. area bombing, from the 1920s through the later stages of WW2. It’s by Malcolm Gladwell and is titled The Bomber Mafia.
I paused the video around 14 seconds to focus my attention on unwrapping a candy bar and noticed the still image has both Chrises make *exceptionally* memeable faces. 10/10 would pause again.
When I was going through Air Command and Staff College over 20 years ago, the fallacy of daylight strategic bombing was a key learning point. Don't be so in love with your solution you can't see its fatal flaws. How many bloody noses did the USAAF get before they finally recognized fighter escort was essential, and the flying castle idea was getting men killed in droves?
The flaw in the bomber theory was shared by many nations. The idea, the bomber will always get through, was the flaw. The absurd thing was after WWII was the massive investment in the B36. An obsolete aircraft before it went into production.
Several of your points I would agree with; several I would dispute. a) It's true that pre-war there was a doctrine of "the bomber will always get through". And, really, despite the losses, they nearly always did. This is not just strategic bombing, it's also the use of air power against tactical targets (such against ships in the Pacific). No matter how good the fighter cover, no matter how intimidating the AA batteries, the bombers nearly 'always got through'. b) It's also true that pre-war strategic theory focused on taking out key industries an envisioned strategic bombing to provide a war-winning "knockout blow". That never happened. Instead, strategic bombing and the air war in general proved always a war of attrition. Destroy more of them (at least in relative terms) of military hardware and productive capacity and infrastructure than they do of you. c) that being said, the strategic bombing campaign, particularly by the USAAF during daylight, had great effect on the war by winning this attrition battle. It forced the Luftwaffe up to fight, and by doing so destroyed it. Even during the unescorted bombing campaign of July-October 1943 the Luftwaffe defenses were losing 40-50 % of their single-engine fighter inventory and 15 % of their pilots a month. The Schweinfurt missions were as bloody in a relative sense at least for the Germans as they were for the USAAF. The appearance of fighter-escorts which could escort the bombers to all targets in German turned a bad situation for the Luftwaffle into a catastrophic one. d) As for the USAAF losses in the summer-fall of 1943, I think the failure was not theory per se. Ira Eaker, the 8th USAAF commander, had commanded fighters and knew the value of escorts. And early on in the strategic bombing campaign, the B-17s did a decent job protecting themselves (a 2 % loss rate, versus the 4 % of British night bombing at the time). But Winston Churchill and the British put pressure on Washington to ramp up the bombing campaign as quickly as possible, and there was a real danger that the USAAF would be redirected to abandon daylight bombing and forced to join the RAF in night bombing. So Eaker had no choice but to commit his rather meager forces to bombing Germany proper as quickly as possible. The very reason that the Germans were able to go from shooting down just 2 % of B-17s early during the campaign to an average of 9.3 % in the worst part of the campaign (July-October 1943) was due to Eaker's being forced to commit his meager forces in rather modest raids, not enough to do the Germans any real damage, but enough to give Luftwaffe fighter pilots a tutorial on 'how to best attack American bomber formations". By the time of the deep unescorted raids, the Germans had learned to up-arm their fighters (with more 20 and even 30 mm cannon), use twin-engined "bomber destroyer" aircraft (Me-110, Me-410s, Ju-88s, etc) equipped with both cannons and air-to-air rockets. They had also learned the best attack angles and how to split up the bombers' defensive fire. That is why the losses on these deep raids were so heavy. So my answer is "who is to blame?" is Winston Churchill and the RAF. If the bombers would have been restricted to areas covered by fighters in 1942 and early 1943, to give their crews training opportunities, and time to get at least some fighter escort (sufficient numbers of P-38s at least could have been available in mid-1943), then it might have been possible to consistently hit the Germans in late 1943 with raids of 500, 600, 700, or more bombers, enough to do real damage, against a Luftwaffe that had not yet learned how to best fight such bomber formations. e) 140 bombers? The USAAF lost 60 in Regensburg-Schweinfurt and 60 at Second Schweinfurt (65 if you include 4 crash-landings and 1 ditching in the Channel). 17 B-17s were scrapped after Second Schweinfurt, and no one seems to know how many were unfixable after Schweinfurt-Regensburg. German losses were probably on the 80-100 range for both battles, destroyed and/or damaged beyond repair (no, I don't believe "25" or "27" given the fact that German numbers on just about everything don't add up, and this wouldn't be the only time and war theater where they underreported their true losses).
I love your channel
If you haven’t already check out Greg’s Airplanes and Automobiles channel and his series on the P47, especially the “Range Deceit” episode where he discusses Schweinfurt in the context of P47 escort ability. A great series and channel 👍
My take on Greg’s video is that he was certainly correct that long range escorts could have been available sooner, and that bombing could have been more effective. However, I believe that he exaggerated the causes, calling that failure treasonous, if I recall correctly. It was a costly error resulting from faulty doctrine; Arnold, et al., sincerely believed that precision bombing was a key to victory, that the bomber would always get through, regardless. They were wrong, but that tragic mistake does not constitute treason.
@@gizmophoto3577 Greg’s video is missing a ton of historical context. The USAAF had been working on extending the range of its fighters since 1942. Republic, Lockheed and North American were all working on the problem. In fact one of the first P-51B’s had flown a simulated mission to Berlin, flying from Muroc Field in California to Albuquerque,NM and back with a prototype fuselage tank and pressurized 75 gallon wing tanks in July 1943 before the first Schweinfurt mission was even flown. USAAF leadership knew that solutions to the long range escort problem were already in the pipeline. But having the 8th AF sitting around in the UK doing nothing but short range missions to France while waiting for these fighters wasn’t seen to be acceptable, particularly when Bomber Command had been agitating to have the US bomber repurposed to their night campaign. As it was, the first long-ish range escorts arrived in Oct 43, right after 2nd Schweinfurt and P-51Bs began flying missions in December 1943. It was literally just 4 months from the first Schweinfurt raid to the arrival of the P-51B in theater. I find it amusing that people continue to paint this as some catastrophic failure of the USAAF.
@@kracerx Great comment.
Greg’s Airplanes and Automobiles should be taken with a huge grain of salt. He gets some stuff just flat-out wrong. His video on how the B-17 could have lugged just as big a bomb load as the Lancaster by using its wing racks, but didn't for seemingly no valid reason, was just absurd. I even pointed out to him in the comments that the wing racks were not used for completely justifiable reasons, and cited references stating those valid reasons, and he just ignored it.
@@gizmophoto3577 _he bomber would always get through, regardless. They were wrong_ They weren't. The bomber DID always get through. The problem was that the losses taken in getting through were unsustainable.
Have you considered displaying a plain green background on the monitor behind you? That might make it easier to have the current style you’re using, but without having to move around the monitor, so you don’t obstruct the effect.
Interesting and thought provoking vid MAH. Curious if you could do a "what if" scenario related to this. What if, instead of hitting various individual war industrial areas (ball bearings, aircraft, etc), there had been the vision within the targeting / intelligence to have seen oil as that "one key" item without which the German war machine would have ground to a halt? What would have happened, in your view, had all that strategic airpower been focused exclusively on oil since day 1?
The point is, for that to work, the targets had to be hit repeatedly. The book 'Masters of The Air' made the point that when the USAAF's strength grew to the point it could hit several choke point industries (Oil, power generation--no power no machinery-, transportation--which actually transported the coal to fuel the generators that provided the power for the factory machinery ), wreck them, and keep hitting them to keep them wrecked, AND the will to accept the losses that came from such missions, it was pretty much a done deal. The Author of 'Masters' spoke to a retired USAF general about this, and sort of asked him, 'ain't that sort of like kicking a guy when he's down?' The General replied, in so many words: that's what you're supposed to do--kick 'em till they're down, and keep doing so, until they don't get up or they "cry uncle"
Another interesting "What If" has to do with the lack of urgency to increase the fighter coverage for long range missions. Even at this stage in the war, the general thinking was that the bombers would be fine without escort. It turned out that P47's could have flown most if not all of the way on these missions had they been provided with the drop tanks that were available later in the war. In an extensive series about the P47, Greg's Airplanes and Automobile channel explained that the planes were capable of being fitted with the drop tanks from the beginning but manufacture of the drop tanks had not been a high priority.
@@jfess1911 Per Greg, they literally allowed the bomber crews of the 8th to be killed just so they could 'win the war by strategic bombing'. Thank Goodness for Jimmy Doolittle--who had no interest in "proving that theory"==he just wanted to smash the luftwaffe.
I find it interesting that the two most famous American strategic bombing missions (Schweinfurt and Ploesti) were both disastrous.
Thanks!
Wow, thank you so much for the support!
The problem of B-17 vs German fighters seems simple to me. One BF 109 has 2 machine guns and a cannon. A certain firing arc of a B-17 has one or two guns. The difference in firing power is appalling.
My Great Uncle got to the 427th BS Which was part of the 303rd BG out of Molesworth England shortly after that raid. His first mission was Hettstedt Germany on 20 Feb 44
A friend of mine was in age of 16 years on the Flak of Regensburg, they fired all six seconds.
Same thing with Linebacker 2. They should'a had Captains in there setting up the mission profiles, rather than getting orders from "higher."
I feel like extending this examination to Korea, Vietnam and then onto the gulf wars would be very interesting.
my dad loved the B-17 it brought him home .
I wish you started with explaining what schweinfurt is even about or at very least added it into description
I am sure quite a bit of the doctrine was institutional politics. By the time of the raid, the creators of this doctrine were so heavily invested in it, they could not allow it, and hence them, to be seen as failures. (Then too, General Marshall always selected officers who were optimists. He never wanted realists/pessimists because their attitude poisoned unit morale.) They still shut down bombing for some time while they worked on the escort fighter problem. Had they continued bombing without escorts, losses would not have been sustainable. The Germans would have achieved what the British had during the Battle of Britain. Battles of attrition may work for armies, but casualty rates are not more than 15-20% which can be sustained over time. Casualty rates of 40% or more are not sustainable, and air forces do suffer such rates in equipment and men.
Good breakdown of doctrine that was similar with all nations that embraced air power after the Great War from 1921 onwards. We live near a few old WW2 USAF / RAF Bomber bases & 1 of them was involved in the Schwienfurt raid lost 20% in one day. For both sides ir was terrible but the Yanks lost nearly a thousand men that raid alone!
thanks
I got as far as the sales pitch then lost interest. What you seem to miss here and apparently gloss over was the US Army Air Corps REFUSAL to allow fighter escorts. They REFUSED to allow fighters to carry drop tanks until bomber losses became so horrid they could no longer adhere to their “bomber mafia” beliefs. AFTER Schweinfurt they FINALLY gave in and allowed drop tanks. For example the p-47 had been flown with a fully flight tested at all altitudes 200 gallon tank before they were even deployed to England. But these use was not allowed. Gregs Airplanes and Automobiles has an EXCELLENT video on this in one of his videos on the P47. By the time the P51 arrived the P47 had already so devastated the Luftwaffe that they were unable to maintian anything like air superiority over Germany much less anywhere else the US bombers flew.. The daylignt bombing brought the Luftwaffe up to confront the bomber and they were then shot up by the escorts. So much damage was done to their EXPERIENCED PILOTS that they no longer had airpower they had in 1942-43 and were not even a factor at the time of the Normandy invasion. THIS is what the daylight bombing accomplished. I STRONGLY recommend that anyone interested view at least the last three of Greg’s P47 videos. AND Greg is a very experienced flight engineer and pilot. AND he has numerous videos on ALL the fighters over Europe and many of the Japanese fighters as well. By 1943 it was no longer about destoying indistry alone. It was about crippling the Luftwaffe as well and it worked very well. Had the Luftwaffe had air superiority over France in June 1944 the D-Day landings would not have been possible.
Great video, Chris and one of your best. I have to admit, I found myself agreeing with you very early on because I have always held a hypothesis of my own which fits in with your message here. People tend to think of aircraft in isolation. I've done it too. Even fighter aircraft are thought of in terms of which one was notionally 'better' because of one technical detail or another. A lot of people who regard themselves as being interested in military history are really more interested in the history of military equipment. That's okay - as far as it goes. But to understand it is necessary to look more closely. The commitment to the design of the B-17 - what its requirements were, as defined by the envisioned mission - had its genesis in Billy Mitchell's theories about strategic bombing. That meant designing and building that aircraft, expanding on the strategy through operational procedures, training the crew to fly it and another crew to service it and then putting it into service. When the USAAF entered the European war in 1942, this theory had still to be tested properly in offensive operations. The focus of the squadrons was operating the B-17 with all the skills they had been taught and all the supplies they had. Changing course at this point was going to be extremely difficult - like doing a U-turn in a supertanker. In the Solent. In the dark. The Americans believed wholly in the value of daylight precision bombing. The fact that the theory and the practice were quite different made for a period of intense head scratching. Daylight precision bombing was an article of faith and that was how the USAAF was configured. It became a self-sustaining system. As we now know, the Americans basically made the same mistake as the British in underestimating Germany's ability to defend herself. While the British changed direction and turned - unsuccessfully - to night bombing early on, the Americans were determined to push ahead _because that's how their force was designed to operate._ This wasn't arrogance. It was a practical reality. This early example of over-commitment to one strategy was only really resolved with the arrival of the Mustang. The Americans couldn't change course, so they needed a good fighter escort to help them. Once this happened, they started to achieve a lot more of their aims. The only other decent video on this is on _'The Operations Room'._ That video focuses solely on the mechanics of the raids from the start to the finish. It's an excellent video, as far as it goes but this fills in all the gaps. Well done.
Well, no. The Mustang made very little difference to the effectiveness of daylight bombing. Because the bombers had to fly at a decent attitude to avoid flak…. And that was above the cloud ceiling. So they couldn’t put the bombs where they were supposed to go. Oh - and the supposedly super accurate Norden bombsight was actually a piece of junk…
@@TheGreatAmphibian Tell that to the Germans. The Germans talk constantly about two Allied aircraft in their reports: the Mustang and the Mosquito. I think it’s perfectly fair to say that whatever the current view is today, it doesn’t tally with what the Germans thought. Galland talks about it a lot in his book _’The First and the Last’._ German pilots used the Mustang as their yardstick for their own aircraft (I can provide references if you like). They thought very highly of it. And they truly hated the Mosquito.
@@TheGreatAmphibian I agree with the sentiments of the rest of your comments but not necessarily the accuracy.
@@thethirdman225 Ok: you don’t understand how wars are won. That German pilots fountain aircraft tactically challenging does not mean that it was a good investment at tge operational level considering opportunity costs. And it’s the operational level that wins wars.
@@thethirdman225 are. Accuracy: see my quote from the usafs Air Power University. Attacking an 800 acre target in daylight, only 10% of bombs hit. And half of those didn’t go off. That’s a 5% effectiveness rate. Where effectiveness is just measured as going off *anywhere* inside the perimeter of one of the biggest factories in Germany even if the bomb doesn’t hit an actual building.
The idea of the "panacea target" as key to being German arms manufacturing to a halt, along with the flawed doctrine "the bomber will always get through", combined to place large formations of inadequately protected bombers deep in hostile airspace, over highly defended targets. Disaster was inevitable.
When the schweinfurt raids were televised on 'World at War' l remember James Stuart recall that the ''Fighter was the bogyman, because the fighter had eyes and in a great many cases a very competent fella at the controls, when he latched on to you ,you were in trouble a lot of the time''..He should know...
Please do one about the Ploiesti raid. And please examine also the Romanian Royal Airforce contribution. Just a proposal. Cheers!
It would be nice to see a second video that takes into account the immediate concerns and pressures weighing Eaker/Arnold. Can't be a complete picture of the Schweinfurt "why" without that.
One of the concerns was the need to bolster the push for an independent air force. To establish that they need a role that was separate from directly supporting the Army. Hence their push to establish the effectiveness of the strategic campaign. US bomber chiefs also favoured Europe over the Pacific because at this stage of the war Japan was unreachable by the current crop of bombers.
Yeah the desire for an independent force was omnipresent but at a much lower level. The immediate overarching concern was defeating the Luftwaffe in time for Overlord which was already less than a year away. More specifically, increasing the 8th's contribution to that goal, which it had thus far done little to achieve (partially because it's units were constantly pulled away).
That briefing part of the video at 4:26. He traces the path to the target using his stick and says, "This is where you drop your bombs." Then he moves the rod backward along the flight path and says, "And, this is where you get shot down. Any questions?"
You need to read the book, The Bomber Mafia. Cutis LeMay had busted his bombers to take off in ANY weather that might cause delays in his bombers not being where they were and when they needed to be there. The plan for this raid came apart when another group of bombers who were part of the plan, decided that it was too misty for them to take off as planned. The conditions that this commander decided were too dicey for his crews to take off in were the same conditions that LeMay trained his crews to take off in. Good weather, bad weather or anything in between, LeMay trained them to take off in. Yes, he was a hard nosed son of a bitch and expected all of his crews to be the same. And when these aircrews thought that this was a bunch of BS, Curtis LeMay flew the LEAD bomber in that raid. He wouldn't ask his men to do anything he wasn't going to do!! Lots of balls there and then some.
I'm familiar with this thesis although not with these more recent sources. I think you are correct re the historical development of the strategic bombing theory and the why of the Schweinfurt raids. But I dispute your conclusion that the results were negligible on the strength of the famous remark to Hitler by Albert Speer.
The book 'Decision Over Schweinfurt' by B-17 Pilot Thomas M. Coffey is the book to get.
To isolate ball bearings as a critical German bottleneck and attack their source was a brilliant idea, but without fighter support I don't know how any of the planes got there and back. Long range fighters came just a little too late for these brave men.
I remember reading the Air Corps assessment of tactics in the Battle of Britain. Smug and totally committed to US bombing doctrine about sums it up
And who wrote it, a bomber pilot? ;) It's worth noting that RAF bomber command were bombing invasion barges during the BoB. And the RN were mining ports and had the Home Fleet and ships at Gibraltar ready to sail and 'sweep the channel' once the invasion started. So, in effect, 'Air war SE England' was only chapter 1 of the 'Battle of Britain'.
The fact that the Germans did not consistently bomb British aircraft factories contributed to the Lufwaffe losing the battle. The tremendous effort needed to win air superiority was demonstrated by the USAAF in the first half of 1944.
@@primmakinsofis614 The Luftwaffe's attacks on the UK lacked focus and capability: they didn't develop a heavy bomber nor commit to air power. The British also developed sophisticaed air defences similar to the Kammhuber line. The Luftwaffe relied on Stukas/tactical air power to support their armour. As for bombing British factories, they didn't even know where some of them were. Others were in Canada! A large number of bombers, including Lancasters were built there. As for "demonstrated by the USAAF in the first half of 1944." You know that the RAF was flying too, right? And the RAAF, RNZAF and other nationalities.
@@johnathanh2660 The USAAF won daylight air superiority over Germany. The Spitfire lacked the range to be a part of the fighting over Germany proper.
@@primmakinsofis614 The RAF was more than Spitfires. And the largest force within the RAF was bomber command, which flew at night. So who won air superiority when fuel plants and storage is being targeted which cuts into the training hours of new pilots?
There was likely a political dimension as well. Stalin was always berating Churchill and Roosevelt about opening a second front to take some pressure off of USSR, which was suffering greatly in 1943. The bomber raids against Germany showed that Britain and the US were doing something to help weaken Germany instead of just letting Stalin fight alone. Stalin was always paranoid about his fellow allies making a separate peace with Germany, hanging him out to dry.
Excellent video. This is the first time I've come across this channel, but I've always admired the Naval Institute. Air power and the bombing campaign in the ETO have always been an interst of mine, since my father joined the Air Corps in 1939 and I was USAFE at Mildenhall in the early '70's.
I protest x2. I agree that having a publisher (of books) as sponsor great. It should happen more often. But I don't want to pay custom duties from the US (Berlin based here). Well I'll pay anyway it seems.
The channel Kelly's History has some very good videos on the allied bombing campaign in case anyone is interested in videos recounting the raids informatively.
My dad was a tailgunner with the 306th bomb group 8th air force this and Berlin were very scary these crews are heroes.
so were the AA gunners
This gives new meaning to "target fixation". 😆 🤣 😂