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The Hamburg Firestorm: 24th July -2nd Aug 1943 World Naval Ships Forums Archive

The Hamburg Firestorm: 24th July -2nd Aug 1943

Posts 1 to 13

[B][B][B]This is a letter, dated as early as 27 May 1943, and written by ACM Harris to his six group commanders, setting out his future intentions. The first part can usefully be included here. MOST SECRET BOMBER COMMAND OPERATION ORDER NO. 173 Copy No: 23 Date: 27th May, 1943 INFORMATION 1.The importance of H A M B U R G. the second largest city in Germany with a population of one and a half millions, is well known and needs no further emphasis. The total destruction of this city would achieve immeasurable results in reducing the industrial capacity of the enemy's war machine. This, together with the effect on German morale, which would be felt throughout the country, would play a very important part in shortening and in winning the war. 2. The 'Battle of Hamburg' cannot be won in a single night. It is estimated that at least 10,000 tons of bombs will have to be dropped to complete the process of elimination. To achieve the maximum effect of air bombardment, this city should be subjected to sustained attack. 3. Bomber Command forces will consist of all available heavies in operational squadrons until sufficient hours of darkness enable the medium bombers to take part. It is hoped that the night attacks will be preceded and/or followed by heavy daylight attacks by the United States VIIlth Bomber Command. INTENTION 4. To destroy HAMBURG.[/B][/B][/B] At the end of July, 1943, in the tinderbox of a summer heat wave, Bomber Harris ordered his air force to begin a massive air raid on Hamburg, Germany's most important industrial centre and the largest seaport on the European Continent. To protect the flyers, Bomber Command had a new technological trick, nicknamed "window." One of the crew would hurl thin strips of aluminium foil out the rear doors of the plane as it flew across German territory. Fluttering in the slipstream, the metal confused the radar that controlled the searchlights and flak guns, sending them swinging erratically across the sky. The Germans would eventually discover the ruse, but not before Hamburg was levelled during a week of devastating raids. [B][B][B]At 9 p.m., July 24, sirens wailed through the streets of Hamburg. People hurried to their basements and to the underground bunkers as bombs exploded a few miles away. Searchlights raked the sky. The people knew what they had to do. There was no particular panic. Within minutes, high explosive, incendiary, phosphorus and napalm bombs pounded the city core. Buildings erupted in flames that shot 20 feet into the sky. With hurricane force, 150 mile per-hour winds were sucked into the oxygen vacuum created by the fire, ripping trees out by their roots, collapsing buildings, pulling children out of their mothers' arms. Twenty square miles of the city centre burned in an inferno that would rage for nine full days. [/B][/B][/B] "There was no smoke, only flames and flying sparks like a snowstorm," recalls a German firefighter. "The heat melted the lens in my protective glasses. I saw a crowd of people lying and sitting on the street, moaning. They had given up. I joined them and lay down, put my steel helmet against the wind, and tried to suck oxygen from the pavement. My clothes kept catching fire and I had to beat the flames out. The air was so hot it burned my windpipe. Everyone around me died. The clothing on the women was baked off them, leaving their bodies naked. The bodies didn't burn but dried out completely. Inge Einspenner, 16 years old, was with her cousin in Hamburg, planning to join her parents at their cottage on the 0st See the next day. "We were caught in a big, big fire," she recalls in halting English. "We came to a street crossing and the houses were all coming down on us. We didn't know where to go. Bombs were everywhere... We went this way, this way... We were lost. We were trying to go away from Hamburg. "We went down in a basement of a house. Then the next minute, we heard a big bomb. So we went out of the house, on the street. And there was a large fire-all the houses. "Everything was burning, even the paving stones in the street. We were blind from the fire. Burning dust. Ashes. People were burning. We went anywhere. We were only concerned to escape the fire. "I saw a child stick in the tar in the street. And it didn't come out again. It burned to death. And the mother tried to save her child. But she couldn't. She made one step. That was all. "A lady was seeing the girl burning and the mother sticking. Then she started to burn on her back, so she jumped into the river. But when she came out, she burnt again." [B][B][B]On August 2, 1943, Doug Harvey boarded his Halifax to fly the last of the four raids that firebombed Hamburg. It was his seventh mission; he had logged 500 hours and he felt as he always did when he flew over Germany-"in total terror that the German fighters were going to shoot me down." Taking off over the North Sea, the plane headed into a solid bank of clouds. Even though the ground crew had rubbed anti icing paste on the leading edges of the wings and sprayed the windscreen and propellers with deicer, the Halifax was coated with a heavy, transparent shell. So thick was the cloud cover that Harvey didn't notice the ice. He was having a hard time controlling the plane. Thunderstorms erupted and lightning streaked the clouds. [/B][/B][/B] "St. Elmo's Fire danced across the inside of the windscreen and all over the flying panel," says Harvey, "making it difficult to concentrate on the instruments." In the distance, the clouds above Hamburg glowed red from the raging fires. A huge cumulus nimbus drifted into the flight path of the Halifax. "If I got into that thunderhead our bomber would be in terrible danger. Trying to keep on course and yet avoid the storm, I inched my way around the storm cloud, or so I thought Except for the smouldering ruins and the fresh fires started by the succession of British and Canadian bombers, the city of Hamburg was black. There was no electricity. No water. Everything was wreckage and dead bodies. People were crushed under tons of bricks. Others were baked. Those who sought shelter in the underground bunkers suffocated. Families were asphyxiated in their cars. In the summer heat, the bodies rotted and stank. Rats and flies multiplied. Forty thousand people were dead. And the survivors, such as Inge Einspenner, would live forever with the horror and the incalculable loss. Most of the dead were ploughed into a mass grave dug in the shape of a cross. [B][B][B]From the British military perspective, the Bomber Command incendiary attack on Hamburg was outstandingly successful. Only 9,000 tons of bombs had killed 40,000 people and reduced a major industrial port to ashes. "None of our other attacks had produced effects that were a tenth as destructive as the effects of a firestorm," wrote Dyson after the war. The operation was nicknamed "Gomorrah."[/B][/B][/B] But bombers could only produce a firestorm when their planes were able to bomb without serious interference. Soon after Hamburg, the Germans developed radar to see through the Allies' aluminium-strip "windows." Only once more- 'at Dresden, in February, 1945-would the British in the Second World War succeed in burning a city to the ground. [B][B]Air Vice Marshall Harris was pleased with the Hamburg raids. To the outraged voices protesting the high civilian casualties, he replied, "In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method ... there is no proof that most casualties were women and children." In fact, according to meticulous German records revealed later, of the 42,000 people killed, 20 percent were children. For every 100 men who died, 160 women were killed. In all, the body count was 13,000 men, 21,000 women and over 8,000 kids.[/B][/B] jainso31

Jim - Having lived through heavy bombing raids, and night-after-night attacks, this gives me the shudders. Let us hope there is never a repetition. Edna

Edna-Lest We Forget-having lived the Fear and Trembling of WW2 bombing The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones; Julius Caesar- Act2 Sc.2.1 jainso31

[B][B]ADDENDUM[/B][/B] The burnt-out area was almost entirely residential. Approximately [B][B]16,000[/B][/B] multistoreyed apartment buildings were destroyed. There were few survivors from the firestorm area and approximately [B][B]40,000[/B][/B] people died, most of them by [B][B]carbon monoxide poisoning[/B][/B] when all the air was drawn out of their basement shelters. In the period immediately following this raid, approximately [B][B]1,200,000 [/B][/B]people - two thirds of Hamburg's population - fled the city in fear of further raids. jainso31

I saw Hamburg in 1950, the place was still mostly mounds of rubble. Civilians were short of most things, especially coffee & tobacco.

I know a Hamburg family. In 1943 the father was away at the front. The mother had two young daughters. They had whooping cough. A doctor said a change of air would help. They went to stay with relatives in Danzig for just two weeks. While they were away the bombing occurred and the district in Hamburg where they lived was obliterated and just about all their neighbours died. Not knowing this, the mother phoned to make arrangements for coming home, and was told that there was no point; there was nothing to come back to.

'Strategic Bombing' whereby no specific military assets are identified, but rather an entire city is targetted, is a most uncivilised form of warfare. Especially abhorrent when this results in such a large loss of life to non-combatants (and in this case, it's hard to understand how/why Blohm & Voss was left untouched). Michael

[B][B]Reference-Extract from the Butt Report 1941-45 0n the RAF's Strategic Bombing Plan via Wikipedia[/B][/B] [B][B]Sir Arthur Harris himself believed that there was a relationship between tonnage dropped, city areas destroyed, and lost production. The effect of Bomber Command's attacks on industrial production is not so clear cut. [/B][/B] The much better provided US survey was little concerned with the RAF area bombing campaign. It pointed to the great success of the USAAF's attacks on Germany's synthetic oil plants starting in the spring of 1944 - this had a crippling effect on German transportation and prevented the Luftwaffe from flying to anything like the order of battle that the aviation engine plants, parts and sub-assembly fabrication and final assembly manufacturing facilities; Luftwaffe training and logistics could have otherwise sustained. [B][B]Further, in going for targets they knew the Germans must defend, the new American escort fighters were able to inflict crippling losses on the Luftwaffe's fighter force. However it should be pointed out that the RAF also made a great contribution to the oil offensive as its abilities to attack precision targets had greatly improved since the arrival of new navigation and target-finding instruments; by mid 1944 it was also mounting huge bombing raids in daylight.[/B][/B] [B][B]Albert Speer, Hitler's Minister of Armaments noted that the larger British bombs were much more destructive. Shortly after the war's end, Speer was unequivocal about the effect of this:[/B][/B] [B][B][B]The real importance of the air war consisted in the fact that it opened a second front long before the invasion in Europe . . . Defence against air attacks required the production of thousands of anti-aircraft guns, the stockpiling of tremendous quantities of ammunition all over the country, and holding in readiness hundreds of thousands of soldiers, who in addition had to stay in position by their guns, often totally inactive, for months at a time . . . No one has yet seen that this was the greatest lost battle on the German side.[/B][/B][/B] In terms of production decrease resulting from the RAF area attacks, the US survey, based upon limited research, found that in 1943 it amounted to 9% and in 1944 to 17%.[B][B] Relying on US gathered statistics the British survey found that actual arms production decreases were a mere 3% for 1943, and 1% for 1944. However they did find decreases of 46.5% and 39% in the second half of 1943 and 1944 respectively in the metal processing industries[/B][/B]. These losses resulted from the devastating series of raids the Command launched on the Ruhr Valley at these times. A contrasting view was offered by Adam Tooze in 2006, that by referring to contemporary sources rather than post-war accounts[B][B] "there can be no doubt that the Battle of the Ruhr marked a turning point in the history of the German war economy ..[/B][/B].." and that in the first quarter of 1943 steel production fell by 200,000 tons, leading to cuts in the German ammunition production programme and a Zulieferungskrise (sub-components crisis).[B][B][B] German aircraft output did not increase between July 1943 and March 1944. "Bomber command had stopped Speer's armaments miracle in its tracks."[/B][/B][/B] This apparent lack of success is accounted for in several ways. The German industrial economy was so strong, its industrial bases so widely spread, that it was a hopeless task to try and crush it by area bombing. Further, up until 1943 it is undoubtedly the case that Germany was not fully mobilised for war, Speer remarked that single shift factory working was commonplace, and so there was plenty of slack in the system. It has been argued that the RAF campaign placed a limit on German arms production. This may be true but it is also the case that the German forces did not run out of arms and ammunition and that it was manpower that was a key limiting factor, as well as the destruction of transport facilities and the fuel to move. [B][B][B]Some positive points should be made. The greatest contribution to winning the war made by Bomber Command was in the huge diversion of German resources into defending the homeland; this was very considerable indeed. By January 1943 some 1,000 Luftwaffe night fighters were committed to the defence of the Reich – mostly twin engined Me 110 and Ju 88. Most critically, by September 1943, 8,876 of the deadly, dual purpose 88 mm guns were also defending the homeland with a further 25,000 light flak guns – 20/37 mm. The 88mm gun was an effective AA weapon, it was a deadly destroyer of tanks and lethal against advancing infantry. These weapons would have done much to augment German anti-tank defences on the Russian front. To man these weapons the flak regiments in Germany required some 90,000 fit personnel, and a further 1 million were deployed in clearing up and repairing the vast bomb-damage caused by the RAF attacks.[/B][/B][/B] This diversion to defensive purposes of German arms and manpower was an enormous contribution made by RAF Bomber Command to winning the war. By 1944 the bombing offensive was costing Germany 30% of all artillery production, 20% of heavy shells, 33% of the output of the optical industry for sights and aiming devices and 50% of the country's electro-technical output which had to be diverted to the anti-aircraft role. [B]From the British perspective it should be noted that the RAF offensive made a great contribution in sustaining morale during the dark days of the war, especially during the bleak winter of 1941-42. It was the only means that Britain possessed of taking the war directly to the enemy at that time[/B]. jainso31

[B][B]Bomber Commands Area Bombing Programme in WW2-a brief synopsis[/B][/B] [B][B] By June 1943, in Operation Gomorrah, British and American bombers attacked Hamburg day and night for an entire week; half the city was levelled, and 40,000 were killed. In January 1944, the RAF pummelled Berlin. On 11 December, Frankfurt, Hanau and Giesson were levelled by 1,600 American planes. In January 1945, the USAAF dropped almost 40,000 tons of bombs on Berlin, Cologne and Hamm. The RAF hit Bochum, Munich and Stuttgart.Solingen and Pforzeheim[/B][/B] [B][B]By the war’s last months, virtually every important German industrial town had been destroyed. Yet the bombing continued. Churchill, convinced that destroying East German communication centres would aid the Red Army’s advance on Berlin, authorised the bombing of Dresden. On 13-14 February 1945, around 30,000 civilians were killed in attacks by the RAF and the USAAF[/B][/B] [B][B]All in all 800000 German civilians lost their lives to the Allied Bombing Campaign[/B][/B] The effectiveness of the area bombing campaign is still debated. There was terrible destruction of the German economy, although output still rose during the war as the economy was geared more and more towards wartime needs. Public support in Germany for the Nazi regime, and civilian morale, was not obviously affected. [B][B]The bombing campaign did force Germany to devote huge resources to the defence of the homeland, and the German air force suffered significant losses at the hands of Allied fighter escorts. The US Eighth Air Force and RAF Bomber Command paid a high price. Six in ten British bomber aircrew were killed, one of the highest casualty rates of any service in the war[/B][/B] [B][B][B]NB It must be remembered that this thread is about Harris's determination to show the world that a city (Hamburg) could be destroyed by bombing-the fact that the Blohm und Voss works were not touched is neither here nor there [/B][/B][/B] jainso31.

The bombing campaign on German cities placed significant pressure on the scarce resources of the nation and the finances of the British treasury. Arguably, Harris' policy was too ambitious with losses more than double even his own estimates. Although significant damage was indeed caused, the area bombing of civilian population centres did not have the desired effect of achieving victory by breaking German morale (any more than the Blitz on London and other UK cities did) and therefore Trenchard’s doctrine was proven to be false. And just maybe without Harris’s enormous ego, the bombing campaign might even have been conducted more clinically - hurting the German war machine without involving indiscriminate targeting of non-combatants. Michael

[B][B]The Combined Bomber Offensive began on 10 June 1943[15] during the Battle of the Ruhr, Pointblank operations against the "intermediate objective" began on 14 June, and the "Effects of Bombing Offensive on German War Effort" (J.I.C. (43) 294) by the Joint Intelligence Subcommittee was issued 22 July 1943.[/B][/B] Losses during the first months of Pointblank operations and lower-than-planned U.S. bomber production resulted in Portal complaining about the 3 month CBO delay at the Cairo Conference, where the British refused a U.S. request to place the CBO under a "single Allied strategic air commander.":[B][B]After Arnold submitted the October 9, 1943 "Plan to Assure the Most Effective Exploitation of the Combined Bomber Offensive" on October 22 the "Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff" signed orders to raid "the aircraft industries in the southern Germany and Austria regions"[/B][/B] July 1943 was the first time that the USAAF would coordinate a raid on the same location as the RAF. They were to fly two daylight missions against industrial targets (U-boat pens and yards) following the opening raid of the RAF campaign against Hamburg. However smoke from the effects of the night's bombing obscured the targets. [B][B]In October 1943 Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris, C-in-C of RAF Bomber Command urged the UK government to be honest to the public regarding the purpose of the bombing campaign and openly announce that: "the aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated as the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany.[/B][/B] [B][B]It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."[/B][/B] [B][B]On February 13, 1944, the CCS issued a new plan for the "Bomber Offensive", which no longer included German morale in the objective but the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems, the disruption of vital elements of lines of communication and the material reduction of German air combat strength, by the successful prosecution of the combined bomber offensive from all convenient bases[/B][/B]. Overall reduction of German air combat strength in its factories, on the ground and in the air through mutually supporting attacks by both strategic air forces pursued with relentless determination against same target areas or systems so far as tactical conditions allow, in order to create the air situation most propitious for OVERLORD is immediate purpose of Bomber Offensive [B][B][B]"The subject of morale had been dropped and [the number of cities with targets] gave me a wide range of choice. … the new instructions therefore made no difference" to RAF Bomber Command operations (Arthur Harris).The February 13 plan was given the code name "Argument", and after the weather became favorable on February 19, Argument operations were conducted during Big Week (February 20–25). Harris claimed the Argument plan was not "a reasonable operation of war", and the Air Staff had to order Harris to bomb the Pointblank targets at Schweinfurt.[/B][/B][/B] Michael I think you are possibly right about another Commander- who had Harris's drive but not his blood thirsty attitude toward killing people; but having said that where/who was he.??? Harris got Bomber Command a bad reputation and it sticks to this day. jainso31

The earliest attacks by Bomber Command aircraft were wholly ineffective with Harris quoting the figure of only one in ten bombers getting within five miles of the target. The initial phase of the RAF area bombing campaign actually began on 28/29 March 1942, when Lübeck was attacked, followed by Rostock, Oberhausen, Mainz, Karlsruhe and Saarbrucken. The next phase saw an escalation from targets of moderate importance to targets of major importance. The first thousand-bomber raid took place on the night of 30 May 1942 with Cologne as the target. After the success of Cologne, the combined bomber offensive began attacking targets in the industrial heartland of the Ruhr, however these proved more difficult since the Ruhr was better defended with far trickier targets to hit (as well as having to deal with the problem of smog). Next came the raids on Hamburg, which are already well described in other parts of this thread. After that, the focus of attack shifted to Berlin, which Harris hoped might bring about an end to the war. Bomber Command aircraft made sixteen concerted attacks on the German capital, but compared to Hamburg, Berlin was far less successful, with ten times as many casualties. The biggest failure of the bombing offensive was probably the raid on Nuremberg. On the night of 30 March 1944, 795 aircraft were sent out, but 94 failed to return, resulting in a loss rate of 11.8 per cent. By now the Luftwaffe had adopted a new form of defensive attrition whereby enemy bombers were being harassed over the whole length of their inbound and outbound journey, rather than just over the target area itself. The ‘Pointblank’ bombing offensive finally came to an end as preparations for Overlord began. The raid on Dresden (February 1945) being the last major bombing raid of the war. Michael

Good morning Michael-read your article and I thought it was a pretty fair assessment of the Bombing Campaign-it did not really get going until the 1st 1000 over Cologne-however :- "The raid on Dresden (February 1945) being the last major of the war"was not- according to "The Bomber Command Diaries" by Martin Middlebrook there were twelve further raids classed as MAJOR ,as follows:- 1st March 1945 MANNHEIM 478 a/c 3 lost 2nd----------- COLOGNE 858 a/c 9 lost LAST RAID 5th----------- CHEMNITZ (Thunderclap)498 a/c 22lost 7th----------- DESSAU---------"-------526 a/c 18 lost 11th---------- ESSEN------------------1079a/c 3lost 12th---------- DORTMUND-------------1108 a/c 2 lost Record tonnage of bombs dropped 4851 tons 8th April 1945 HAMBURG (Last) 450 a/c 6 lost 9th -----------KIEL---------------591 a/ 3 lost 14th----------POTSDAM --------500 a/c 1 lost 18th ---------HELIGOLAND------969 a/c 3 Lost 24th ---------BREMEN-----------767 a/c 2Lost 25th----------WANGEROOGE----482 a/c 0 Lost jainso31

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