Bombing of Berlin

[Mike K]

Apparently Harris had free reign to make the overall decisions , he claimed he would end the war by flattening Berlin with a expected loss of 400-500 bombers . Around one quarter of the Berlin residential buildings were destroyed or made uninhabitable. Over a million people were evacuated out of Berlin .

There were Russians manning some of the flak guns , a choice to over to the German side or starve to death in a camp .

During a panic over 100 people were crushed to death in a shelter stairwell.

A WAAF girl was killed, she had been driving a van beneath Stirling spinning props, one day she drove under a Lancasters spinning props .

On one Berlin raid the aircrew deaths from crashes and collisions exceeded the aircrew deaths by enemy action. The UK airfields were fogged in and many pilots low on fuel tried to land but crashed with terrible fatalities. There was a beam landing system at some airfields but it was a terribly slow system, with many aircraft circling waiting to land. Some bailed out over England rather than land


The Lancasters had a lower survival for crew members , there were few easy to get at escape hatches . The Halifax was easier to jump out of , a higher crew survival rate.

Harris stopped the Stirlings flying to Berlin because of terrible losses.

[Lang]

Mike

Somewhere I have a study on the mental health aspects of the bomber crews.

The pressure was enormous - more than anything else in WW2 and akin to being in the trenches during WW1.

Complete nervous breakdowns were very common and numbered in their thousands. Early in the war it was still being treated as LMF (low moral fibre or cowardice). They improved their treatment and discharged bad cases as medically unfit or sent crews to training jobs or even ground postings. Most never went back to operations.

The propaganda, spread by the public as well, is that these blokes just gritted their teeth and got on with it with British stiff upper lip. Most of them went through stages. Early terror, a bit of experience resulted in ways to stay "safe" and many ended up totally resigned to death, becoming socially withdrawn with little interest in doing anything other than just going there and back. Mental breakdowns happened at any stage. The great majority got absolutely smashed in the bar nearly every night (remember most of these young fellows would have been very light or non-drinkers before enlisting). Flying with hangovers, or still alcohol affected was almost the norm.

There were huge numbers of failure to take off due to some engine problem that the ground crew could not replicate (an easy way was to do all the warm-up and taxi on one bank of spark plugs. On the pre-take off magneto check the unused bank of plugs would have oiled up and show an excessive rev drop making the engine u/s for flight).

It was difficult for the Americans to fabricate a turn-back because they flew in daylight in close formation but they had a big advantage of the close visual and moral support of their mates. The British flew totally alone at night and hoped they never saw their mates because if they did they would be so close a collision was likely. Nobody flew at their assigned altitude and they just picked a "lucky" height to try to get out of the huge traffic flow and not hit someone.

Thousands of tons of bombs were dropped anywhere from just off the English coast to somewhere near the target. The flash photography was primarily to make sure they did not dump their bombs along the way but it was advertised as a way of checking the accuracy.

Many a crew colluded and flew in circles over the north sea for 5 hours before joining the returning flock. We think of the pilots when discussing these problems but the pilot and the navigator were 100% occupied the whole flight both mentally and physically while the rest of the crew with less continuous duties were just sitting in an aluminium coffin waiting for something to happen with no control over their destiny. No wonder "The Skipper" became God (no matter how bad a pilot he might be) which in turn put more pressure on him.

We should be in awe of those blokes who pushed and pushed until they either mentally or physically collapsed. Their treatment post-war was hopeless and thousands lived out their lives in depression, ruined relationships or just suicided.

We are at last getting a handle on PTSD and see the effects on troops in Afghanistan which is a walk in the park compared to Bomber Command.

Lang

[Mike K]

Yes it is a wonder that any of those chaps could go back to a civilian life after experiencing so much anxiety .

Harris did try to persuade the Americans to come in on the Berlin bombing but they refused.

The Germans had developed a very good Air Intercept radar , the SN-2 that was fitted to Me110's . They also listened to the H2S emissions from the British bombers. A day after the first deployment of the H2S the Germans captured a intact set in a crashed bomber. Berlin had three massive flak towers with twelve twin 128mm flak guns firing a barrage up to 45,000 feet every ninety seconds, the exploding shells threw out shrapnel in 100 metre radius .

[Lang]

Mike

The massed heavy flak was very off-putting to the crews and created evasive action inaccuracy even when it was only thought to be there. Once it started firing it pushed inaccuracy up over 68%.

Towards the end of the war it took 16,000 rounds of heavy flak to down one aircraft but this ratio did not matter because of its disruption to accurate bombing. The Americans solved the problem by using the formation bombing system under command of a Master Bombardier. The poor buggers could not manouevre and were just carried in perfect formation right into the clouds of flak.

The Americans reported 110,000 aircraft were damaged in some way by flak. This includes aircraft counted several times as they were hit on numerous different trips. They brought back dead and wounded crew in numbers equaling those lost in complete aircraft shoot-downs.

Fighters downed 59% and Flak 41% in the last years of the war but the crews feared the flak more.

Lang

[Mike K]

Many of the RAF aircrews were kids barely out of school. I did read somewhere, somebody aged 28 volunteered for aircrew but the RAAF medical doctor said to the chap "you are too old for aircrew we prefer the younger ones " Many teenagers think they are invincible and they are generally more willing to take risks , by the time you reach late twenties you become a little wiser and more cautious, this is probably why they deliberately chose the 18 to 20 year olds for aircrew training.

The Lancaster pilot ( David Scholes ) I met in Tassie years ago spent his twenty first birthday on a flying op.

The Germans had school kids on the flak batteries passing ammunition to the gunners. The RAF were trying to start a firestorm in Berlin as they had done in Hamburg but Berlin was more spread out with wider streets. By good luck more than anything else a ball bearing factory in Berlin was hit and badly damaged, Albert Speer had a major tantrum over that.

[Ed Storey]

A visit to the Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery quickly brings home the price paid during the Allied bomber offensive.

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[Lang]

The elephant in the room of course is the morality question of carpet bombing civilian populations. It is very difficult 80 years later to put ourselves into the shoes of those at the time.

The British offensive was primarily aimed at the cities and inaccuracy of individual night bombing guaranteed the target of a "ball bearing works" resulted in vast areas of urban dwellings being obliterated. Fire storms caused by incendiary attacks in such places as Hamburg and Dresden could not be interpreted as anything other than a public slaughter. Churchill and Harris freely advertised their aim to terrify the civilian population into submission.

If the jolly British singing Pack Up Your Troubles in the London underground could not be demoralised and in fact were made more determined, the Germans were highly unlikely to have been reduced to submission. It is hard to escape the modern concept of terrorism.

Few of the crews going out day after day allowed these questions to affect their duty but many carried the guilt for the rest of their lives. They are all gone now but those of us who knew and talked with the WW2 crews know a lot of them struggled to justify many missions. Guilt played a big part in many post-war mental problems.

Wars are a rotten business as the people of Syria, Libya, Gaza, Afghanistan,Yemen, half of Africa etc etc can tell you this very moment.

Lang

[motto (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Mike Kelly

Harris did try to persuade the Americans to come in on the Berlin bombing but they refused.

They weren't so shy when it came to bombing the Japanese capital. LeMay's B29s in one night burned out 16 square miles of Tokyo. This would have been predominently residential area.
As in Sherman's march to the sea it was done in the hope of ending the bloody affair. Justified? I'll not sit in judgement.

David