Bombing of Berlin

[Mike Kelly]

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 Kelly]

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 Kelly]

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

[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 Kelly]

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.