Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Target Germany - The Summing Up

ON AUGUST 17, 1942, twelve Flying Fortresses stepped accurately but not heavily on the little finger of the Nazi war machine. They penetrated fifty miles into France, dropped eighteen tons of bombs on the marshaling yards at Rouen, and returned intact.

On August 17, 1943, three American aerial task forces, totaling more than 350 Fortresses, struck two hard blows at the industrial heart of Germany. Two of the forces, dropping 424 tons of bombs on Schweinfurt, fought their way back to Britain. The third force, hitting Regensburg with 298 tons, roared on across the Mediterranean. As the brakes squealed on African runways and the tired men climbed -down, a cycle became complete. The VIII Bomber Command's first year over Europe was ended.

What the year proved, what it added up to, cannot be summarized in a phrase. The official figures: 16,977 tons of bombs dropped, 2050 enemy fighters destroyed, 472 bombers and 4481 men missing, do not give the complete picture any more than Goebbels' mid-August understatement that the war in the air was Germany's most serious problem. No one hero story can convey all the heroism, no one example of bomb damage can indicate the tremendous cumulative strain on Nazi industrial resources. The scale is too large for easy simplification.

Fortunately, there is no need for such capsule conclusions. It is unnecessary, at this stage of the war, to convince anyone of the military importance of air power. The purpose of this book has been factually to record the testing of a new concept of vertical warfare. The final evaluation is yet to be made, but already a general trend of the results is apparent.

The aim of any bombing program is destruction of enemy objectives. Here is an inventory of the VIII Bomber Command's achievements for its first year of operation:

The results of these 124 attacks, of course, varied. A few were relative failures, others moderate successes, and some prodigious triumphs. Fortunately, the improvement in the bombing which came about as the first year's campaign progressed placed most of the notable successes in the second six months of operations -when target's of more importance were attacked. Thus, the Huells rubber plant was knocked out for an undetermined period, the Heroya aluminum plant blasted to pieces, the Renault plant crippled,- and the Messerschmitt fighter factory almost totally destroyed-all these high priority objectives were attacked after the American forces had perfected their bombing in the early raids.

One factor hampering the appraisal of the returns from strategic bombing is the interval between destruction and effect. A naval squadron sinks an enemy cruiser and there is one less enemy to face, an infantry division captures a town and the front lines move forward, an air support squadron wrecks a transport column and the tactical advantage is instantly obvious --but this immediacy is lacking in strategic bombing.

A heavy bomber force destroys a synthetic rubber plant and plugs the source of one third of the enemy's supply, but the military effects of the blow may not become apparent for six months. A marshaling yard is blown to bits, forcing upon the enemy an expenditure of labor, rails, locomotives, and cars that he can ill afford; an aircraft factory is wrecked and its production of fighters ceases. Again, the results may not be immediately obvious. But sooner or later the inevitable cost of these losses makes itself felt-a thousand armored cars are withheld from combat for lack of tires; for lack of railroad roiling stock a reserve division reaches its position a day too late; half a hundred enemy fighters never reach the front to blast our troops in transport lines. In an accumulation of such economic shortages and the consequent military dislocations are the seeds of final disaster.

The first five months of the operational life of the VIII Bomber Command were kindergarten months. The exponents of high-altitude precision bombing had to walk before they could run. In the process of learning to walk they sometimes stumbled. But the case these pioneers proved was more important than the damage they inflicted. Their assaults on the submarine bases, their strikes on Nazi industrial targets in France, the attrition and division of strength they forced upon the Nazi fighter command-these achievements represented valuable contributions to the Allied war effort. Just as valuable was the evidence that such contributions were possible, in daylight and from five miles up.

The kernel of the proof was the inability of the Germans to prevent American daylight bombers from attacking their objectives. Time and again in the Battle of Britain, Spitfires and Hurricanes intercepted Nazi raiders and drove them away from their targets. The American bombers were never stopped. Weather sometimes made recall necessary, but unless that recall came through the Forts and Liberators went on to their target. The Germans are trying every defense they can think of, but neither flak nor fighters, nor aerial bombs nor rocket cannons, have ever deflected an American formartion from its objective.

It was this fact, plus the parallel success at the RAF's night operations, that resulted in the  Casablanca mandate to the British and U. S., bomber forces in the United Kingdom. At Casablanca the Combined Chiefs of Staff ordered a joint British-U. S. air offensive to accomplish "the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial, and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to the point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened." The term "fatally weakened" was interpreted as meaning so weakened as to permit initiation of final combined operations on the Continent. That order was given in January. The two bomber commands lost no time in setting about the job.

To the RAF fell the task of destroying Germany's great cities, of silencing the iron heartbeat of the Ruhr, of dispossessing the working population, of breaking the morale of the people.

 The mission of the VIII Bomber Command was the destruction of the key industries by which the German military machine is sustained.

How well the RAF succeeded in the next eight months, sending six, seven, eight hundred heavy bombers over a target, dropping four or five times the weight of explosives that fell on Coventry, may be judged by the desperate outcries of the German press and the incontrovertible photographic evidence brought back by reconnaissance planes.

Meanwhile the American bomber command, with a striking force which in January, 1943, was about one seventh the, size of the RAF, was hitting the key objectives of the Nazi war industry. As the American bomber force grew and the weight and variety of the blows increased, German defenses stiffened. Concentrations of antiaircraft guns mounted and Nazi fighter strength on the Western Front rose sharply. Between January and July the number of enemy first-line single-engine fighters specifically charged with neutralizing the daylight raiders was almost doubled, largely at the expense of other fronts. Necessity to defend the homeland cost the Germans what little hope they had of maintaining air superiority in Russia or air equality in Africa.

For the Germans the only answer to the bomber offensive was the stepping up of fighter plane production. This decision had become apparent months before, when their aircraft industry began to shift from bomber to fighter production-that is, from offensive to defensive weapons.

The Allies, well aware of this strategy, took energetic steps to meet it. More and more the thrusts of precision bombing were aimed at German aircraft factories. In July the VIII Bomber Command attacked plants involving sixty-five per cent of Germany's Focke-Wulf production, seventy-one per cent of her airplane tire capacity. The anniversary raid of August 17 robbed the Nazis of the use of their second largest Messerschmitt plant at Regensburg. A few days earlier Liberators, based on Africa had struck the sister factory at Wiener Neustadt, not far from Vienna. Meanwhile, over Russia, Italy, and Germany the attrition of the Luftwaffe went on.

As these words are written, the battle for air supremacy in Europe is in full swing. If the Luftwaffe can be pushed over the edge of the cliff as it was in Africa, as it was in Sicily, as it will be in Germany if the pressure is maintained, the collapse of Germany within a foreseeable time becomes certain.

This is one answer to the question so often raised, -"Will bombing win the war?"  To the military logician, the question is beside the point. Aerial assault is directed both at the enemy's will to resist and his means to resist. One may collapse before the other; either eventuality is desirable. Bombing will be carried out to the fullest extent in any case. Whether or not German morale cracks, the work of destroying the enemy's fighting capacity must go on. Daylight precision bombing, in co-operation with RAF night area bombing, is the most economical and practicable means now at hand for achieving that destruction.

The word -"economical" is used advisedly. All war is hideously expensive. But compared to damage inflicted, the cost of aerial attack- in dollars and cents as well as human lives is moderate. In large-scale bombing, the balance sheet shows the attacker well in the black, the defender hopelessly in the red. To meet the challenge Germany maintains more than fifty-eight per cent of her fighter strength and 39,000 antiaircraft guns on the Western Front. A million men serve the guns, searchlights, and barrage balloons and ten per cent of the total population give all or part of their time to the air-raid services. In devastating Hamburg, the RAF and the USAAF lost 103 planes out of some 2700 sent over the target. At a cost of some $25,000,000 worth of equipment lost, therefore, and less than a thousand men missing, the two bomber commands paralyzed Germany's greatest port, and destroyed an incalculable amount of industrial property. At Vegesack, in an attack which cost the Germans at least four submarines, some fifty fighters destroyed, and vast damage to the shipyards, the Americans lost two bombers.

The picture is not always so rosy. In the anniversary battles of August 17, the VIII Bomber Command lost more aircraft in a single day than it had lost in the first six months of operations over Europe. The price paid was no higher than expected and was more than justified by the results achieved. But it indicated clearly that the battle for air supremacy is not yet won. German antiaircraft defenses are still on the increase; their new fighters are more heavily armed. The air war in the European Theater of Operations is becoming a slugging match between offense and defense. The side with the most stamina will win by a knockout.

Whether the decision is reached sooner or later, the VIII Bomber Command will-if present plans are followed-emerge from the struggle, as one of the most polished and powerful instruments of aerial destruction ever assembled. When the end comes in Europe, this force of men and planes, this accumulation of skill and experience, will join its strength with the strength of the American bomber commands now fighting on other combat theaters. As one force, this mighty armada will turn its attention elsewhere. . . .

Japan has been listening to the ominous sound of the thunder in the West, one day our lightning will strike in the East.