bear66
Well-known member
He said it was a waste of time as they generally missed them in the night bombing raids and they'd already been sabotaged!
The lack of bombing by the allies of transportation lines to the extermination camps was a disgrace.
16th May 1943: at 21:39 hrs. the first Formation of 617 Squadron ["Dambusters"] took off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire......
- Thread starter r00fie1
- Start date
The lack of bombing by the allies of transportation lines to the extermination camps was a disgrace.
Lefty
Well-known member
Were people carrying on working while the bombs were coming down?
bear66
Well-known member
Not at night, but prisoners were put in train housing at night, hence the white crosses they painted on the rooves.
HolgateCorner
Well-known member
A disgrace which, as far as I am aware, has never been explained.
Auschwitz was just within bombing range I believe.
bear66
Well-known member
The only explanation I've seen was a view that the Germans may resort to even worse atrocities. A dreadful decision to have to make if that was the reason.
Lefty
Well-known member
It was not a disgrace.
You need to balance up some very difficult choices.
How about not targeting industry, or the workers in those industries, Hamburg and Dresden etc were also hubs for communications eg port and railway.
Targeting them meant direct disruption but it also meant the Germans had to spend time dealing with housing, food and water shortages for the labour for the war effort. Repairs or new build had to be done. Refugees clogged up roads.
If you are impeding production, slave labour was needed even more. If the railways were knackered, they couldn't send jews off to camps. When they were repaired, it was arms and supplies that were then prioritised, rather than another train of children to the gas chambers. At least until the very late stages.
What you have to remember is that with any normal adversary, the war was lost by late 1942 and there would have been a surrender. Those in charge were not normal and fanatics permeated every facet of German society. Fear of their own side was extraordinary. The bombing was the only solution.
It was incredibly costly but incredibly effective.
Operation Gomorrah killed 37,000 in a week and wounded 180,000 when it destroyed Hamburg. The bomb sites weren't accurate for more precision bombing at that time, but it doesn't matter, the aim was to utterly disrupt. Remember bombing was by day with the USAAF and by night from the RAF. There was no let up. It was wearing the opposition down psychologically and physically as well as materially and logistically.
You need to balance up some very difficult choices.
How about not targeting industry, or the workers in those industries, Hamburg and Dresden etc were also hubs for communications eg port and railway.
Targeting them meant direct disruption but it also meant the Germans had to spend time dealing with housing, food and water shortages for the labour for the war effort. Repairs or new build had to be done. Refugees clogged up roads.
If you are impeding production, slave labour was needed even more. If the railways were knackered, they couldn't send jews off to camps. When they were repaired, it was arms and supplies that were then prioritised, rather than another train of children to the gas chambers. At least until the very late stages.
What you have to remember is that with any normal adversary, the war was lost by late 1942 and there would have been a surrender. Those in charge were not normal and fanatics permeated every facet of German society. Fear of their own side was extraordinary. The bombing was the only solution.
It was incredibly costly but incredibly effective.
Operation Gomorrah killed 37,000 in a week and wounded 180,000 when it destroyed Hamburg. The bomb sites weren't accurate for more precision bombing at that time, but it doesn't matter, the aim was to utterly disrupt. Remember bombing was by day with the USAAF and by night from the RAF. There was no let up. It was wearing the opposition down psychologically and physically as well as materially and logistically.
HolgateCorner
Well-known member
The ‘disgrace’ was with specific reference to not bombing the death camps.
No they weren't. Realistically, the Soviet Union would have beaten the Axis powers without D Day. A longer war, more casualties, but the Soviets would have won. D Day may have shortened the war a bit, but it didn't change the course of the war. It did change the course of the post war, because it prevented the Soviets from occupying more of Europe than they did.
Most important battles in WWII (Europe) were -
Stalingrad
Kursk
Kharkov
Smolensk
Zeelow
Halbe
Berlin
90% of all the Wehrmacht casualties were lost in those campaigns.
The Atlantic convoys were important but it's hard to quantify the effect the supply had, because by the end of the war, the Soviet Uniion was producing a lot of really good materiel on its own - like T34 tanks.
Jedi boro
Well-known member
He was offered to be taken off active duty after the raid as a PR ringleader to be used to promote war bonds but he refused and went back to his squadron sadly we know the out come.
incredible guy as you say we see his image in movies and expect him to be middle aged but he was only 24.
rip guy
r00fie1
Well-known member
We will look at the battles of El Alamein , Tobruck, Malta, Greece, the Far East....War is a dirty business - as others on here, far more qualified than me, can tell us.
No mans life is more or less valuable than anothers - the grave stones and the memorials from all wars tell of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice and we owe it to them to pay our respects.
Lefty
Well-known member
They didn’t target the death camps but they did very much go after the railways, but via railway hubs rather than specific lines over Germany. They were more specific on the western front once air supremacy was achieved during daytime hours and the fighter bombers could roam with impunity. They didn’t really have the range or payload for eastern Germany and Poland where most of the camps were.
HolgateCorner
Well-known member
You know a lot more about it than me, I thought Auschwitz was just in range for bombing and Churchill knew about the extermination there but chose not to go after it but sometimes you only read a small part of the story.
Lefty
Well-known member
The Germans positioned their railway hubs where the industry was, which happens to be where the labour force was ie cities. It is why we bombed them, we were disrupting all three.
STAFFORDA4
Active member
My thoughts exactly.
Lefty
Well-known member
@bear66
I've mentioned the James Holland/Al Murray We Have Ways podcast on here before. Have you listened to it?
They have been asking people to write in with family stories about their relatives WW2 experience. Sometimes they have actual accounts or letters from the time, sometimes they are simply a recollection from the son or daughter about what they know of their father's service, recalling stories they told them. They are really quite interesting and moving to hear. James and Al do a good job of reading out the letters they receive. You should consider writing in about your father, they would be appreciated. What has been really impressive to people on the patreon backers forum is just how important they find it that these experiences have been shared, not lost with the gradual passing of family.
I've mentioned the James Holland/Al Murray We Have Ways podcast on here before. Have you listened to it?
They have been asking people to write in with family stories about their relatives WW2 experience. Sometimes they have actual accounts or letters from the time, sometimes they are simply a recollection from the son or daughter about what they know of their father's service, recalling stories they told them. They are really quite interesting and moving to hear. James and Al do a good job of reading out the letters they receive. You should consider writing in about your father, they would be appreciated. What has been really impressive to people on the patreon backers forum is just how important they find it that these experiences have been shared, not lost with the gradual passing of family.
bear66
Well-known member
My father's story is recorded in the Imperial War Museum - his comrade was with him at Normandy. They were together throughout the rest of the war and remained friends till about 10 years ago. Both have now died.
There was another recording of them being freed by the Russians by someone from another regiment which gives good corroboration to my father's story.
Thanks for podcast recommendation.
Lefty
Well-known member
I'm sure they would still appreciate being able to read it out for their listeners
What were the chances of the RAF hitting a railway line in a night bombing raid? Most of the time they were lucky to hit the right town, let alone a railway line. And, unless the hit was on a bridge or tunnel, it would have fairly easy to fix the damage. The cost in terms of planes and aircrew lost trying to hit specific targets like that would have imapacted the broader bombing campaign against Berlin, etc.
bear66
Well-known member
Agree it was poor at night, hence the huge numbers of civilian casualties. One of the marshalling yards he was forced to work (badly) on was at Ulzen, which was hit by a daytime US precision bombing raid.
Lefty
Well-known member
The US daytime raids were generally no more effective as the RAF night bombing.
They tried to target military installations rather than carpet bomb an industrial area with the aim of 'dehousing' the workforce if factories and communication hubs were missed, but for the first two years of the war only 16% of their bombs landed within a kilometre of the target, due to the high altitude and brutal combat conditions they operated in.
The RAF developed better night sights and pathfinder radar techniques and then became more accurate until the Americans caught up in 1945. The Tallboy and Earthquake bombs were dropped with incredible precision remember.