Dresden Firestorm

[TCBF]

A Thursday?  As in "Black Thursday?"  I can't recall.

I have "Irish Alzhieimers": I forget everything except my grudges.

;D

Tom

 

[3rd Herd]

A Thursday?  As in "Black Thursday?"  I can't recall.

I have "Irish Alzhieimers": I forget everything except my grudges.

;D

Tom

Schweinfurt was first attacked on August 17, 1943. 230 B-17s were mounted for the attack, but the Luftwaffe marshaled over 300 fighters in opposition. 184 B-17s reached Schweinfurt and 36 either crash landed or were shot down with bomber crews experiencing 341 casualties. The defensive effectiveness of the box formations had not been sufficient to defeat the lethal attacks of the Luftwaffe. Coupled with a loss of 24 bombers and 200 men from a strike on Regensburg that same day, this was a heavy blow to the 8th Air Force. In addition, reconnaissance indicated the Schweinfurt bombing was not as accurate as had been hoped and the ball bearing factories had not been critically damaged.

After three months of rebuilding its strength, the 8th Air Force again attacked Schweinfurt on October 14, 1943. The day would go down in history as "Black Thursday." 291 B-17s left England, 229 bombers reached the target, and 60 bombers were lost. Crew casualties amounted to 639 men, a loss the 8th Air Force could not afford and which for all practical purposes stopped unescorted deep bombing penetrations into Germany. The bombing of Schweinfurt was more accurate this time, but strike analysis indicated that it did not impose a crippling blow to the German ball bearing industry.

Source O'Leary, Michael Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Production Line to Frontline 2, Botley, Oxford, United Kingdom: Osprey Publishing.(1999).

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

I wonder about the Allied bombing campaigns effect on the Allied war effort as well.  Bombers and their crews represent an "opportunity" cost.  The ten or so men put into a bomber can't be used for anything else and the same can be said for the support personnel.  The industrial effort to manufacture the bombers could be used for something else as well.  Looking at manpower in particular, would the relatively high-quality individuals sent to the bombers to man .50 cal machineguns have been better served in the ground forces as section commanders/squad leaders/crew commanders?

Looking at the tank production question, is there an established production exchange equation for the Panther, Tiger and Mk IVH?  The Mk IVH was certainly a capable tank right up to the end, but I think that the Panther was needed (once the bugs were worked out).  How many extra Mk IVHs could have been produced if Tigers and Panthers had not been built?  Would that have helped?

Guderian was concerned about rationalizing German AFV production when he was appointed Inspector of Panzer Troops mid-war.  The Mk III disappeared and he tried to focus efforts on a smaller number of designs.  It is interesting to note, however, that his efforts to rationalize assault guns were frustrated by their belonging to the Artillery. 

I have read that the Germans produced some 80,000 AFVs during the war.  22,000 were tanks of the Mk III to Mk VI range inclusive.  Add to that roughly 10,000 Stug assault guns and over 6,000 tank destroyers.  Rounding up, this makes roughly one half of AFV production aimed at tanks/tank destroyers and assault guns.  One third of 1943 AFV production was devoted to halftracks. 

The US produced a staggering 207,000 AFV during the war.  50,000 of the 80,000 tanks manufactured were Shermans.  The Soviets produced 102,000 AFVs, of which some 71,000 were T34/KV/IS tanks.  UK numbers include commonwealth countries and give almost 25,000 tanks out of a total of 70,000 AFVs.  It should be noted, however, that over 5,000 British tanks never saw action due to being obsolete when produced or being chronically unreliable.

These numbers give the Allies over 170,000 tanks to face just under 40,000 German tanks/TDs/assault guns.  Numbers do not tell the whole story as tactics, crew training, quality and supporting arms also play a part.  In addition, would the late-war German produced AFV have had fuel and crews for them?

Could the Germans have tried to match the Allies in numbers by going for "cheaper" tanks or with more ruthless standardization?  The Americans, in particular, resisted efforts to improve established designs to keep production numbers up.  It is also interesting wonder if the efforts devoted to halftracks could have been better invested into more assault guns or tanks?  Bringing this back to the topic, somewhat, what effect did Allied bombing have on these numbers?

My apologies for babbling,

2B

 

[3rd Herd]

Feel free to babble 2Bravo
"The situation was bad not only in the war front. While Russian tank production increased to unbelievable levels, the German obsession for complex new super weapons, like the advanced but then immature Panther and Tiger tanks, largely reduced German tank production. General Guderian, the best German armor expert and commander, said "As interesting as these designs were, the practical result was just a reduced production of the Panzer 4, our only efficient tank then, to a very modest level.". Shortly before the battle of Kursk Guderian added, about the Panther and its crews, "They are simply not ready yet for the front". In early 1943 the Germans were about to destroy their own tank production rates by terminating Panzer 4 production in return for a production of just 25 new Tigers per month, but at a moment of reason Hitler gave control of tank production to Guderian who stopped this idea."

intersting article on German Tank trends at http://www.lonesentry.com/tanktalk/

as too would the Germans have crews here is an citing showing the the allied side

Tabulating the results of this mismatch, Cooper highlights the staggering cost of the Army’s flawed choice for its main battle tank. Over the next 11 months, the Third Armored Division, which began the Normandy campaign with 232 M4 tanks, would see 648 of its Shermans destroyed in combat, with another 700 knocked out of commission before being repaired and returned to service—a cumulative loss rate of 580 percent. Casualties among tank crews also skyrocketed, producing an acute shortage of qualified personnel. By late 1944, Cooper recalls, the Army was sending newly arrived infantrymen into combat as replacement tank crews. Some of these recruits received only one day of armor training before being dispatched to the front in their M4s.
Source: Cooperr Belton Y. Death Traps:  The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II   Presidio Press Novato, California, 1998

In answers to your question re: bombing effect on numbers I found the following at: 'Tank Industry Report Second Edition January 1947',The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: European Theater of Operations Second Edition January 1947 http://www.angelfire.com/super/ussbs/tankrep.html

"The tank industry was not hit as a target system until August 1944. Before this time, Alkett, in an area raid in November 1943, had been the only plant heavily damaged by air attack, but by June 1944 it had fully recuperated through setting up a new plant in Falkensee. In August, September, and October, most of the big tank factories were heavily attacked. Of five plants surveyed, destruction and structural damage during these three months amounted to 64 percent of the total plant areas."

"By mid-1944 German panzer production, with practically no hindrance by direct air attack had level off with June output at 1,657 and July 1,669. However, certain plants were thereafter scheduled to increase output, and except for the 38 t assault gun, for the industry scheduled gains were representative of what production would have been the remainder of the year in the absence of bombing."

"By subtracting actual production for the period August through December 1944 from estimated potential production for the same period, it may be calculated that the attack on panzer production cost the enemy 2,250 tanks, assault guns and self-propelled guns. After December the combined effects of bombing and loss of territory reduced panzer output further, but the amount attributable to bombing alone is a figure that cannot be isolated."

me thinks this wesite answers our questions on boombing effectiveness on German AFV it is worth taking a look at as it has production monthly tables

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Good link.  I've read excepts from the strategic bombing report (and I drew from it back on page 2 of this thread) but never in this detail.  It seems to me that the bombing campaign's impact on tank production came rather late in the war.  Aug 43 would have been more timely for an increased effort, but I suppose they were doing what they could when they could.

I'll apologize in advance for a tangent here.  The standardization question remains intriguing.  For the Germans, it is interesting (if pointless) to wonder if they should have only produced the Mk IV and not the Mk III in the early war period.  The US was very strict regarding modifications and upgrades to the Sherman, putting emphasis on quantity over quality.  The Brits tinkered more (the Firefly as one example), perhaps as a result of their experience in the Western Desert when German and British tanks were constantly being upgraded or replaced by newer models.  I believe that the first US Shemans with 76mm guns (a somewhat less capable gun that the 17 pdr but still better than the 75mm) were the result of field workshops putting guns from M10s on Shermans.  They then had problems getting 76mm rounds from the system since Tank units weren't suppose to have 76mm guns...  Even the Russians upgraded their T34s through the war, with the biggest change being the introduction of the new three man turret with the 85mm gun.  Doctrinal problems also seem to have plagued many country's designs (cruiser tanks vs infantry tanks, tanks vs tank destroyers, "heavy tanks" vs medium tanks, etc).

Quantity vs quality is not a new argument.  We always want both, of course, but compromises must be made somewhere (see my profile quote).  As a (former) tank crewman, I would tend on the side of quality, but I suppose that quantity has a quality of its own.  Still, trained manpower for tank crews is a critical and perishable resource for an army.  It "costs" the same to put five crewmen in an inferior tank as it does to put them in a good one.  In addition, if you put them in a survivable tank you can keep them around longer.  You might also find that they will press home attacks and follow up advances with more speed and aggression.  I figure that an Army should seek to upgrade its tanks but find production efficiencies in other vehicles.  For example, tinker with your MBTs to keep them with or ahead of the bad guy but perhaps do away with having light tanks and weird and wonderful halftracks.

Cheers,

2B

 

[3rd Herd]

Interested parties
Here is the reply from Bovington Tank Museum as promidsed in an earlier post:

Thanks for your enquiry and apologies for the delay in replying, it was due to a terminal left unattended in the course of an extra-long vacation. Equally unfortunately I don’t have an answer on this and I suppose to some extent it relies on definition. If we are talking about immediate air strikes, aircraft versus tank as in the case of RAF Typhoons with Rockets then I doubt it. Recent research seems to show that accuracy was very poor and one assumes this would also apply to low flying attack by bombs and cannon. When it comes to high level bombing then production centres certainly took a toll but to what extent this resulted in total destruction of individual vehicles, rather than simply delaying production is difficult to judge. After that I think there would be even more difficulty in deciding between tanks knocked out by tanks, tank destroyers and anti-tank guns along with hand-held weapons and so on.

Such evidence as there is seems to be limited to Normandy which may not be typical; an article by Dr Alfred Price in Air Power Review for spring 2005 shows about ten percent destroyed from the air, 31.5 % simply abandoned undamaged, 39.5 percent wrecked by their own crews to prevent capture and 20 % attributed to ‘other causes’. Not very promising for air power. If you have the opportunity study ‘Air Power at the Battlefront by Ian Gooderson (Frank Cass 1998 isbn 0 7146 4211 8) .This confines itself to Europe 1943 -1945 and appears to give an even lower figure where tanks are concerned; he lists a number of Operational Research documents that might repay study.

On balance I would say the odds were strongly in favour of ground forces.

DavidF
Comments'

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Just to put this back into the spirit of the thread, are factories producing military equipment legitimate targets?  If the answer is yes, does that extend to the workers in them?  If that answer is yes, are workers for military industries legitimate targets even when they are not at work? 

I would argue that the factories are certainly "legitimate" targets and that the presence or absence of the workers should not be a factor in selecting the time of the attack.  While I believe that uniformed soldiers are targets regardless of time and place, I don't see the factory workers as targets when they are not at work.  Its a double standard, I suppose. 

I believe that a certain level of collateral damage is acceptable if the factory is in a city.  It's location among dwellings should not give it immunity.  That being said, flattening a city to get one factory would probably be out of proportion.  That being said, what is the acceptable margin of collateral error?

 

[3rd Herd]

If the answer is yes, does that extend to the workers in them?  If that answer is yes, are workers for military industries legitimate targets even when they are not at work? 

I would argue that the factories are certainly "legitimate" targets and that the presence or absence of the workers should not be a factor in selecting the time of the attack.  While I believe that uniformed soldiers are targets regardless of time and place, I don't see the factory workers as targets when they are not at work.  Its a double standard, I suppose. 

as I stated in an above post " strategic bombing to a certain extent was to deprive cities of there populace and therefore factories of their work force"

After commencement of the genre of strategic bombing[ Guernica, Spain ]the existing ratio of civil verses military causalties reversed itself. Prior to world war two there was an acknowledged ratio of 10 to 90, civilian verses military. Remember war was and to this day a spectator sport. The are many narratives of families packing lunches and trundling off to vantage points to watch the battle unfold . One of the foremost example of this is the battle of Gettyburg.

With the advent of airpower as a strategic weapon this ratio reversed to 90 to 10, civilian causalties verses military. The subject of this thread is a prime example the 'Dresdan Firebombing'. Equally could be said of Gen. Curtis LeMay's switch in bombing doctine with regard to Japan. Moving from the use of high explosive bombs to the fire raids.

Comments

 

[MarkOttawa]

This is very interesting--take that Mr Irving:

How Many Died in the Bombing of Dresden? (usual copyright disclaimer)
Spiegel Online, Oct. 2, by Frederick Taylor
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,581992,00.html

The question of many people died in the World War II Allied bombing of Dresden has been politically charged for decades. Now, a commission of historians has said the real total could be much lower than previously thought. But the debate likely won't go away.

The city of Dresden was destroyed following a vicious Allied bombing raid at the end of World War II.
Calculations of the death-toll from the Anglo-American bombing of Dresden in February 1945 have varied widely, but never ceased to be dramatic. Figures suggested have ranged from 35,000 through 100,000, and even up to half a million at the wilder fringes of speculation.

It is easy to see why. Dresden was a magnificent city of three quarters of a million people, its population further swollen by hordes of anonymous refugees from the Eastern Front. Its historic heart was destroyed in one apocalyptic night by aircraft armed with more than 4,500 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs. This devastated area amounted to around 13 square miles (34 square kilometers).

The firestorm that destroyed Dresden’s architectural treasures and so much of its civilian population became a byword for the horrors of modern warfare and a stain on the Allies’ claim to have fought a “good war” against Nazism. This was a truly catastrophic event to which only very big numbers seemed able to do justice.

Now, more than 60 years later, it seems we must lower our estimates. After four years’ work, an impressive commission of German historians this week filed its report on this issue, and it seems that even the lowest figure so far accepted may be an overestimate. Drawing on archival sources, many never previously consulted, on burial records and scientific findings -- including street-by-street archaeological investigations -- plus hundreds of eye-witness reports, the “Dresden Commission of Historians for the Ascertainment of the Number of Victims of the Air Raids on the City of Dresden on 13/14 February 1945” has provisionally estimated the likely death-toll at around 18,000 and definitely no more than 25,000.

These conclusions, to be elaborated on in a full report due out next year, are convincing. However, despite the eminence of the commission’s experts, including Germany’s most distinguished historian of the air war, Dr. Horst Boog, they will be controversial, especially in Dresden itself. Many of those who lost families, homes and loved ones in the catastrophe have found dignity and meaning in the sheer magnitude and dark grandeur of the event, and to see the Dresden casualty figures reduced from the hundreds of thousands to more “normal” (though still horrendous) levels seems incredible, even insulting.

And there are the political distortions. The Nazis were the first to exaggerate the number of victims for propaganda purposes, and the communists were liable to push the numbers up during the post-war period, in order to discredit the Anglo-Americans, who had been the Soviets’ allies until 1945 but were now their Cold War enemies. Finally, neo-Nazis in modern Germany conjure up dizzyingly high figures running into the hundreds of thousands, while at the same time playing down or denying the World War II mass murder of the Jews and the Roma and Sinti, hoping thereby to convince their fellow-citizens that the Allied bombing of Germany was an even worse “holocaust” than the actual one.

Hence the commission’s establishment in 2004 was opposed by many in Dresden and its work has since been subject to political chicanery. That it has finally issued its report seems something of a miracle. And that its members have courageously and doggedly followed the logic of the evidence, knowing the unpopularity it may bring, speaks strongly for the integrity of the historians involved.

So can we say "case closed"? Almost certainly not. Many Dresdeners, understandably, cling to their memories and traditions even in the face of historical evidence. The far right will undoubtedly persist with a line of propaganda central to its aim of undermining the democratic German state and rehabilitating the Nazi past. For all these people, interpretation of the Dresden death-toll will likely remain an article of faith rather than a matter of fact.

FREDERICK TAYLOR
Frederick Taylor is the author of "Dresden: Tuesday, Feb. 13, 1945" (HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), which examines the apocalyptic destruction of the German city just weeks before the end of World War II. Taylor's book counters the widely held view that the Dresden bombing served no strategic purpose by pointing out that Dresden hosted numerous workshops and factories dedicated to the war effort. Taylor published "The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961- 1989" in 2007, likewise with HarperCollins. He studied history and modern languages at Oxford and Sussex universities in Britain and focused on the history of the extreme right in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[geo]

Humm....
1945 - 2008 = 63 years and counting.
18 000 deaths or 100 000, at this point in time.... does it matter ???
Was Germany ready to capitulate ???  How about Japan ???
We could only work with the information available in 1945... and that was that the Nazi & Japanese war machines were still fighting and taking lives.

The destruction of Dresden, Hamburg OR Hiroshima, Nagasaki simply amplifies the absurdity of war.  Should Spiegel be be asking about the death and destruction wreaked on London, Coventry, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Shanghai up to AND including 1945 ???

War is brutal & you aren't about to find much humanity in the day to day running of a campaign of conquest.

Lest we forget!

 

[1feral1]

Humm....
1945 - 2008 = 63 years and counting.
18 000 deaths or 100 000, at this point in time.... does it matter ???
Was Germany ready to capitulate ???  How about Japan ???
We could only work with the information available in 1945... and that was that the Nazi & Japanese war machines were still fighting and taking lives.

The destruction of Dresden, Hamburg OR Hiroshima, Nagasaki simply amplifies the absurdity of war.  Should Spiegel be be asking about the death and destruction wreaked on London, Coventry, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Shanghai up to AND including 1945 ???

War is brutal & you aren't about to find much humanity in the day to day running of a campaign of conquest.

Lest we forget!

Good post Geo, that about sums up the reality of it all.


Cheers,

Wes

 

[mariomike]

Bomber Command crews were ( reportedly ) told that the Nazis had convinced the German people that at the end of World War One  their armed forces had remained still on foreign soil and basically undefeated. And that they - the German forces of WW1 - had been "stabbed in the back" by politicians back home.
Crews were told: "Never again will any future German government be able to say that the homefront was fairly well intact at the end of a war."