Bombing of Berlin

[Mike K]

I found a interesting book at the op shop 'The Berlin raids' Author: Martin Middlebrook. subtitled 'RAF Bomber Command Winter 1943-44'

Berlin was considered to be the most heavily defended city in the Reich with around 200 searchlights and many flak positions.

Some of the Berlin raids were very ineffective with more RAF aircrew killed than Germans killed on the ground . One early raid had almost sixty bombers lost, 298 killed aircrew and only minor damage to Berlin. Around ten percent of RAF crews turned back before reaching Berlin , and some airmen just refused to fly there.

The new H2S air to ground radar was used in the pathfinder aircraft and the results were generally poor but on one successful raid everything clicked and the radar sets proved to be accurate . The improved Mk III H2S was on a shorter 3cm wavelength and these were quickly pressed into service but they were very unreliable.

The British had phantom German speaking radio operators directing the night fighters away from the target but the Germans quickly got around this ruse. A few Lancasters were fitted with special wireless equipment , these sets would jam the German ground control frequencies. The Germans used female radio operators so the British did the same ! It was a to and fro game. The Germans had specially trained JU88 crews dropping flares above the bomber stream over Berlin.

It has been generally said that the raids on Berlin were not a victory.

Quite a few of the returning RAF bombers crashed on landing at foggy airfields in the UK.

[Lang]

This is a good summary from the Canadian Bomber Command Museum

http://www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/commandlosses.html

[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.

[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

[Lang]

Robert

I did not wish to offend anyone with my comments and do understand the military a little with 15 years in the trade.

It was more a matter of scale and risk that I was comparing Afghanistan with Bomber Command. Canada had around 50,000 serve in RCAF and RAF during WW2 and lost around 10,000 people in 5 years. Canada has had about the same number serve in Afghanistan and lost around 170 people in 17 years. These are operational and training deaths and neither of these figures includes normal "industrial" accidents eg traffic and machinery accidents which, with modern safety regulations and health care, makes the WW2 figures for such events seem really bad.

The huge numbers involved in WW2 and the guaranteed horrific casualty rate on every mission, every time you went out made bomber command unique in the allied major operations (the U-Boat crews and the atrocious conditions for both sides on the Eastern Front are another story). There was no end in sight and they were there for the duration if they survived - do your allotted missions, have a break, then back into it again.

At least the Afghanistan people know they are not there forever and the casualty rate is minuscule compared with bomber command. This does not reduce the courage and dedication of the people there nor reduce individual experiences.

Many Australian soldiers have 3 and 4 six month tours of Afghanistan under their belt but they have good breaks in between and are monitored closely for any PTSD signs and get early treatment and are not thrown back to the wolves like the WW2 aircrew. Many are keen to go back because it is what they signed up for and the others go because it is their duty. These multiple extended "peacetime" deployments take a huge toll on relationships and family life. I should imagine the other nations in Afghanistan have similar monitoring and problems.

The 20 year olds of 2018 are no less dedicated or courageous than the 20 year olds of 1943 but their situation is vastly different. It is investigation into the historical lack of support for WW1, WW2 and particularly Vietnam, mental problems that has allowed us to treat the current people - for exactly the same - problems.

One other point is that all? the people in Afghanistan come from professional regular armies or volunteers from an active reserve. It is their chosen career and when they signed up they knew dying was part of the job description. In WW2 most nations fighting in Europe had majority conscripted (not Australia) forces and the vast majority of the volunteer group had no military interest but were there to do the right thing then go back to their lives. It does not change the effects upon the individual but you can not say circumstances are identical for every period in history.

Nothing new as the Romans and armies before them were full of people with PTSD but it has taken us 10,000 years to actually try to do something about it.

As I said, wars are a most unpleasant thing.

Lang

[motto]

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

[Rene Nijrolder]

Hello, Mike Kelly wrote this: " 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 "

Today one off the huge towers, apart from the many guns there were six story's where in total around 20.000 people could shelter during the ongoing bombardments, is open for a visit.

https://www.berliner-unterwelten.de/...of-debris.html

Very interesting and from an unbelieveble scale. The guided tour which I did in March 2008 was very informative about the towers and living in wartime Berlin. One statement from the very well informed guide was that all 3 the towers together with their very large guns during the whole war didn't take down a single bomber out over Berlin ! (Disruptive sure, but no "kills")
The shelter of people in the undestructable inner of the bunker (70x70 meter and 42 meter high) during the whole war and a limmited use as anti tank guns during the final stage from the battle of Berlin, are the only real achievments of those massive and very costly buildings.

It was overall a nice trip to Berlin, there were (and are) a lot of signs from WW2 still to be found and visited. Flying to Berlin and landing on Tempelhof (it would be closed in October off that year) made it extra special.

René.

[Mike K]

The massive Flak tower in the Berlin Zoo park was in The British occupation zone and it took them over ten years of work before they managed to demolish it all. The remains of the tower which Rene visited, is in the old French occupation zone of Berlin . The French tried to blow the tower up with explosives three times .

I think the Americans were not keen on daylight bombing of Berlin because of the projected losses , they had just suffered heavy losses with raids on other German targets and they were in a rebuilding phase.