The Combined Bomber Offensive 1943 - 1944: The Air Attack on Nazi Germany. L. Douglas Keeney

      Another measure of the severity of the opposition encountered by the day bombers is found in the amount of battle damage sustained by aircraft which were able to return from missions. During the 1942 operations, 27% of heavy bombers completing “credit sorties” (that is, sorties entering areas where enemy action was normally anticipated) were damaged in varying degrees of severity; in the first quarter of 1943 the rate was 31% and for April, May, and June it was approximately 30.7. That meant that three out of every 10 heavy bombers entering enemy territory were damaged.

      Loss and damage figures can be interpreted in various ways. “The Statistical Summary of Eighth Air Force Operations in the European Theater, 17 August 1942-9 May 1945” and various studies by the Operational Research Section are excellent sources for these figures. The interest here is in that these date tell about the intensity of enemy opposition. The evidence indicates that the effectiveness of that opposition was increasing during the first phase of the bomber offensive.

      It is evident also that the defensive problems presented by this severe opposition were recognized by AAF leaders and that energetic steps were taken to overcome the formidable efforts of the Germans to halt the day bomber offensive.

      It had been noted that the three principal German defense were the radar installations for detecting the approach of hostile forces, the German fighter force with its elaborate control system, and antiaircraft artillery (flak). Since the principal defensive efforts of the Eighth during the first these were concerned with fighters and antiaircraft fire, those measures will be considered here. Radar countermeasures are treated in connection with the third phase when they were first used.

      The plan for the bomber offensive which was drawn up in the European theater in April called attention to the growth of the German fighter force and the changes that had taken place in the composition of that force. The GAF was increasing its fighters at the expense of other types, and it was concentrating these on the Western Front at the expense of other theaters. Both these trends were to continue for many months.

      The German fighter force was not only increasing its numbers and concentrating then against the bomber offensive; it was improving its standard pursuit tactics and even making some rather startling tactical innovations. Two of these innovations began to appear during the first half of 1943. The first was air-to-air bombing, both dive and level, by individual planes and in formation. Apparently the first use of this tactic against the Eighth’s heavy bombers was on 16 February 1943, in a mission against St. Nazaire. Reports of its use were made in March, and the four April heavy missions encountered it. Air-to-air bombing was met on at least nine missions in May and several times in June. This German measure was never successful because of the great difficulty of insuring the detonation of a projectile at just the right instant sufficiently near a rapidly moving target. Undoubtedly the reason for its use was that the size of the lethal burst of a bomb was very great – perhaps six times as large as that of the best flak.

      The other new tactic of the German fighters which was initiated during the first phase was the employment of 21-cm. rockets by both FW-190’s and Me-109’s. Their use was first reported positively on 21 May 1943 during the raid on Wilhelmshaven, but there is some evidence that they were used earlier. The danger to the heavy bombers from the rocket projectiles lay in the fact that the rocket gun could be carried to 35,000 feet by either of the enemy’s two best single-engine fighters, and once at that altitude could fire an 80-pound shell very accurately at ranges well beyond those of the .50-caliber machine guns carried by U S. bombers. Another great danger from the rocket projectile lay in the fact that it had a lethal burst of 150 feet and its detonation could be well controlled.

      The greatest danger from enemy fighters during the first half of 1943 was not due to these innovations but to improved pursuit tactics and that these fighters were armed with larger caliber guns. During 1943 there were 40 cannon hits for every 100 machine-gun hits; during the first half of 1943 there were 77 for every 100 machine gun hits. The hits by heavier guns helps to explain the increased loss rate of bombers to fighter action. The damage rate due to enemy fighters became particularly formidable during the first two months of expanded VIII Bomber Command operations (May-June 1943) than more than 15 of the bombers crossing into enemy territory were damaged by fighters. This was approximately one and one-quarter times the rate for all operations prior to May.

      An indirect product of damage from enemy aircraft was self-inflicted damage to the heavy bombers. This was caused both by the guns on the damaged planes and by guns on friendly planes in the same or near-by formations. This category of battle damage became prominent first in May 1943. On missions 55 through 60, carried out between 13 and 21 May, 24 of 125 aircraft damaged by machine-gun fire were reported damaged by their own guns. Most of the self-inflicted battle damage came from empty shell cases falling from higher planes. Most of the self-inflicted machine-gun fire damage occurred to B-17’s and was caused by waist gunners firing into the horizontal stabilizers and elevators on their own planes.

      The other German weapon for combating the day bomber was flak. Although the damage rate from flak was higher than from enemy fighters, the damage from the forger was generally less severe. It was often true, however, that flak damage was a contributing factor in many cases of aircraft reported lost to enemy aircraft, for an initial hit by antiaircraft frequently caused a bomber to straggle behind its formation and make it easy prey for fighters. All important German targets were heavily defended by flak; these included the submarine yards and airdromes that were the particular targets during the first phase of the offensive. In France, the most heavily defended areas were around Paris and St. Nazaire, both of which were attacked by the Eighth during the second quarter of 1943.

      Defense of the day bomber involved both materiel and tactical developments. Two of the more outstanding materiel problems that demanded attention during the first phase were the modification of the heavy bomber to increase fire power and the development of escort for the bomber formations.

      During the early months of the bomber offensive certain complaints were voiced against the armament of the heavy bombers. The most serious was that the forward fire power was entirely inadequate. B-17d’s and F’s came to the European theater with a single hand-held .39-caliber center nose gun or with no center nose gun at all. B-17E’s had no side nose guns and some F’s had two hand-held side nose guns. B-24D’s generally had one .50-caliber gun in the nose. Such armament was not a sufficient deterrent to the German fighter armed with 30-mm. cannon.

      When Marshall Goering was interviewed as a prisoner of war, he said that tail attacks on the day bombers were preferred to head-on attacks because the closing-in speed involved in the latter allowed too short a firing time. Tail attacks were the rule during the period from August 1942 to November 1942, but head-on attacks predominated in December 1942, and during the whole first half of 1943. The evidence is quite clear, and it was recognized in the theater at the time.

      Modifications were performed on the heavies throughout the first half of 1943 in order to increase their forward fire power. On the B-17’s either one or two .30-caliber guns with ring-and-post sights were installed in the center nose section. On B-24’s an additional .50-caliber nose gun was mounted.

      These hand-held guns were the best answer the Eighth found to the problem during the first phase. They were recognized as a temporary measure, for the manufacturers of the B-17 were working on a power-driven chin