Back to History, and not "Current Events" (Nose in corner )

While reading a model review of a Bf-110 G-4, I came upon some numbers concerning RAF bomber loses during night bombing, that I had not seen before..

What interested me was the numbers of loses, particularly to night fighters, that the RAF took in some of their night raids! All I had read before, or seen on the likes of the History Channel, was references to the USAAC losses at Schweinfurt and Regensburg (60 & 56 respectively, if I recall thru my half-heimers), plus a second Scweinfurt raid with 50+ B-17s going down. Some example follow:

- By the end of 1942 the RAF had lost 1,291 bombers, two-thirds to night fighters.
- During Air Marshal "Bomber" Harris' "Battle of Berlin", from Nov 18, 1943 - 31 Mar 44, the RAF lost 1,047 bombers!! Almost cost AM Harris his job.
- 55 of 648 bombers shot down on Jan 21, 44, 43 of 683 on January 29, and 78 of 823 on Feb 19.
- The worst single night for RAF Bomber Command was Mar 31, 1944 when 94 bombers were last.

I just wonder what would have happened to daylight percision bombing if the USAAC had suffered those kind of losses on single raids. Don't get me wrong, the B-17s and B-24 took high losses over Europe, but I don't recall the number of single raid losses on the daylight side.

A major problem for RAF bombers was that they were much lighter armed than US bombers (.303 MGs vs. .50 cal), and RAF bombers had no dorsal turrets, allowing German night fighters to attack from below with impunity. The British also did not have escorts, in the form of Mosquito night intruders, until the fall of 1944.

What really saved both day and night bombers were:
1. Escort fighters, there and back
2. Capture of German early warning radars by advancing ground forces
3. Switching of bombing priorities to support of OVERLORD and supporting deception plans. These supporting raids were primarily conducted over France and the Low Countries, keeping the bombers away from the heaviest fighters and flak concentrations.
and finally,
4. The P-51 Mustang destroyed the German day fighters in the air and on the ground and German night fighters resting during the day.

Any thoughts?

Amigo-- interesting subject. My two cents. The USAAF was a slave to their pre-war doctrine. This doctrine advocated unescorted dayl;ight "precision" bombardment against industrial centers. It did not work for the British from a materiel view as you state. However, we thought we could make it work. Why we never went to night time saturation raids (which we eventually did in daylight) is beyond me other than my lead-in line. By way of contrast look at the Pacific. We went in initially with European tactics and found the results disastorous. The B-29 then was stripped of everything except incendiaries and flew indivdiually at night into the cities of Japan. We also saw the folly and limitations of daylight bombing in Korea. It took us until after Vietnam to have the resources to bomb at accurately at night. Night is better.
DJ

Ps--what Curent Event topics are yopu referring to.

I was referring to the EU search to become a military superpower.

In further discussion of your comments: It would have been a crowded sky if both the USAAC and RAF had flown at night!! I don't know if there is enough airspace over southern England for all those aircraft

The combination of day and night bombing did put a lot of pressure on the Germans, they had to man their AAA and fighters 24/7.

In Japan, not only did LeMay switch from day to night bombing, he also ordered bombing altitude lowered from 20,000 ft to about 12,000. Japan being geographically different from NW Europe, has must different winds at different altitudes, making accurate bombing from 20,000 impossible. They switched from iron bombs to incendaries to compensate for the way Japanese industry was organized: with exception of the aircraft plants, oil refineries and ports, a large part of the Japanese industry was "cottage industry". The only way to get to that part of the manufactorign was to burn out entire industrial areas.

Both methods had their good and bad points. Until the advent of 'oboe' and then 'h2s' radars, and the 'pathfinder' system accurate night bombing was extremely difficult, but the flack also found it harder to find and hit their targets. The system of individual crews bombing on the markers ensured that all the bombs fell on the main target, which would have been harder to achieve in daylight; where the usual practice was for all aircraft to release at the same time, meaning that the leader bombed on target and the 'tail-end-charlie' bombed 20 miles behind!
Day bombing potentially gave better visibility to the bomb aimer/ navigator but allowed the enemy to put up whole groups of fighters in opposition instead of a small force of speciallised night fighters.
I think on the whole I'd rather have flown at night!

I would have opted to take my chances at night . But, Jeff brings up a good point on air traffic control of two large forces. It would have been a disaster given the state of the art equipment in use. I also believe that when you lokk at the air operations you'll see remarkably few coordinated drills. I can only think of Hamburg and Dresden where we hit the target during the day and the Brit bombed at night. Probably has as much to do with personalities as it did with coordination.

Bulldog brings up some good points. Both systems depend on accuracy of lead aircraft - pathfinders for teh night flyers, and lead navidator/bombadier for daylight. the Germans also had countermeasures for both: Smoke camouflage and fake installations for daylight, and false pathfinder fires and jamming of Oboe, H2S for night. As far as fighters, the Germans put up more than 200 night fighters against teh RAF bomber streams, allowing the fighters to take-one bomber at a time, and with approaches from below they were basically unchallenged. In fact the German night fighters were equipped to hone in on the RAF bomber signal transmitted as part of their guidance systems. Day bombers faced swarms of day fighters and at times even night fighters, but they at least had all-around gun fire and could see at what they were firing.

Just one question, why did the British not give their bombers ventral turrets?

Good question on the turret. My guess is two fold: One, they did not realize this was a traumatizing weakness (kinda like helicopters flying in Iraq) and Second, they did now re design any of their bombers...lack of resources?

One point missed was the theory of Round the clock bombing. It was to wear out the German defenses as well as destroy targets. Another point to the reason for incenriary preferred against the Japanese was the nature of their building material. They were primarily wood and paper houses as opposed to brick and stone in Europe

Ok, but why didn't the Britidsh modify their bombers to counter the threat posed by night fighters coming from below and downing their aircraft?

Actually both the Halifax and Lancaster at one time did have ventral guns - a single gun in the cae of the Lancaster, and an open gun position in the early Halifax. Neither aircraft had enough space for a full turret arrangement. Certainly in the case of the Lancaster the aircraft could not have carried a ventral turret together with H2S radar and the long bomb-bay that made it the best heavy bomber of WW2. The Tallboy & Grand Slam bombs were designed to fit the Lanc, the Dambusters raid would not have happened, and the huge 10 ton load just wouldn't have been.
H2S was never actually jammed, and it was this that enabled the Pathfinders to mark on top of cloud and fog that meant that even in bad visibility the target could still be marked.
The accuracy of this system was obvious in Normandy when Lancasters bombed only 1-200 yards ahead of the front line of British and Canadian troops without a single casualty.

Bulldog.....lol (it's a club like the piggies)

Jeff has indeed been away from the site too long.

Interesting stats. I don't think in a generation or two people will really grasp the sheer scope and scale that was WWII.

Jim