Policy at the start of the war Before World War II began, the rapid pace of aviation technology created a belief that groups of bombers would be capable of devastating cities. For example, British Prime Minister
Stanley Baldwin warned in 1932, "
The bomber will always get through." When the war began on 1 September 1939 with Germany's
invasion of Poland,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the
armed neutralitarian United States, issued an appeal to the major belligerents (Britain, France, Germany, and Poland) to confine their air raids to
military targets, and "under no circumstances undertake bombardment from the air of civilian populations in unfortified cities". The British and French agreed to abide by the request, with the British reply undertaking to "confine bombardment to strictly military objectives upon the understanding that these same
rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all their opponents". Germany also agreed to abide by Roosevelt's request and explained the bombing of Warsaw as within the agreement because it was supposedly a fortified city—Germany did not have a policy of targeting enemy civilians as part of their doctrine prior to World War II. The British Government's policy was formulated on 31 August 1939: if Germany initiated unrestricted air action, the
RAF "should attack objectives vital to Germany's war effort, and in particular her oil resources". If the
Luftwaffe confined attacks to purely military targets, the RAF should "launch an attack on the German fleet at
Wilhelmshaven" and "attack warships at sea when found within range". The government communicated to their French allies the intention "not to initiate air action which might involve the risk of civilian casualties". While it was acknowledged bombing Germany would cause civilian casualties, the British government renounced deliberate bombing of civilian property, outside combat zones, as a military tactic. The British changed their policy on 15 May 1940, one day after the German bombing of Rotterdam, when the RAF was given permission to attack targets in the
Ruhr Area, including oil plants and other civilian
industrial targets which aided the German war effort, such as
blast furnaces that at night were self-illuminating. The first RAF raid on the interior of Germany took place on the night of 15/16 May 1940 while the
Battle of France was still continuing.
Early war in Europe , the first Polish city destroyed by
Luftwaffe bombing, on 1 September 1939. In one of the first acts of World War II, German bombers destroyed of all the buildings, including a clearly marked hospital and church, killing approximately civilians. bombing civilian infrastructure such as hospitals Notably, the
Luftwaffe bombed the Polish capital of Warsaw, and the small towns
Wieluń and
Frampol. The
bombing of Wieluń, one of the first military acts of World War II and the first major act of bombing, was carried out on a town that had little to no military value. Similarly, the
bombing of Frampol has been described as an experiment to test the German tactics and weapons effectiveness. British historian
Norman Davies writes in
Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory: "Frampol was chosen partly because it was completely defenceless, and partly because its baroque street plan presented a perfect geometric grid for calculations and measurements." In his book,
Augen am Himmel (
Eyes on the Sky),
Wolfgang Schreyer wrote: Frampol was chosen as an experimental object, because test bombers, flying at low speed, weren't endangered by AA fire. Also, the centrally placed town hall was an ideal orientation point for the crews. We watched possibility of orientation after visible signs, and also the size of village, what guaranteed that bombs nevertheless fall down on Frampol. From one side it should make easier the note of probe, from second side it should confirm the efficiency of used bombs. The directives issued to the
Luftwaffe for the Polish Campaign were to prevent the
Polish Air Force from influencing the ground battles or attacking German territory. In addition, it was to support the advance of German ground forces through direct tactical and indirect air support with attacks against Polish mobilisation centres and thus delay an orderly Polish strategic concentration of forces and to deny mobility for Polish reinforcements through the destruction of strategic Polish rail routes. Polish reports from the beginning of September note strafing of civilians by German attacks and bombing of cemeteries and marked hospitals (marking of hospitals proved counterproductive as German aircraft began to specifically target them, until hospitals were moved into the open to avoid such targeting), and indiscriminate attacks on fleeing civilians which according to Szarota was a direct violation of the
Hague Convention. Warsaw was first attacked by German ground forces on 9 September and was put under siege on 13 September. German author Boog claims that with the arrival of German ground forces, the situation of Warsaw changed; under the Hague Convention, the city could be legitimately attacked as it was a defended city in the front line that refused calls to surrender. The bombing of the rail network, crossroads, and troop concentrations played havoc on Polish mobilisation, while attacks upon civilian and military targets in towns and cities disrupted command and control by wrecking the antiquated Polish signal network. Over a period of a few days,
Luftwaffe numerical and technological superiority took its toll on the Polish Air Force. Polish Air Force bases across Poland were also subjected to
Luftwaffe bombing from 1 September 1939. On 13 September, following orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe (German
Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe (
ObdL)) to launch an attack on Warsaw's Jewish Quarter, justified as being for unspecified crimes committed against German soldiers but probably in response to a recent defeat by Polish ground troops, and intended as a terror attack, 183 bomber
sorties were flown with 50:50 load of high explosive and incendiary bombs, reportedly set the Jewish Quarter ablaze. On 22 September,
Wolfram von Richthofen messaged, "Urgently request exploitation of last opportunity for large-scale experiment as devastation terror raid ... Every effort will be made to eradicate Warsaw completely". His request was rejected. On 14 September, the French
Air attaché in Warsaw reported to Paris, "the German Air Force acted in accordance to the international laws of war [...] and bombed only targets of military nature. Therefore, there is no reason for French
retorsions." That day – the Jewish New Year – the Germans concentrated again on the Warsaw's Jewish population, bombing the Jewish quarter and targeting
synagogues. Three days later, Warsaw was surrounded by the
Wehrmacht, and hundreds of thousands of
leaflets were dropped on the city, instructing citizens to evacuate the city pending a possible bomber attack. On 25 September the
Luftwaffe flew 1,150 sorties and dropped 560 tonnes of high explosive and 72 tonnes of incendiaries. (Overall, incendiaries made up only three percent of the total tonnage dropped.) Due to prevailing strong winds they achieved poor accuracy, even causing some casualties to besieging German troops.
The Western Front, 1939 to May 1940 On 3 September 1939, following the German invasion of Poland, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany and the war in the West began. The RAF bombed German warships and light vessels in several harbours on 3 and 4 September. attacks on ships at
Cuxhaven and
Heligoland followed. The 1939
Battle of the Heligoland Bight showed the vulnerability of bombers to fighter attack. Germany's first strikes were not carried out until 16 and 17 October 1939, against the British fleet at
Rosyth and
Scapa Flow. Little activity followed. Meanwhile, attacks by the Royal Air Force dwindled to less than one a month. As the winter set in, both sides engaged in
propaganda warfare, dropping leaflets on the populations below. The
Phoney War continued. The British government banned attacks on land targets and German warships in port due to the risk of civilian casualties. For the Germans, the earliest directive from the Luftwaffe head Hermann Göring permitted restricted attacks upon warships anywhere, as well as upon troop transports at sea. However, Hitler's
OKW Direktive Nr 2 and
Luftwaffe Direktive Nr 2, prohibited attacks upon enemy naval forces unless the enemy bombed Germany first, noting, "the guiding principle must be not to provoke the initiation of aerial warfare on the part of Germany." After the
Altmark incident, the
Luftwaffe launched a strike against the British navy base at Scapa Flow on 16 March 1940, leading to the first British civilian death. A British attack followed three days later against the German airbase at
Hörnum on the island of
Sylt, hitting a hospital, although there were no casualties. The Germans retaliated with a naval raid. German bombing of France began on the night of 9/10 May. By 11 May, the French reported bombs dropped on Henin-Lietard, Bruay, Lens, La Fere, Loan, Nancy, Colmar, Pontoise, Lambersart, Lyons, Bouai, Hasebrouck, Doullens and Abbeville with at least 40 civilians killed. While Allied light and medium bombers attempted to delay the German invasion by striking at troop columns and bridges, the British War Cabinet gave permission for limited bombing raids against targets such as roads and railways west of the
Rhine River.
Rotterdam Blitz The Germans used the threat of bombing
Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to try to get the Dutch to come to terms and surrender. After a second ultimatum had been issued by the Germans, it appeared their effort had failed and on 14 May 1940,
Luftwaffe bombers were ordered to bomb Rotterdam in an effort to force the capitulation of the besieged city. The controversial bombing targeted the centre of the besieged city, instead of providing direct tactical support for the hard-pressed German 22nd Infantry Division (under Lt. Gen.
von Sponeck, which had airlanded on 10 May) in combat with Dutch forces northwest of the city, and in the eastern part of the city at the Meuse river bridge. At the last minute, the Netherlands decided to submit and sent a plenipotentiary and other negotiators across to German lines. There was an attempt to call off the assault, but the bombing mission had already begun. In legal terms, the attack was performed against a defended part of a city vital for the military objectives and in the front-line, and the bombing respected Article 25 to 27 of the Hague Conventions on Land Warfare. Out of 100
Heinkel He 111s, 57 dropped their ordnance, a combined 97 tons of bombs. In the resulting fire of the city centre were devastated, including 21 churches and 4 hospitals. The strike killed between 800 and 1,000 civilians, wounded over 1,000, and made 78,000 homeless. In 2022, archival research showed a total of 1,150 to 1,250 civilians, and Dutch army and Nazi army personnel were killed during the Rotterdam Blitz. Nearly twenty-five thousand homes, 2,320 stores, 775 warehouses and 62 schools were destroyed. Whilst German historian Horst Boog says
British propaganda inflated the number of civilian casualties by a factor of 30, the Dutch legation in New York later issued a revised figure of 30,000. International news agencies widely reported these figures, portraying Rotterdam as a city mercilessly destroyed by terror bombing without regard for civilian life, with 30,000 dead lying under the ruins. It has been argued that the bombing was against well-defined targets, albeit in the middle of the city, and would have assisted the advancing German Army. The Germans had threatened to bomb
Utrecht in the same fashion, and the Netherlands surrendered.
Allied response Following the attack on Rotterdam,
RAF Bomber Command was authorized to attack German targets east of the Rhine on 15 May 1940; the Air Ministry authorized
Air Marshal Charles Portal to attack targets in the
Ruhr, including
oil plants and other civilian industrial targets which aided the German war effort, such as blast furnaces. The underlying motive for the attacks was to divert German air forces away from the land front. Churchill explained the rationale of his decision to his French counterparts in a letter dated the 16th: "I have examined today with the War Cabinet and all the experts the request which you made to me last night and this morning for further fighter squadrons. We are all agreed that it is better to draw the enemy on to this Island by striking at his vitals, and thus to aid the common cause." Due to the inadequate British
bomb-sights the strikes that followed "had the effect of terror raids on towns and villages." On the night of 17/18 May, RAF Bomber Command bombed oil installations in
Hamburg and
Bremen; the H.E. and 400 incendiaries dropped caused six large, one moderately large and 29 small fires. As a result of the attack, 47 people were killed and 127 were wounded. Railway yards at Cologne were attacked on the same night. Despite the British attacks on German cities, the Luftwaffe did not begin to attack military and economic targets in the UK until six weeks after the campaign in France was concluded. and in the port of
Kiel and the next day, 16 RAF bombers attacked German train facilities in
Hamm. The
Battle of Britain began in early June 1940 with small scale bombing raids on Britain. These
Störangriffe ("nuisance raids") were used to train bomber crews in both day and night attacks, to test defences and try out methods. These training flights continued through July and August, and into the first week of September.
Hermann Göring's general order, issued on 30 June 1940, stated: The
Kanalkampf of attacks on shipping and fighter skirmishes over the English Channel started on 4 July, and escalated on 10 July, a day which Dowding later proposed as the official start date for the Battle. Throughout the battle, Hitler called for the British to accept peace, but they refused to negotiate. Still hoping that the British would negotiate for peace, Hitler explicitly prohibited attacks on London and against civilians. being used as a bomb shelter in 1940 On 6 August Göring finalised plans for
"Operation Eagle Attack" with his commanders: destruction of RAF Fighter Command across the south of England was to take four days, then bombing of military and economic targets was to systematically extend up to the Midlands until daylight attacks could proceed unhindered over the whole of Britain, then a major attack was to be made on London causing a crisis with refugees when the intended
Operation Sea Lion invasion was due to begin. On 8 August 1940, the Germans switched to raids on RAF fighter bases. To reduce losses, the
Luftwaffe also began to use increasing numbers of bombers at night. From the night of 19/20 August night bombing targeted the aircraft industry, ports, harbours, and other strategic targets in towns and cities, including suburban areas around London. By the last week of August, over half the missions were flown under the cover of dark. On 24 August, several off-course German bombers accidentally bombed central areas of London. The next day, the RAF bombed Berlin for the first time, targeting
Tempelhof airfield and the
Siemens factories in Siemenstadt. These attacks were seen by the Germans as indiscriminate due to their inaccuracy, and this infuriated Hitler; he ordered that the 'night piracy of the British' be countered by a concentrated night offensive against the island, and especially London. In a public speech in Berlin on 4 September 1940, Hitler announced that: bomber flying over Wapping and the Isle of Dogs in the East End of
London at the start of the Luftwaffe's evening raids of 7 September 1940 The Blitz was underway. Göring – at
Kesselring's urging and with Hitler's support – turned to a massive assault on the British capital. On 7 September 318 bombers from the whole
KG 53 supported by eight other , flew almost continuous sorties against London, the dock area which was already in flames from earlier daylight attacks. Another 250 bomber sorties were flown in the night. By the morning of 8 September 430 Londoners had been killed. The
Luftwaffe issued a press notice announcing they had dropped more than of bombs on London in 24 hours. Many other British cities were hit in the nine-month Blitz,
including Plymouth,
Swansea,
Birmingham,
Sheffield,
Liverpool,
Southampton,
Manchester,
Bristol,
Belfast,
Cardiff,
Clydebank,
Kingston upon Hull and
Coventry.
Basil Collier, author of 'The Defence of the United Kingdom', the
HMSO's official history, wrote: In addition to the conclusions of Basil Collier to that effect there are also, for example, the 1949 memoirs of General
Henry H. Arnold who had been in London in 1941 and supported Collier's estimate.
Harris noted in 1947 that the Germans had failed to take the opportunity to destroy English cities by concentrated incendiary bombing. As the war continued, an escalating
war of electronic technology developed. To counter German radio navigation aids, which helped their navigators find targets in the dark and through
cloud cover, the British raced to work out the problems with countermeasures (most notably airborne
radar, as well as highly effective deceptive beacons and jammers). Despite causing a great deal of damage and disrupting the daily lives of the civilian population, the bombing of Britain failed to have an impact. British
air defenses became more formidable, and attacks tapered off as Germany abandoned its efforts against Britain and focused more on the Soviet Union. Operation Abigail Rachel, the
bombing of Mannheim, was one of the first revenge bombings by the British against a German city on 16 December. The British had been waiting for the opportunity to experiment with such a raid aimed at creating a maximum of destruction in a selected town since the summer of 1940, and the opportunity was given after the German raid on Coventry. Internally it was declared to be a reprisal for Coventry and Southampton. The new bombing policy was officially ordered by Churchill at the start of December, on condition it receive no publicity and be considered an experiment. Target marking and most bombs missed the city centre. This led to the development of the
bomber stream. Despite the lack of decisive success of this raid, approval was granted for further Abigails.
Germany later in the war A in French
''Armee de l'Air'' colours in 1945. Goering's first chief of staff,
Generalleutnant Walther Wever, was a big advocate of the
Ural bomber program, but when he died in a flying accident in 1936, support for the strategic bomber program began to dwindle rapidly under Goering's influence. Under pressure from Goering, Albert Kesselring, Wever's replacement, opted for a medium, all-purpose, twin-engine tactical bomber.
Erhard Milch, who strongly supported Goering's conceptions, was instrumental in the Luftwaffe's future. Milch believed that the German industry (in terms of raw materials and production capacity) could only produce 1,000 four-engine heavy bombers per year, but many times that number of twin-engine bombers. In spring of 1937, just when the Luftwaffe's own Technical Office had passed the
Ju-89 and
Do-19 heavy bomber models as ready for testing, Goering ordered a halt to all work on the four-engine strategic bomber program. However, in 1939 the
Bomber B program sought to produce a twin-engined strategic bomber that could carry nearly-equivalent bombloads of Allied four-engined heavy bombers, but as an advanced development of the pre-war
Schnellbomber concept. The
Bomber B designs meant to achieve top level speeds of at least 600 km/h (370 mph). The
Bomber B program went nowhere, as the intended designs required pairs of combat-reliable aviation engines of at least 1,500 kW (2,000 PS) apiece, something that the German aviation engine industry had
serious problems in developing. A further design program was initiated in the late spring of 1942, to develop four-engine (and later six-engine) bombers with trans-Atlantic range to attack the continental United States and aptly named the
Amerika Bomber. This also went nowhere, with only five prototype airframes from two design competitors getting airborne for testing, before the war's end. that struck Teniers Square, Antwerp, Belgium on 27 November 1944 The only heavy bomber design to see service with the
Luftwaffe in World War II was the trouble-prone
Heinkel He 177A. In the initial design of November 1937, the
RLM had mistakenly decided that the He 177 should also have a medium angle "dive bombing" capability.
Ernst Heinkel and Milch vehemently disagreed with this, but the requirement was not rescinded until September 1942 by Goering himself. The He 177A went into service in April 1942, despite an ongoing series of engine fires in the small batch of A-0 series production prototype aircraft. This deficiency, along with numerous, seriously deficient design features, led Goering to decry the He 177A's
Daimler-Benz DB 606 powerplants to be nothing more than fire-prone, cumbersome
"welded-together engines" in August of that year. Production of the B-series by Heinkel's only subcontractor for the
Greif,
Arado Flugzeugwerke, would not have started until November 1944, because of Arado's focus on the production of its own
Arado Ar 234 jet-powered reconnaissance-bomber at the time. The July 1944-initiated
Emergency Fighter Program (), as well as the devastating effects of Allied bombing on the entire German aviation industry, prevented any production of the He 177B design. The He 177A entered service in April 1942. At this time, after
a destructive RAF attack on Lübeck, Adolf Hitler ordered the
Luftwaffe to retaliate with the so-called
Baedeker Blitz: {{blockquote|The Führer has ordered that the air war against England be given a more aggressive stamp. Accordingly, when targets are being selected, preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life. Besides raids on ports and industry, terror attacks of retaliatory nature are to be carried out against towns other than London. Minelaying is to be scaled down in favour of these attacks.|Signal from the Führer's headquarters to the
Luftwaffe High Command, 14 April 1942. The Luftwaffe destroyed numerous Soviet cities through bombing, including
Minsk,
Sevastopol, and
Stalingrad. 20,528 tons of bombs were dropped on Sevastopol in June 1942 alone. German bombing efforts on the Eastern Front dwarfed its commitments in the west. From 22 June 1941 to 30 April 1944, the Luftwaffe dropped 756,773 tonnes of bombs on the Eastern Front, a monthly average of 22,000 tonnes. German scientists had invented
vengeance weapons –
V-1 flying bombs and
V-2 ballistic missiles – and these were used to launch an aerial assault on London and other cities in southern England from continental Europe. The campaign was much less destructive than the Blitz. As the Allies advanced across France and towards Germany from the West, Paris,
Liège,
Lille, and
Antwerp also became targets. The British and US directed part of their strategic bombing effort to the eradication of "wonder weapon" threats in what was later known as
Operation Crossbow. The development of the V2 was hit preemptively in
Operation Hydra of August 1943 against Peenemunde research facility.
The British later in the war The purpose of the area bombardment of cities was laid out in a British Air Staff paper, dated 23 September 1941: During the first few months of the area bombing campaign, an internal debate within the British government about the most effective use of the nation's limited resources in waging war on Germany continued. Should the
Royal Air Force (RAF) be scaled back to allow more resources to go to the
British Army and
Royal Navy or should the strategic bombing option be followed and expanded? An influential paper was presented to support the bombing campaign by Professor
Frederick Lindemann, the British government's leading scientific adviser, justifying the use of area bombing to "
dehouse" the German workforce as the most effective way of reducing their morale and affecting enemy war production.
Mr. Justice Singleton, a High Court Judge, was asked by the cabinet to look into the competing points of view. In his report, delivered on 20 May 1942, he concluded: In the end, thanks in part to the dehousing paper, it was this view which prevailed and Bomber Command would remain an important component of the British war effort up to the end of World War II. A large proportion of the industrial production of the United Kingdom was harnessed to the task of creating a vast fleet of heavy bombers. Until 1944, the effect on German production was remarkably small and raised doubts whether it was wise to divert so much effort—the response being there was nowhere else the effort could have been applied, as readily, to greater effect. survived the war. Lindemann was liked and trusted by
Winston Churchill, who appointed him the British government's leading scientific adviser with a seat in the
Cabinet. In 1942, Lindemann presented the "
dehousing paper" to the Cabinet showing the effect that intensive bombing of German cities could produce. It was accepted by the Cabinet, and
Air Marshal Harris was appointed to carry out the task. It became an important part of the
total war waged against Germany. Professor Lindemann's paper put forward the theory of attacking major industrial centres in order to deliberately destroy as many homes and houses as possible. Working-class homes were to be targeted because they had a higher density and fire storms were more likely. This would displace the German workforce and reduce their ability to work. His calculations (which were questioned at the time, in particular by Professor
P. M. S. Blackett of the Admiralty
operations research department, expressly refuting Lindemann's conclusions) showed the RAF's Bomber Command would be able to destroy the majority of German houses located in cities quite quickly. The plan was highly controversial even before it started, but the Cabinet thought that bombing was the only option available to directly attack Germany (as a major invasion of the continent was almost two years away), and the Soviets were demanding that the Western Allies do something to relieve the pressure on the
Eastern Front. Few in Britain opposed this policy, but there were three notable opponents in Parliament, Bishop
George Bell and the Labour
MPs Richard Stokes and
Alfred Salter. after a bombing, March 1945 On 14 February 1942, the
area bombing directive was issued to Bomber Command. Bombing was to be "focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular of the industrial workers." Though it was never explicitly declared, this was the nearest that the British got to a declaration of unrestricted aerial bombing – Directive 22 said "You are accordingly authorised to use your forces without restriction", and then listing a series of primary targets which included Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, and
Cologne. Secondary targets included
Braunschweig,
Lübeck,
Rostock,
Bremen, Kiel, Hanover, Frankfurt, Mannheim,
Stuttgart, and
Schweinfurt. The directive stated that "operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civilian population, and in particular, the industrial workers". Lest there be any confusion,
Sir Charles Portal wrote to
Air Chief Marshal Norman Bottomley on 15 February, The first true practical demonstrations were on the night of 28 to 29 March 1942, when 234 aircraft bombed the port of Lübeck. This target was chosen not because it was a significant military target, but because it was expected to be particularly susceptible – in Harris's words it was "built more like a fire lighter than a city". The old timber structures burned well, and the raid destroyed most of the city's centre. A few days later, Rostock suffered the same fate.
over Hamburg At this stage of the air war, the most effective and disruptive examples of area bombing were the "thousand-bomber raids". Bomber Command was able by organization and drafting in as many aircraft as possible to assemble very large forces which could then attack a single area, overwhelming the defences. The aircraft would be staggered so that they would arrive over the target in succession: the new technique of the "bomber stream". On 30 May 1942, between 0047 and 0225 hours, in
Operation Millennium 1,046 bombers dropped over 2,000 tons of high explosive and incendiaries on Cologne, and the resulting fires burned it from end to end. The damage inflicted was extensive. The fires could be seen 600 miles away at an altitude of 20,000 feet. Some 3,300 houses were destroyed, and 10,000 were damaged. 12,000 separate fires raged destroying 36 factories, damaging 270 more, and leaving 45,000 people with nowhere to live or to work. Only 384 civilians and 85 soldiers were killed, but thousands evacuated the city. Bomber Command lost 40 bombers. Two further thousand-bomber raids were conducted over Essen and Bremen, but neither so utterly shook both sides as the scale of the destruction at Cologne and Hamburg. The effects of the massive raids using a combination of
blockbuster bombs (to blow off roofs) and incendiaries (to start fires in the exposed buildings) created
firestorms in some cities. The most extreme examples of which were caused by
Operation Gomorrah, the combined USAAF/RAF
attack on Hamburg, (45,000 dead),
attack on Kassel (10,000 dead), the
attack on Darmstadt (12,500 dead), the
attack on Pforzheim (21,200 dead), the attack on Swinemuende (23,000 dead) and the
attack on Dresden (25,000 dead). According to economic historian
Adam Tooze, in his book
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, a turning point in the bomber offensive was reached in March 1943, during the
Battle of the Ruhr. Over five months, 34,000 of bombs were dropped. Following the raids, steel production fell by 200,000 tons, making a shortfall of 400,000 tons. Speer acknowledged that the RAF were hitting the right targets, and raids severely disrupted his plans to increase production to meet increasing attritional needs. Between July 1943 and March 1944 there were no further increases in the output of aircraft. The bombing of Hamburg in 1943 also produced impressive results. Attacks on Tiger I heavy tank production, and of that of 88mm guns, the most potent dual-purpose artillery piece in the
Wehrmacht, meant that output of both was "set back for months". On top of this, some 62 percent of the population was dehoused causing more difficulties. However, RAF Bomber Command allowed itself to be distracted by Harris' desire for a war winning blow, and attempted the fruitless missions to
destroy Berlin and end the war by spring, 1944. In October 1943, Harris urged the government to be honest with the public regarding the purpose of the bombing campaign. To Harris, his complete success at Hamburg confirmed the validity and necessity of his methods, and he urged that: He further said, By contrast, the
United States Strategic Bombing Survey found attacks on waterways, beginning 23 September with strikes against the
Dortmund-Ems Canal and
Mittelland Canal, produced tremendous traffic problems on the Rhine River. It had immediate effects on shipments of goods, and especially coal deliveries, upon which Germany's economy depended. With no more additional effort, by February 1945, rail transport (which competed for coal) had seen its shipments cut by more than half, and by March, "except in limited areas, the coal supply had been eliminated". The devastating bombing raids of Dortmund on 12 March 1945 with 1,108 aircraft – 748 Lancasters, 292 Halifaxes, 68
de Havilland Mosquitos – was a record attack on a single target in the whole of World War II. More than 4,800 tons of bombs were dropped through the city centre and the south of the city and destroyed 98% of buildings.
Other British efforts Operation Chastise, better known as the Dambusters raid, was an attempt to damage German industrial production by crippling its hydro-electric power and transport in the Ruhr area. The Germans also built large-scale night-time decoys like the
Krupp decoy site () which was a German decoy-site of the
Krupp steel works in Essen. During World War II, it was designed to divert Allied
airstrikes from the actual production site of the arms factory.
Operation Hydra of August 1943 sought to destroy German work on long-range rockets but only delayed it by a few months. Subsequent efforts were directed against
V-weapons launch sites in France.
U.S. bombing in Europe In mid-1942, the
United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) arrived in the UK and carried out a few raids across the English Channel. The USAAF
Eighth Air Force's B-17 bombers were called the "Flying Fortresses" because of their heavy defensive armament of ten to twelve machine guns — eventually comprising up to thirteen heavy 12.7 mm calibre,
"light barrel" Browning M2 guns per bomber — and armor plating in vital locations. In part because of their heavier armament and armor, they carried smaller bomb loads than British bombers. With all of this, the USAAF's commanders in Washington, D.C., and in UK adopted the strategy of taking on the Luftwaffe head on, in larger and larger air raids by mutually defending bombers, flying over Germany, Austria, and France at high altitudes during the daytime. Also, both the
U.S. Government and its Army Air Forces commanders were reluctant to bomb enemy cities and towns indiscriminately. They claimed that by using the B-17 and the
Norden bombsight, the USAAF should be able to carry out "
precision bombing" on locations vital to the German war machine: factories, naval bases, shipyards, railroad yards, railroad junctions, power plants, steel mills,
airfields, etc. In January 1943, at the
Casablanca Conference, it was agreed RAF Bomber Command operations against Germany would be reinforced by the USAAF in a Combined Operations Offensive plan called
Operation Pointblank. Chief of the British Air Staff
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Charles Portal was put in charge of the "strategic direction" of both British and American bomber operations. The text of the
Casablanca directive read: "Your primary object will be the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial, and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened." At the beginning of the combined strategic bombing offensive on 4 March 1943, 669 RAF and 303 USAAF heavy bombers were available. In late 1943, the Pointblank attacks manifested themselves in the Schweinfurt raids (
first and
second). Despite the use of
combat boxes and the
assembly ships to form them, formations of unescorted bombers were no match for German fighters, which inflicted a deadly toll. In despair, the Eighth halted air operations over Germany until a long-range fighter could be found in 1944; it proved to be the
North American P-51 Mustang, which had the range to fly to Berlin and back. USAAF leaders firmly held to the claim of "precision bombing" of military targets for much of the war, and dismissed claims they were simply bombing cities. However, the weather over Europe seldom left the target visible. The American Eighth Air Force received the first
H2X radar sets (a derivative of the British H2S navigational radar) in December 1943. Within two weeks of the arrival of these first six sets, the Eighth command gave permission for them to area bomb a city using H2X and would continue to authorize, on average, about one such attack a week until the end of the war in Europe. In reality, the
day bombing of WWII was "precision bombing" only in the sense that most bombs fell somewhere near a specific designated target such as a railway yard. Conventionally, the air forces designated as "the target area" a circle having a radius of 1,000 feet (300 m) around the aiming point of attack. While accuracy improved during the war, Survey studies show that, overall, only about 20% of the bombs aimed at precision targets fell within this target area. In the fall of 1944, only seven percent of all bombs dropped by the Eighth Air Force hit within 1,000 feet of their aim point. Nevertheless, the sheer tonnage of explosive delivered by day and by night was eventually sufficient to cause widespread damage, and forced Germany to divert military resources to counter it. The diversion of German fighter planes and
anti-aircraft 88 mm artillery from the eastern and western fronts was a significant result of the Allied strategic bombing campaign. in
Bratislava,
Slovakia, June 16, 1944. For the sake of improving USAAF
firebombing capabilities,
a mock-up German Village was built up and repeatedly burned down. It contained full-scale replicas of German residential homes. Firebombing attacks proved quite powerful;
in a series of attacks launched by the RAF and US forces in July 1943 on Hamburg, roughly 50,000 civilians were killed and large areas of the city destroyed. With the arrival of the brand-new
Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy, command of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe was consolidated into the
United States Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF). With the addition of the Mustang to its strength — and a
major change in fighter tactics by the Eighth Air Force, meant to secure daylight
air supremacy for the Americans over Germany from the start of 1944 onwards — the
Combined Bomber Offensive was resumed. Planners targeted the
Luftwaffe in an operation known as "
Big Week" (20–25 February 1944) and succeeded brilliantly – its major attacks came during Operation Steinbock (the so-called "Baby Blitz") period for the Luftwaffe over England, while losses for the Luftwaffe's day fighter forces were so heavy that both the twin-engined
heavy fighter wings (the intended main anti-bomber force) and their replacement, single-engined of
heavily armed Fw 190As became largely ineffective, clearing each force of
bomber destroyers in their turn from Germany's skies throughout most of 1944. With such heavy losses of their primary means of defense against the USAAF's tactics, German planners were forced into a hasty dispersal of industry, with the day fighter arm never being able to fully recover in time. On 27 March 1944, the
Combined Chiefs of Staff issued orders granting control of all the Allied air forces in Europe, including strategic bombers, to General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, who delegated command to his deputy in
SHAEF Air Chief Marshal
Arthur Tedder. There was resistance to this order from some senior figures, including Churchill, Harris, and
Carl Spaatz, but after some debate, control passed to SHAEF on 1 April 1944. When the Combined Bomber Offensive officially ended on 1 April, Allied airmen were well on the way to achieving air superiority over all of Europe. While they continued some strategic bombing, the USAAF along with the RAF turned their attention to the tactical air battle in support of the
Normandy Invasion. It was not until the middle of September that the strategic bombing campaign of Germany again became the priority for the
USSTAF. The twin campaigns—the USAAF by day, the RAF by night—built up into massive bombing of German industrial areas, notably
the Ruhr, followed by attacks directly on cities such as Hamburg, Kassel, Pforzheim,
Mainz and the often-criticized bombing of Dresden. Approximately 10% of the bombs dropped on Germany are thought to have failed to explode.
Bombing in the Netherlands later in the war Eventually, the
Netherlands surrendered on the 15th of May 1940, after the bombings of multiple Dutch cities by the
Luftwaffe from 10 to 14 May, which had killed 1250-1350 citizens. However,
Zeeland continue to resist the German occupation with assistance from Belgian and French forces till the 27th of May, resulting in another bombing by the
Luftwaffe in
Middelburg on the 17th of May. During the German
occupation of the Netherlands from May 1940, the Allied Forces would perform approximately 600 strategic air bombings on Dutch soil. and approximately 30,000 were left homeless. During the end of the war in 1944–1945, the
Luftwaffe would again drop bombs on multiple Dutch cities, which were already liberated by the Allies in
Operation Market Garden while the rest of the country was still under German occupation. Around 100 civilians were killed and 200 wounded as a result of Operation Tidal Wave. In all, the bombardments killed some 7,693 civilians and wounded another 7,809. After the 23 August 1944 coup, the Luftwaffe began
bombing Bucharest in the attempt to remove the King and Government from power. The raids lasted from 24 to 26 August and killed or wounded over 300 civilians and damaged many buildings.
Bombing in Italy , with the
Statue of Liberty having a skull. Italy, first as an Axis member and later as a
German-occupied country, was heavily bombed by Allied forces for all the duration of the war. In
Northern Italy, after small-scale bombings which mainly targeted factories, only causing little damage and casualties, RAF Bomber Command launched a first large-scale
area bombing campaign on
Milan,
Turin and
Genoa (the so-called 'industrial triangle') during the autumn of 1942. All three cities suffered heavy damage and hundreds of civilian casualties, although the effects were less disastrous than those suffered by German cities, mainly because Italian cities had centres made of
brick and
stone buildings, while German cities had centers made of wooden buildings. Milan and Turin were bombed again in February 1943; the heaviest raids were carried out in July (295 bombers dropped 763 tons of bombs on Turin, killing 792 people) and August (all three cities were bombed and a total of 843 bombers dropped 2,268 tons of bombs over Milan, causing about 900 casualties). These attacks caused widespread damage and prompted most of the cities' inhabitants to flee. The only other city in Italy to be subjected to area bombing was
La Spezia, heavily bombed by the Bomber Command during April 1943, with slight casualties but massive damage (45% of the buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged, and just 25–30% remained undamaged). The effect of this on Italian war production was substantial, with a 60% reduction of capacity caused, not so much by the physical destruction of factories, but by the workforce leaving the bombed areas for the safety of less industrialised areas. This is the morale effect looked for in much of the bombing of Europe, based on the observed effects of the Blitz on industrial production in Britain. During 1944 and 1945 Milan, Turin and Genoa were instead bombed by
USAAF bombers, which mainly targeted factories and
marshalling yards; nonetheless, imprecision in bombings caused further destruction of vast areas. By the end of the war, about 30–40% of the buildings in each of the three cities were destroyed, and both in Milan and Turin less than half of the city remained undamaged.
2,199 people were killed in Turin and
over 2,200 in Milan. Several other cities in northern Italy suffered heavy damage and casualties due to USAAF bombings, usually aimed at factories and marshalling yards but often inaccurate; among them
Bologna (2,481 casualties),
Padua (about 2,000 casualties),
Rimini (98% of the city was destroyed or damaged),
Treviso (1,600 killed in the bombing of 7 April 1944, 80% of the city destroyed or damaged),
Trieste (463 casualties on 10 June 1944),
Vicenza (317 casualties on 18 November 1944). In
Southern Italy, after small-scale bombings by the RAF (more frequent than in the north), USAAF started its bombing campaign in December 1942. The bombings mostly targeted
harbour facilities, marshalling yards, factories and
airports, but the inaccuracy of the attacks caused extensive destruction and civilian casualties; among the cities hit the hardest were
Naples (6,000 casualties),
Messina (more than one third of the city was destroyed, and only 30% remained untouched),
Reggio Calabria,
Foggia (
thousands of casualties),
Cagliari (416 inhabitants were killed in the bombings of February 1943, 80% of the city was damaged or destroyed),
Palermo,
Catania and
Trapani (70% of the buildings were damaged or destroyed).
Central Italy was left untouched for the first three years of war, but from 1943 onwards it was heavily bombed by USAAF, with heavy damage (usually due to inaccuracy in bombing) to a number of cities, including
Livorno (57% of the city was destroyed or damaged, over 500 people were killed in June 1943),
Civitavecchia,
Grosseto,
Terni (1,077 casualties),
Pisa (1,738 casualties),
Pescara (between 2,200 and 3,900 casualties),
Ancona (1,182 casualties),
Viterbo (1,017 casualties) and
Isernia (about 500 casualties on 11 September 1943).
Rome was bombed on several occasions; the historic centre and the
Vatican were spared, but the
suburbs suffered heavy damage and between 3,000 and 5,000 casualties.
Florence also suffered some bombings in the outskirts (215 people were killed on 25 September 1943), while the historical centre was not bombed.
Venice proper was never bombed. In
Dalmatia, the Italian
enclave of
Zara suffered extensive bombing, which destroyed 60% of the city and killed about 1,000 of its 20,000 inhabitants, prompting most of the population to flee to mainland Italy (the town was later annexed to
Yugoslavia). Except for Rome, Venice, Florence,
Urbino and
Siena, damage to
cultural heritage in Italy was widespread.
Bombing in France German-occupied France contained a number of important targets that attracted the attention of the British, and later American bombing. In 1940, RAF Bomber Command launched attacks against German preparations for
Operation Sealion, the proposed invasion of England, attacking Channel Ports in France and Belgium and sinking large numbers of barges that had been collected by the Germans for use in the invasion. France's Atlantic ports were important bases for both German surface ships and submarines, while French industry was an important contributor to the German war effort. Before 1944, the Allies bombed targets in France that were part of the German war industry. This included raids such as those on the
Renault factory in
Boulogne-Billancourt in March 1942 or the port facilities of
Nantes in September 1943 (which killed 1,500 civilians). In preparation of Allied
landings in Normandy and
those in the south of France, French infrastructure (mainly rail transport) was intensively targeted by RAF and USAAF in May and June 1944. Despite intelligence provided by the
French Resistance, many residential areas were hit in error or lack of accuracy. This included cities like
Marseille (2,000 dead),
Lyon (1,000 dead),
Saint-Étienne,
Rouen,
Orléans,
Grenoble,
Nice,
Paris and surrounds (1000+ dead), and so on. The
Free French Air Force, operational since 1941, used to opt for the more risky skimming tactic when operating in national territory, to avoid civilian casualties. On 5 January 1945, British bombers struck the "Atlantic pocket" of
Royan and destroyed 85% of this city. A later raid, using
napalm was carried out before it was freed from Nazi occupation in April. Of the 3,000 civilians left in the city, 442 died. French civilian casualties due to Allied strategic bombing are estimated at half of the 67,000 French civilian dead during Allied operations in 1942–1945; the other part being mostly killed during tactical bombing in the Normandy campaign. 22% of the bombs dropped in Europe by British and American air forces between 1940 and 1945 were in France. The port city of
Le Havre had been destroyed by 132 bombings during the war (5,000 dead) until September 1944. It has been rebuilt by architect
Auguste Perret and is now a
World Heritage Site.
Soviet strategic bombing The first Soviet offensive bomber campaign was directed against the Romanian oilfields in the summer of 1941. In response to a German raid on Moscow on the night of 21–22 July 1941,
Soviet Naval Aviation launched a series of seven raids against Germany, primarily Berlin, between the night of 7–8 August and 3–4 September. These attacks were undertaken by between four and fifteen aircraft—beginning on 11 August the new
Tupolev TB-7—from the island of
Saaremaa, base of the
1st Torpedo Air Regiment. Richard Overy argues that the bombing campaign absorbed a significant proportion of German resources that could have been used on the Eastern Front; according to Overy, in 1943 and 1944, two-thirds of German fighters were being used to fend off bomber attacks, which Overy argues was a significant hindrance for the Luftwaffe as it prevented them from conducting bombing operations against the Soviets even though such an air campaign had caused considerable damage to the Soviets early in the war. Overy also reports that by the end of 1943, 75% of Flak 88mm guns were being used in air defence, preventing them from being used for anti-tank work on the Eastern Front despite their effectiveness in such a role. Overy also estimates that Britain spent about 7% of her war effort on bombing, which he concludes was not a waste of resources. Buckley argues the German war economy did indeed expand significantly following Albert Speer's appointment as Reichsminister of Armaments, "but it is spurious to argue that because production increased then bombing had no real impact". The bombing offensive did do serious damage to German production levels. German tank and aircraft production, though reached new records in production levels in 1944, was in particular one-third lower than planned. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that the bombing was not stiffening morale but seriously depressing it; fatalism, apathy, defeatism were apparent in bombed areas. The
Luftwaffe was blamed for not warding off the attacks and confidence in the Nazi regime fell by 14 percent. By the spring of 1944, some 75 percent of Germans believed the war was lost, owing to the intensity of the bombing. Historian
Max Hastings and the authors of the official history of the bomber offensive,
Noble Frankland among them, has argued bombing had a limited effect on morale. In the words of the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU), "The essential premise behind the policy of treating towns as unit targets for area attack, namely that the German economic system was fully extended, was false." This, the BBSU noted, was because official estimates of German war production were "more than 100 percent in excess of the true figures". The BBSU concluded, "Far from there being any evidence of a cumulative effect on (German) war production, it is evident that, as the (bombing) offensive progressed ... the effect on war production became progressively smaller (and) did not reach significant dimensions."
Allied bombing statistics 1939–1945 According to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Allied bombers between 1939 and 1945 dropped 1,415,745 tons of bombs over Germany (51.1% of the total bomb tonnage dropped by Allied bombers in the European campaign), 570,730 tons over France (20.6%), 379,565 tons over Italy (13.7%), 185,625 tons over Austria, Hungary and the Balkans (6.7%), and 218,873 tons over other countries (7.9%).
Casualties after Allied bombing on the night of 13 February 1945 After the war, the U.S.
Strategic Bombing Survey reviewed the available
casualty records in Germany and concluded that official German statistics of casualties from air attack had been too low. The survey estimated that at a minimum 305,000 were killed in German cities due to bombing and estimated a minimum of 780,000 wounded. Roughly 7,500,000 German civilians were also rendered homeless. Overy estimated in 2014 that in all about 353,000 civilians were killed by Allies bombing raids against German cities. In addition to the minimum figure given in the Strategic bombing survey, the number of people killed by Allied bombing in Germany has been estimated at between 400,000 and 600,000. In the United Kingdom, 60,595 Britons were killed by German bombing, and in France, 67,078 French people were killed by Allied bombing raids. Belgrade was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe on 6 April 1941, when more than 17,000 people were killed. According to
The Oxford companion to World War II, "After Italy's surrender the Allies kept up the bombing of the northern part occupied by the Germans and more than 50,000 Italians were killed in these raids." An
Istat study of 1957 stated that 64,354 Italians were killed by aerial bombing, 59,796 of whom were civilians. Over 160,000 Allied airmen and 33,700 planes were lost in the
European theatre. ==Asia==