Even Churchill put to rest the "prolonged and obstinate technical argument" against daylight bombing.
The biggest USAAF raid on Berlin took place just a few months before the end of the war.
On Feb. 3, 1945, almost 1,000 American B-17s hit Berlin in clear weather. Bombardiers aiming from 24,000 to 27,000 feet scored good accuracy amidst "murderous" German flak. Just 21 bombers were lost as the P-51s kept away the tattered remnants of the Luftwaffe.
Although marshaling yards and railways were top targets, the list of additional targets had some interesting sites. The official USAAF history listed them as the Reichschancellery, Air Ministry, Foreign Office, Ministry of Propaganda, and Gestapo headquarters.
This raid cost Berliners between 20,000 and 25,000 dead. Then, the bomb lines moved inside Berlin as advancing armies shortened the lines of communication. The attacks on transportation facilities inside cities were coordinated with efforts to stop repositioning of troops as the Red Army pressed in. They were "missions which the Russians had requested and seemed to appreciate," noted the USAAF official history.
The bombing of Berlin showed perhaps better than any other target how technical limits and campaign imperatives shaped the bomber war.
Looking back, the lens of history is smudged by brilliantly effective Nazi propaganda that recorded every attack in the most dramatic and graphic terms. It turned the bomber war against Germany into an ongoing debate scrutinized far more than bombings carried out by the Nazis earlier in the war ever were.
In part because of the efforts of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, tales of the bombing of the Reich and debate over its morality have lingered to this day. The analysis of the bombing tends to blend RAF and USAAF results with little distinction between the very different methods, motives, and objectives of the two air forces’ campaigns.
For the USAAF, bombing "Hitler’s town" always followed a campaign-level imperative—destroying the Luftwaffe, or wrecking ground lines of communication.
Het ging niet allemaal goed. Tijdens het afwerpen van de bommen komt dit vliegtuig onder een andere bommenwwerper terecht.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten