Uralbomber to Amerikabomber

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From 'uralbomber' to 'amerikabomber': The Luftwaffe and strategic bombingR. J. Overy a

a Queens' College, Cambridge

Online Publication Date: 01 September 1978

To cite this Article Overy, R. J.(1978)'From 'uralbomber' to 'amerikabomber': The Luftwaffe and strategic bombing',Journal of StrategicStudies,1:2,154 — 178

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01402397808436996

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From 'Uralbomber' to 'Amerikabomber':the Luftwaffe and Strategic Bombing

R. J. Overy*

The historiography of the Second World War has suffered badly fromhaving too little written from original sources about the German wareffort. A series of official histories would go a long way towards fillingthe gap. Nowhere is this need more pressing than in air warfare.British historians have the four-volume Strategic Air Offensive againstGermany as an invaluable guide.1 The American air war is well coveredin the six volumes of The Army Air Forces in World War II.2 Thefollowing article is an attempt to fill some of the gaps in the knowledgeof Germany's air war, although the subject is large enough and interest-ing enough to merit that official history when it comes.

At the end of the Second World War many German soldiers blamed thefailure of the German Luftwaffe on the fact that it possessed no satis-factory heavy bomber and had failed to undertake a strategic bombingoffensive to rival that of the Allies. Field Marshal Milch wrote afterthe war that 'Germany had no really adequate aircraft model for use instrategic operations: without any doubt, this is one of the reasons forthe failure of the air offensive against Britain and for the Luftwaffe'sinability to provide adequate air protection for Germany's submarinesat sea'.3 During the war itself both Hitler and Goring repeatedlydemanded a heavy bomber capable of undertaking strategic operationsthat might have been decisive in nature—such as the trade blockadeof Britain or the elimination of the Soviet industrial base beyond theUrals—but no satisfactory one was to appear.4

It was certainly true that no such bomber was successfully developedand produced in mass. It was also true that the Germans failed tomount a bomber offensive against the western powers on the samescale as that carried out by the RAF and the American 8th Army AirForce. The crude figures for bomb tonnage demonstrate the huge gulfthat separated the German effort from that of the Allies. The Germansdropped on Britain a mere 3 per cent of the quantity dropped onGermany. The story of the war in the Atlantic was the same. Onceadequate convoy defences had been established the slow converted

*Queens' College, Cambridge.

I

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FROM 'URALBOMBER' TO 'AMERIKABOMBER' 155

TONNAGE OF BOMBS DROPPED IN EUROPE BY GERMANY ANDWESTERN ALLIES 1 9 4 0 - 4 5 < 5 )

Year194019411942194319441945

Total•Including 'V'-weapons.

Germany*36,84421,858

3,2602,2989,151

76174,172

Allies14,63135,50953,755

226,5131,188,577

477,0511,996,036

air-liner, the Focke-Wulf 200 'Kondor' aircraft, proved completelyunequal to the demands made of it in the sea war.6 So, too, with theRussian front: hardly any independent bombing operations werecarried out in the Russian heartland and against Russian industry.Nor did the Russians carry out any determined strategic air offensiveagainst Germany. The air forces of both sides played a largely supportrole for ground operations.7

It had never been intended, however, that this should be the case.In Germany, as elsewhere, the same attention had been given to thequestion of strategic air warfare. Throughout the war Germanyremained committed to the idea of building up a strategic bomberforce and planned to produce heavy bombers in quantity for thatpurpose. The fact that they failed in the end to produce and use thebombers should not obscure the fact that the intention to use themclearly existed. Nevertheless the course of strategic thinking on the useof the heavy bomber in Germany was not a smooth one. In the for-mative years of the Luftwaffe the first chief of staff, Col. Wever, had,together with a section of his staff, decided on the necessity for amulti-engined bomber aircraft. In 1934 plans were produced for theso-called 'Uralbomber'. After the war General Nielsen confirmed thatWever 'was convinced that the important target areas would be Sovietindustries and the outermost corners of European Russia and evenbeyond, and in the area just east of the long Ural mountain chain.'8

Specifications were given to the firms of Dornier and Junkers for workto begin in the summer of 1935 on Langstrecken-Grossbomber and thefirst prototypes of the Dornier Do 19 and Junkers Ju 89 were flownlate in 1936. By this time, however, Wever was dead and had beensucceeded by Albert Kesselring, whose main interest was in the develop-ment of close co-operation between army and air force. Wever hadfound much opposition to his idea of building up a strategic strikingforce of bombers. His successor and much of the Luftwaffe stafffavoured a tactical air force using smaller bomber aircraft. On April29th 1937 the 'Uralbomber' programme was wound up.9

This decision did not end the development of the four-enginedbomber. It had been made partly because the Technical Office of the


156 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

German Air Ministry (RLM) had calculated that the bomber of thefuture would need a considerably better performance than that promisedby the Dornier and Junker models. A specification for a 'Bomber A'had been drawn up in 1936 even while the 'Uralbomber' were beingprepared. The specification went to Heinkel, whose designer, Günter,began work in September 1936. The decision to approve the Heinkelproject (designated Projekt 1041) was finally made on June 2nd 1937only shortly after the cancellation of the Do 19 and Ju 89. This aircraftcontinued to be developed in the years before the outbreak of warwith the blessing of some of the engineering officers in the TechnicalOffice and became known as the He 177.10

But despite the continued development of a heavy bomber pro-gramme, the death of Wever had coincided with a fundamental shiftin thinking of the German air staff and a part of the Technical Office.It was decided that the medium-bomber was all that was necessary tocarry out not just the tactical support of the army, but also all the likelystrategic tasks that the air force would be set.11 The main reason forthis lay in the fact that a dive-bombing medium bomber was expectedto achieve a high degree of bombing accuracy in attacks on munitionsfactories, transport facilities and other special targets. The cult of thedive-bomber was not altogether so short-sighted. In Spain it hadbeen very successful. Moreover, the bulk of the available literature onthe future air war failed to predict the actual physical damage thatinvading bomber forces would be likely to inflict. It was expected thata small number of aircraft with a modest bombload would be able toinflict damage to property and population so great that a decisivevictory could be achieved through air-power alone.12 So the GeneralStaff decided that a medium-bomber that could dive would gain morethrough precision attacks than large formations of larger, horizontally-flying aircraft whose chances of delivering a knockout blow wereregarded as inferior.13

At the time that the decision to concentrate on medium-bomberswas taken Goring was already dissatisfied with the prospects of theheavy bomber as it had been presented to him. It was a giant consumerof resources for a military effort which could, it was believed, beachieved through the dive-bombing twin-engined aircraft. At the timeUdet and the Technical Staff were particularly anxious about the rawmaterial situation as was Kesselring in his brief appointment as Chiefof Staff. Udet told Heinkel: 'we do not want these expensive, heavymachines which eat up more in material than a medium, twin-engineddive-bomber costs'.14 From what was then known about the possibilitiesof strategic bombing it seemed sensible to choose what could beregarded in terms of industrial effort and military efficiency as theoptimum then available. At the time, too, little thought had been givento the broad strategic possibilities stemming from Hitler's diplomacy.



This was a major miscalculation, but not perhaps a very surprising one.To Hitler the medium-bomber programme was suitable either for aseries of short continental wars or a major war against Britain orRussia. The Junkers Ju 88 bomber that became the standard newmedium-bomber was particularly attractive to the Air Staff and toHitler because its range was so remarkable. Koppenberg, the generalmanager of Junkers, claimed that the aircraft would be able to carry areasonable load of bombs out into the Atlantic beyond the coast ofIreland.15 Count Ciano recorded how Goring had told him in April1939 that 'this bomber [Ju 88] has such a long range that it could beused to attack not only England herself, but also could branch outtoward the West, to bombard the ships approaching England from theAtlantic'.16 Goring, and it would be fair to assume Hitler too, boththought that a large medium-bomber fleet could inflict sufficientdamage on civilian morale and war-willingness as well as on the enemywar economy, and that a strategic bomber force was already, for allintents and purposes, an integral part of the Luftwaffe planning. Thedecision to place everything on the Ju-88 programme, a programmethat disrupted the pace of production of all arms in late 1939, wasmade at the highest level not because Hitler's foreign ambitions werebased on the modest demands of Blitzkrieg, but because the leadershipmistakenly believed that it already possessed the means to wage asuccessful strategic operation whatever the scope of Hitler's diplomacy.When the German bombers were released against Britain in 1940 itwas in the fulfilment of German 'Douhetism', the attempt to bringthe British to the point of capitulation without having to fight a waron land.

It seemed, therefore, that the concept of strategic air activity hadnot been lost sight of either on tactical or on strategic grounds. Quitethe reverse; for when war broke out the western Allies scanned theskies waiting for the hail of bombs that the more numerous anddeadlier Luftwaffe was expected to bring. In the sense of what peopleexpected of a strategic air war in 1939, Germany was assumed to be aswell armed as was necessary to carry out such a programme.

nBelow the top-level leadership of the Luftwaffe there was considerablymore pessimism about the chance of carrying out such an air campaignwith any great degree of success. Particularly among those who hadany operational experience, but also those in the engineering corpswho remained loyal to the Wever philosophy, there was a strongrealization that Germany did not possess the means by which to bringa major enemy to its knees through the exercise of air power.17 It wasconsidered by some that Germany did not even possess the means to



carry out a successful combined offensive against her strongest potentialenemies, Britain and Russia. Starting in 1936 the Luftwaffe exploredthrough contingency plans the possibility of a war in the air againstFrance and England. Those concerned with France concentrated onthe tactical nature of Luftwaffe deployment, mainly in support ofground forces. Attacks on Paris were to be merely retaliatory.18 Aslate as 1939 General Felmy concluded in a study based on the contin-gency of a war against Britain that the Luftwaffe's existing forces wereunsuitable.19 Erhard Milch, temporarily excluded from the top decision-making on aircraft types between 1936 and 1939, realised that theLuftwaffe would not be ready for war until at least 1942 and possiblymuch later.20 It was Hitler, with his tenuous grasp of the problem ofair warfare, his high expectations of the Ju 88, fed by Göring's boasting,and his mistaken appreciation of the state of air preparation, whocreated the war situation for which the Luftwaffe was particularlyill-equipped. Yet at the time the fears of the junior officers and staffwere regarded as groundless. Germany possessed the largest fleet ofbombers in Europe with the most modern equipment and more battleexperience than any other air force.

In some important respects, however, the strategic air operationsthat the Luftwaffe expected to carry out in the impending war differedvery considerably from those of the 'Douhet' school. In 1939 it wasassumed that the air operations over enemy territory in attackingmunitions industries, communications and vital installations wouldcoincide with and support a knock-out blow aimed by the army. Theoperations were seen essentially as combined operations. The maintask of the air force was to speed up the destruction of enemy forcesand to smooth the path of advancing armies by destroying pockets ofresistance. Operations into enemy territory were not designed to endthe war by themselves. Instead inter-service politics determined that theLuftwaffe play a role subordinate to that of the army. Even in 1940when Goring promised to force capitulation from Britain by attacks onLondon, many still saw the Blitz as essentially a preliminary bombard-ment before the actual landing operation to be carried out by the armyand navy. That had certainly been the main strand of Hitler's ownthinking.21 The air force was thus forced to play a mainly tactical role.In preparing for strategic operations there were severe limitationsimposed by the needs of the other services. The German air forcebecame committed to limited strategic bombing. In Britain the oppositewas the case. Although with reluctance, the RAF had been allowed be-tween the wars to work on the idea of completely independent airoperations and out of this thinking had developed the strategic airoffensive for which preparations were already in hand before 1939. Suchan idea was attractive to the British. For one thing it might mean thatit would no longer be necessary for British soldiers to fight in Europe.



It also meant that in the event of Britain's complete exclusion militarilyfrom Continental Europe, the means would exist for undertaking anindependent military offensive from the air to force the enemy tocapitulate either through a knock-out blow or through the erosion ofthe enemy will-power and economic potential.22 The absence of such aconsistent bombing policy in Germany meant two important things.The Luftwaffe suffered from the start in not having enough top-levelplans for air operations outside those for immediate tactical supportof the army. Secondly no large independent force of bombers could bekept together by bomber commanders for use only on long-rangestrategic missions behind the enemy lines. Such bombers might bemade available but tended to be so only in anticipation of army oper-ations or at the end of army operations, to achieve a speedier conclusionto a campaign.

The Luftwaffe thus had a very different orientation from the RAF orthe United States air force. Having decided that the medium-bomberwas suitable for Germany's air warfare, the commanders also decidedthat the air operations must be kept within the scope of the overallmilitary planning and not be allowed too much independent life. Thepowerful position of the army in German military life ensured the airforce only a limited strategic role. These were the kind of choices opento all air forces before 1939. The Luftwaffe 'guesses' were much lesssatisfactory as it turned out than those of General Guderian and themotorized divisions, but they were all 'guesses' nevertheless. Had theEuropean war ended in June 1940 with the British surrender even theguesses that were made would have been hailed as the right ones. Whatfinally turned the Luftwaffe towards the idea of the heavy bomberagain was the failure of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz and theindividual failure of the Ju 88 medium-bomber. Far from the expectedvictory in the air in 1940, the German bombers were driven out of thedaylight skies, failed to make more than a temporary dent in Britishwar production and made the British population more than everdetermined to resist rather than capitulate because of the Blitz.23

Moreover the Ju 88 that was supposed to be able to fly as far as theAtlantic shipping lanes beyond Ireland proved a great disappointmentboth in general performance and in range and carrying capacity.

The campaign in the air in 1940 was the test of the German airplanning and the idea of limited strategic bombing with the precisionbombing medium-bombers. In fact it proved to be the only time thatthe Luftwaffe had the opportunity to carry out a fully strategic operationon its own. At first the role of the air force after the fall of Francewas to help to create the conditions for a landing undertaken by thearmy on the south English coast, an extension of the tactical roleplayed in the Battle of France itself. But Hitler also gave Goring theopportunity to prove whether the air force was equal to the task of



bringing the British to surrender through air power alone, althoughother options were kept firmly open.24 This strategic course was onethat Hitler had not ignored before war broke out. To the heads of theservices in 1939 he had already said: 'The ruthless employment of theLuftwaffe against the heart of the British will-to-resist can and willfollow at the given moment'.25 Thus when Goring turned the bombersagainst London in the Battle of Britain and the Blitz it was not justout of the desire for reprisals against British raids on Germany, butbecause it was now hoped that, everything else having failed,Terrorangriffe would bring the British to their senses.26 The attackswere also combined with instructions to attack 'the armaments industry(particularly air armament). Then important harbours. London will beattacked constantly night and day in order to destroy the city'.27 TheBlitz was an extension of this strategic aim, and was forced on theLuftwaffe because of the high combat attrition suffered throughdaylight raids. Thus gradually during the course of the Battle of Britainthe German leadership began to move more towards the concept of afull strategic air offensive for the first time. This was not to be a limitedstrategic operation, but an offensive like that planned and prepared bythe British : to bring the war to an end through the exercise of air power.

The major problem facing the Luftwaffe was that its preparation andequipment was simply not good enough for the kind of tasks it had beenset. The bombloads were inadequate, the aircraft had too short a range,they were not sufficiently well-armed and not enough of them werebeing produced. Training and planning was still well below the requiredlevel, mainly because the new strategic requirements had not beenanticipated before the war. Moreover the Germans quickly realisedthat, despite the exaggerated reports of the bomber crews, targets weremore often than not missed altogether and even when hit could not bedestroyed decisively.28 Hitler certainly came to believe as a result ofthe German experience that

the munitions industry . . . cannot be interfered with effectively byair raids. We learned that lesson during our raids on English arma-ment centres in the autumn of 1940 . . . Usually the prescribedtargets are not hit; often the fliers unload their bombs on fieldscamouflaged as plants; and in both countries the armamentsindustry is so decentralised that the armament potential cannotreally be interfered with.29

Although Hitler directed the air force to begin again its attacks onBritain after the war in the east had been brought to a speedy conclusion,little preparation was actually undertaken for such an offensive. Therewas clearly a general feeling that on the basis of the failure in the winterof 1940-41 there was little point in trying to undertake a bombingoffensive against Britain. Moreover the successful conquest of theBalkans and the early successes in Russia returned the Luftwaffe to



the idea that a limited strategic role combined with tactical support forthe advancing armies made very much greater military sense.30

Thus the medium-bomber and the ideas that supported it continuedto have an important place even after 1940. For one thing Jeschonnekwas still Chief of Staff and Udet still head of the Technical Office andboth were known to favour the medium-bomber approach. It also hadthe advantage of already being in production and if the medium-bomberhad failed against Britain it was used with great effect in the first monthsof the Russian campaign. Nevertheless there existed a number ofLuftwaffe leaders who recognized the drawback of this aircraft and itsuse. Petersen, who headed the air force testing stations, blamed theearly failures of the air war on the choice of the medium-bomber andin late 1942 expressed the hope that 'The days of the medium-bomber...are numbered'.31 In the same year the General of Bombers wrote toMilch of the mistake made from the beginning in choosing a com-promise aircraft like the Ju 88, clearly incapable of carrying out thevery necessary bombing campaign against England.32 There alwayshad been opponents to the medium-bomber programme. By 1942 mostof the leadership came to recognize the need to replace it on strategicoperations with something more suitable.

Thus in the middle of the war the Germans began to rethink airstrategy. More precisely they tried to find the technical means forcarrying out the kind of strategic bombing campaign they had exploredin the war against Britain in 1940. The search could hardly be regardedas a very consistent or vigorous one. It was severely limited by thedemands being made on all sides by the war situation itself. Yet even ifthe technical means remained beyond realisation, the Luftwaffe leader-ship and Hitler moved slowly but surely towards several clear lines ofstrategic policy on the bombing issue. The first of these was straight-forward enough; to carry out a major independent bombing offensiveagainst Britain in retaliation for that now being fought against Germancities. The campaign was to be strictly strategic in nature. The expec-tation was that its successful operation might bring the British to thepoint of negotiating terms with the Germans. Hitler in particularfavoured such a programme. 'The English', he told Goebbels, 'will besurprised when this undertaking is launched on a big scale. There is noother way of bringing the English to their senses. They belong to a classof human beings with whom you can talk only after you have firstknocked out their teeth'.33 Goring, obviously affected by Hitler'sdetermination to retaliate, took up the same theme. Moreover Goring,capitalising on an earlier discovery made during 1940, encouraged thedevelopment of incendiary bombs instead of high explosive. Discussingthe war against Britain in May 1942 he told his audience 'If a machinedrops one or two large bombs and these don't hit the target precisely,then the whole attack has failed : were many incendiaries to be carried



then the greater spread of bombs would create more damage . . . \3 4

The theme of incendiary bombing was one to which he often returned,hoping that the promised new bombs would come from the researchestablishments in time to be used against Britain.35 Together with theincendiaries the Luftwaffe needed the heavy bomber. Hitler told Heinkelin May 1943 that he wanted 40 or 50 such aircraft flying non-stopshuttle attacks on London day and night. 'Such continuous attacks' hesaid, 'would bring life there to a standstill'.36 Goring, too, recognizedthat it was the heavy bomber that would make possible the attack onBritain, attacking small towns with incendiaries carried in 50 aircraft,attacking large cities with 200-300 aircraft carrying the same cargo.37

Göring's view was still coloured by the misunderstanding of thenumbers involved. The destruction of Lübeck, Rostock and Colognehad been effected with up to 1,000 aircraft returning in two or threewaves. Goring optimistically talked in late 1943 of the much smallerheavy-bomber raids that he had in mind: 'Go and make the first attackon London with 150 aircraft, and only with 150, and then just read theEnglish press'.38 This kind of misjudgement was shown too in the kindof operations that Hitler demanded. His Terrorangriffe, a directresponse to the first area attacks of the RAF, were to be carried outagainst centres of culture rather than against munitions, which theleading Nazis still considered to be more or less immune from attack.Goebbels recommended that such centres should be 'attacked two orthree times in succession and levelled to the ground; then the Englishprobably will no longer find pleasure in trying to frighten us by theirterror attacks'.39 These attacks, which became known as 'Baedekerattacks' were in fact carried out not by the heavy bombers but bymedium-bombers scraped together from units all over Europe for thepurpose.40

Had the heavy bombers been ready they might indeed have been aserious threat. As it was the terror and retaliation attacks failed tohave any appreciable effect on the British will to fight or ability tofight. The same was true of the 'Little Blitz' ordered in the winter of1943-44.41 The failure in 1942 to get the heavy bomber out in quantityand the growing crisis in Russia throughout 1943 postponed the carry-ing out of the strategic bombing of Britain indefinitely. 'The zerohour' complained Goebbels, 'is being postponed again and again.That's the terror of terrors. If we could only strike back at the Englishsoon! But, look where you will, no such possibility is to be seen'.42

Nevertheless Hitler approved on 1 December 1943 orders 'to prepareand carry out the long-range warfare against England with all thespecial weapons involved therein'.43 In May 1944 he completed anorder for the Armed Forces for the 'employment of long-range weaponsagainst England'.44 The weapons were to consist of a mixture ofV-weapons and bombers for a concentrated attack on London as the



main target. Although the V-weapon assault took place, the invasion ofEurope put a permanent stop to any new bomber offensive and thesmall number of heavy and medium-bombers sent against Britainduring the winter of 1943/44 achieved practically nothing. By this timethe Allies were dropping as many bombs on Germany in four days asGermany was to drop in a whole year. Hitler's vision of sustaining abomber offensive against the British vanished through lack of equip-ment, though he, for one, never halted his search for the right weapons.In January 1945 he was still asking Speer to produce 'a high-speedheavy bomber with wide range and a large bombload'.45

More success was expected from the second strand of strategicbombing policy, the war at sea. The idea of such an operation hadcrystallised in 1939 but was only developed fully in 1941 with thegrowing success of the U-boats and the Focke- Wulf 'Kondor' aircraft.48

The idea was primarily to attack all the major shipping lanes out ofrange of British coastal defence aircraft and to blockade the Britishinto surrender. This was a policy of major strategic significance andwas one of the main reasons why the development of the heavy-bomber was speeded up by Milch and Jeschonnek in 1941. Milchregarded the bomber as a most 'important aircraft, suitable for oceanattacks'.47 Hitler too favoured as a vital strategic task the attack onBritish trade, and Goring at a famous conference in September 1942demanded yet again an aircraft 'that really can fly far out to sea, thereto attack the convoys where they have not got great security'.48 But themost enthusiastic campaigner for the strategy of air and sea blockadewas Raeder, head of the German Navy. Aware of the limitations of hisU-boats he called in February 1941 for the strategic involvement of theLuftwaffe. 'The Air Force' he told Hitler, 'must attempt to hit GreatBritain where it hurts most, by attacking her imports . . . Systematicallyplanned attacks must be made on supply lines, docks, ships andharbours . . . lasting damage must be inflicted on naval bases, especiallyshipyards'. Raeder regarded such a policy as being 'capable of exertinga decisive influence', a fact that had not escaped Hitler who stressed'the correctness of the view always held by the Navy, namely, that onlythat naval and air activity which is concentrated on cutting off supplieswill help to bring about the defeat of Great Britain'. The programmewas held up by the shortage of bombers, the poor level of preparationand inter-service rivalry, particularly the reluctance of the Luftwaffe toallow its units to be directed by the Navy. After 1943 the main weightof strategic thinking went into ideas of area bombing of the Britishmainland, though the attacks on convoys remained a part of the generalstrategic aim.49

The final strategic idea that grew out of the middle period of thewar was the need for both terror and war economic attacks on Russiaand the United States. Both of these potential targets had been recog-



nized before 1939 but only became important after 1941 when Germanydeclared war on both. In fact to the Luftwaffe General Staff the idea ofattacks on Russia seemed more important and likely to have a greatereffect on the current situation than any attacks on Britain, which werefor some time only expected to begin again after the war with Russiawas completed. Hitler had expected that such a policy would benecessary from at least 1940. In Directive no. 21 (Barbarossa) heordered the Luftwaffe to direct attacks on the Russian arms industry'only after the conclusion of mobile warfare, and they will be concen-trated first on the Urals area'.50 The plan never materialised because ofthe need for tactical support for the army along the eastern front, butas an idea it was one to which the Luftwaffe leadership was to return. Ithad the advantage that an attack on Russian production, with its largefactories and industrial concentrations might halt the flow of arms, andturn the tide in favour of the Germans.51 In late 1942 Hitler once againraised the question. He wanted heavy bombers for attacks 'in horizontalflight, by night against long distance targets which lie so far from ourfront that they could not be reached with other aircraft types'.52 Thisidea had already been formulated by Jeschonnek some months beforewhen he had planned to use the He 177 for 'far-ranging tasks of de-struction'53 but had had little effect. Not until late 1942 did the firstgroup of He 177's move to the Russian front at Zaporozh'ye when mostof them were lost or damaged in the Stalingrad battle and the survivorswithdrawn back to Germany. The failure did not discourage Hitler.'For three years this machine has been promised to me' he told in-dustrialists in May 1943. 'For three years I've been waiting for a long-distance bomber. I can't bomb the convoys in the North Sea, nor can Ibomb the Urals . . . \5 4 Jeschonnek's successor, General Körten triedto carry out the policy in late 1943 by withdrawing the IV Air Corpsfrom the eastern front 'in order that it might be prepared for strategicoperations against Soviet Russian industrial targets'.55 The suggestionwas approved but turned out to be inoperable by 1944. Once again itwas a failure of supply. Intention far outstripped German's ability toprovide adequate weapons.

The projected attacks on the United States arose, as with those againstBritain and the Urals, out of the fact that Germany had no other directway of bringing the war to the enemy homelands. Attacks againstAmerica would of necessity be rather limited in scope and the initialintention was temporarily to disrupt American home defences, not tolaunch a major offensive. The same was true of the idea to attack thePanama Canal. Considerable propaganda would be generated by suchactions but their economic or military effect would be only temporary.56

Atomic weapons would clearly have been necessary if anything greaterwere to be achieved in strategic terms. Nevertheless the Americanprojects helped to illustrate the fact that the Luftwaffe had moved a long



way during the Second World War towards accepting and operatinga strategic air war like that of the Allies. The British and Americanstoo had worked towards such a strategy with much heart-searchingand uncertainty but they had both developed a heavy bomber before1939 and a strategic view of its use which had committed them at amuch earlier date to the expectation that an aerial offensive would bedecisive.5' Although the Germans developed a comprehensive airstrategy to include Britain, Russia and America they had failed toprepare adequately for such a contingency. In particular they hadfailed to provide the technical means for its achievement.

mAlthough Germany developed a new strategic bombing policy duringthe war, the possibility of fulfilling it became far less promising. It wasdifficult to switch in midstream from a set of production prioritiesbased on the medium-bomber to one based on the largely untriedheavy bombers not yet in full production. As it turned out there wasonly a small output of heavy bombers throughout the war and part ofthe explanation for this must lie with the fact that the change in attitudesto the bomber came far too late to affect the immediate course of thewar and of war production. Erhard Milch had discovered, on takingover from Udet, that German aircraft production was in a confusedand unco-ordinated state and for the time being was forced to stickwith the models already in production in order to get anywhere near thetargets set for the combined operations against Russia in 1942.58 Tohave to cut back on this production in favour of large and expensiveheavy bombers would perhaps have been even more disastrous thanthe earlier decision to place all the emphasis on the smaller bomber.By 1942/43 it was also necessary to provide for the massive expansionof fighter aircraft to combat the bomber offensive that threatened todestroy Germany's chances of producing anything. The same was trueof personnel. It would be necessary to retrain pilots for the tasks of aheavy bomber offensive as well as make available the ground crewsand air bases for making such an offensive possible. By the middle ofthe war the pressure on manpower made such a switch increasinglydifficult to carry out. Nevertheless the heavy bomber now became anintegral part of the long-term planning despite the problems that sucha decision necessarily brought with it.

The difficulty of switching production strategies in the middle ofthe war was made worse by a further series of miscalculations andmisjudgements not unlike those made before 1939. The first problemwas to decide how many bombers should be produced. Goringcharacteristically demanded far too few while giving the impressionthat he was setting impossible targets. The Germans had consistently



underpinned most aircraft types and continued to do so with the heavybomber. Instead of planning for enough aircraft to keep large fleets ofbombers in being to fulfil the several roles assigned to it by Hitler andthe Luftwaffe staff, it was planned to produce less than one-third of whatthe British were producing. Of course it was difficult for the Germansto know exactly what numbers would be required, what the expectedrate of loss would be and how large a reserve to build up. Neverthelessthe gulf between what the Germans expected to produce and what theAllies were actually producing was very considerable. Nor was this dueto lack of capacity. Speer was to prove in 1944 that good organisationand improvised methods of production could enormously increase theoutput of aircraft. The first plan to incorporate a significant number ofheavy bombers, the so-called 'Göring-Programm', only planned aproduction of 323 aircraft in 1942 and 903 in 1943. No plan gave amonthly production figure higher than 165. The British on the otherhand had plans—albeit unfulfilled—to produce a total of 6,682 heavybombers in 1943 rising to a monthly peak of 625. Moreover actualBritish production amounted in 1943 to 4,615, whereas German

TABLE 1PLANNED AND ACTUAL PRODUCTION OF HEAVY-BOMBERS

FOR THE LUFTWAFFE 1 9 4 0 - 4 6 ( o >

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946Plan 10 — 38 — — — — —Plan 11 — 63 — — — — —Plan 16 25 92 — — — — —Plan 18/1 — 75 — — — — —Planl9B — — 453 — — — —Plan'Elch' — — 387 — — — —Plan'Goring' — — 392 983 — — —Plan 21U — — 395 975 — — —Plan 22 — — — 946 1,512 — —Plan 222 — — — 847 1,651<6) — —Plan 224/1 — — — — 972 900"» —Plan 225/1 — — — — — 1,200 1,200Actual Production'0'

A 36 58 250 491 573 nil nilB 38 58 251 491 518 nil nil

(a) includes the types Heinkel He 177, Focke-Wulf Fw 200, Messerschmitt Me 264.(i>> to September only.(c) Figures for A from W. Baumbach Broken Swastika (London, 1960) pp. 212-3:

figures for B from C. Webster, N. Frankland The Strategic Air Offensive againstGermany (London, 1961) Vol. IV, p. 496. The figures for the early part of the warare mainly for Fw 200 aircraft which were also used for a long-range reconnais-sance role. According to Baumbach there were 263 Fw 200's produced and 1,146He 177's, the bulk of the latter being produced in 1943 and 1944.

Source: BA/RL3 141, Plan 19B: RL3 148, Plan Goring: RL3 152, Plan 21 U:RL3 156, Plan 22: R13 157, Plan Elch: RL3 158, Plan 10, Plan 11 : RL3 159,Plan 16: RL3 162, Plan 18/1 : RL3 167, Plan 222: RL3 177, Plan 224/1 :RL3 182, Plan 225/1.



TABLE 2

PLANNED AND ACTUAL OUTPUT OF HEAVY-BOMBERS: BRITAIN,GERMANY AND UNITED STATES'"'

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945(!))

Germanymax. plannedactual output

Britainmax. plannedactual output

United Statesactual output

2538

21941

60

9258

1,464498

321

453251

3,5731,976

2,619

983491

6,6824,615

9,615

1,651518

6,8505,507

16,341

300nil

1,4381,073

3,198(a) Figures for America are for actual production only and are for four-engined air-

craft, not all of which were heavy bombers. The German figures do not includethe four-engined jet bombers planned as these could not be regarded as 'heavy'bombers.

<6) Jan.-March only.Source: For Germany as Table 1. For Britain; Webster and Frankland, IV, 497,

M. M. Postan British War Production (London, 1952) pp. 472-85,Statistical Digest of the War (London, 1951) p. 152: for America, Webster

• and Frankland, IV, 497, Appendix 49, Table xxiv.

production of the heavy bomber amounted to a mere 415 in the sameyear. The story was the same in 1944. The British built 5,507; theGermans, having planned to build only 1,600, actually produced only518 (See Table 1 for details of German planning). The contrast withthe performance of the United States was the same. Huge plans werelaid by the Allies in the expectation that an impossibly high target wouldencourage maximum effort (see Table 2 for details of German andAllied production). Modest plans in Germany reflected both a failureto understand the kind of numbers involved in a bombing war andthe deep divisions that had existed since the middle 1930's on thenecessity for heavy bombers at all.

The second miscalculation was a more technical one. It involvedthe kind of performance expected of the aircraft once they were oper-ational. Here again there existed a wide difference between the per-formance of the British and American heavy bombers and thoseexpected and achieved in Germany. Allied heavy bombers tended to belarger, better powered, with wider range and larger bomb load. TheAmerican B-17 (first begun as early as 1934) series C weighed 46,650 lbsgross, had a range of 2,400 miles carrying 4,000 lbs of bombs and overshorter distances some versions could carry up to 20,800 lbs of bombs.59

The British Avro Lancaster bomber weighed 68,000 lbs gross and hada range of up to 1,660 miles carrying 14,000 lbs of bombs. Moreoverthis particular aircraft could carry the Grand Slam bomb weighing22,000 lbs.60 By comparison the standard Luftwaffe medium-bomber,the Ju 88 (series A-l) could carry a maximum bomb load of only3,960 lbs with a normal range of only 620 miles. The He 177 heavy



bomber weighed 66,000 lbs gross, and with a full load of only 6,000 lbshad an operational range of only 745 miles. It did not even have theadvantage of speed, being only slightly faster than the B-17 andLancaster and considerably slower than the B-29 Superfortress thatbecame operational in 1944. The initial specification to Heinkel hadcalled for higher speeds and better ranges than were actually achieved,but the greatest problem was the bomb-load. In all these areas the actualHe-177 performance came well below that expected by the designer andthe RLM but even the expected performance was well below thatachieved in the United States. Going hoped to make up for thesedeficiencies by producing a better bomb, but not even this coulddisguise the fact that both sides expected something different from theiraircraft. The Americans planned from 1941 for the production of abomber with a maximum bomb load of 72,000 lbs, and a load of10,000 lbs with a range of 5,000 miles and a gross weight of 278,000 lbs.The result, the Convair B-36 became available as an intercontinentalbomber after the war. The German replacement for the He 177, theHeinkel He 277, had a range of 3,700 miles maximum with a maximumbomb-load of 8-10,000 lbs. Another long-range bomber project waseven less satisfactory. The He 274 four-engined bomber developed inthe second part of the war had a 'normal' range of only 1,770 mileswith a bomb-load of 8,000 lbs.61 Thus, throughout the war the Germansfailed to plan and produce the kind of bomber force that could carrya large enough bomb-load over a far enough range to make the effortbear any real success.

Perhaps the greatest technical miscalculation lay with the actualchoice of aircraft itself and the way it was developed. The Heinkel He177 heavy bomber proved to be a disaster. Two things made thisparticular choice more unfortunate than the selection of other types.First of all it had been chosen at a time when Goring had 'discovered'the principle of limitation of types {Typenbeschränkung). Instead ofencouraging the development of a number of competing heavy aircraftto keep new designs in the pipeline, the He 177 was chosen as the onlyheavy bomber and other projects were shelved.62 Moreover the decisionstaken in 1940 to restrict development of future projects in the expecta-tion of quick victory meant that there was no long-term project likelyto replace the He 177 once its performance became obsolete.63

Secondly, having put all the eggs in one basket the General Staff wenton to make it very difficult to hatch them. The aircraft was given a verylow priority; Heinkel himself was given little encouragement to produceit even at the regular speed, and worse still the dive-bomber capability,that had plagued the air planning of the pre-war years, was applied tothe He 177.64 It was this decision that produced a whole series oftechnical difficulties with the aircraft which were never effectivelysolved throughout the war. It required that the aircraft have two engines



or two pairs of engines because a four-engined aircraft was not thoughtto be capable of diving. It required too that the aircraft have strengthen-ing in the wings and fuselage that added to its weight (and reduced itsrange). It also meant that the design of the aircraft had to prove reliableunder flying conditions that placed very considerable stresses on bothcrew and machine. As it turned out these problems were intractable.The He 177 was not, despite its defenders, a particularly good aircraft.The coupled engines were disastrous. After years of research and testingDaimler-Benz failed to solve the problem of producing a power unitwhich would not either break or catch fire in the air. The reason wasquite simple. The design dictated by the coupling produced an enginethat was both too heavy as a unit and too difficult to protect against therisk of fire. In fact at the Rechlin testing station an investigating teamdiscovered 56 possible causes of fire.65 By 1942 correspondence at theHeinkel works on alterations and testing of the He 177 filled 56 files.66

Under such conditions it was difficult to get the aircraft into service.Accidents were frequent and test pilots lost their lives so often that theaircraft was nicknamed the Luftwaffenfeurzeug, the 'air force lighter'.But despite these handicaps the RLM insisted not only on continuingtests at all, but on keeping the dive-bombing He 177 as the only availableheavy-bomber design. The aircraft even became operational, althoughone air force officer refused to take the responsibility for sending hiscrews out in it.67 On one typical operation in the 'little Blitz' in January1944 some 14 He 177 aircraft were supposed to attack London. Oneburst a tyre before take-off, eight more overheated and returned almostimmediately to base, four reached London of which one was shot down,and the leader of the group lost his way and, finding himself overNorwich, returned to Germany after dropping his bombs in theZuyder Zee. The same lack of success attended the operations at sea.When, in an effort to regain some lost initiative in the Atlantic battle,the He 177's stationed at Bordeaux-Mérignac were released to attackconvoys, the second operation cost 50 per cent of the attacking heavybombers (including the group commander) and left the whole groupwith just seven serviceable aircraft.68 The aircraft was neither fastenough nor manoeuvrable enough to justify its use in small numbersagainst enemy fighters or anti-aircraft fire, and the aircraft itself wasstill so dangerous that what the enemy failed to destroy was done bythe aircraft itself.

It was only in 1942, already too late to affect the next few years ofwar, that Goring discovered that the coupled engine and dive-bomberrequirement had been largely responsible for the failure of the He 177.Both he and Hitler ordered not only that the dive-bombing requirementshould be abandoned but that the aircraft be converted to four enginesif more success could be achieved that way.69 It took time for these newrequirements to percolate through the planning stages since a lot of



money had been devoted already to the He 177 project and the RLMwas, even in 1942, not completely convinced of the aircraft's un-suitability.70 Nevertheless the exposure of its drawbacks in late 1942produced some positive results. A whole new range of heavy-bomberprojects were started, the He 177 (redesignated He 277) was convertedto four engines (although not finally until 3 July 1944) and the idea ofproducing a large jet-bomber was explored for the first time. WhatHitler did not have, however, was the ability to accelerate the processof development and testing. There was in fact little chance on currentperformance of getting an aircraft of the size, specifications andcomplexity required into operation before 1946 or 1947. The He 277faced problems at every stage—Heinkel's design bureau was held upbecause of a move to Vienna where it was hastily installed in a beercellar. Although Goring demanded in May 1944 that 200 a monthshould be produced as soon as possible there were still years of newdevelopment before mass production would be possible.71 Thus becauseof the initial concentration on an aircraft that was technically toocomplicated to perfect and whose performance never matched up to theinitial requirements, the Luftwaffe was left in 1942 with a new airstrategy but no aircraft capable of fulfilling it.

Even the new projects suffered from all kinds of problems. Themost promising—the Âmerikabomber of Messerschmitt—had in factbeen completed in prototype by late 1942 but the RLM decided infavour of a Junkers design that would be less wasteful of resources.72

The second Me 264 protype was destroyed by Allied bombers and thethird was uncompleted before the final ban on the aircraft at thebeginning of 1944. The Focke-Wulf proposals (the Fw 300 and Ta 400)never effectively left the drawing board. The Junkers converted transportplane, the Ju 290B, was only started late in 1943 and was scrapped inlate 1944 only a few months after the first prototype had flown. TheJu 390 in a bomber version was never produced and the Ju 488, chosenin preference to the other projects in early 1944 because it used medium-bomber components, was destroyed by French saboteurs on its wayfrom Toulouse to Dessau. In the end the RLM opted for a fast newmedium-bomber, the Arado Ar 234C, which used four turbo-jetengines, but had a range of only 900 miles with a bomb-load of 4,400lbs. By mid-1944 plans for the aircraft in 1945 had risen to an output of2,514, increasing to 500 per month in 1946.73 This decision was basedon the optimistic assumption that an aircraft could reach full mass-production in the space of a few months when all aircraft types in thewar had taken years to get into production. Only a few of the aircraftwere actually produced.

The whole catalogue of projects initiated after 1942 produced thereverse of the situation in 1939-41. Now instead of the limitation oftypes there was a superfluity. It was clear that the RLM neither knew



what industry was capable of producing, which model to choose, norwhat kind of strategy its production should be related to. The earlychoice of the He 177 was thus a double blow. It meant there would beno heavy bombers when they were needed in 1940-42—when Milchbelieved their use might have been 'decisive'—and it meant a scrambledand unsatisfactory search for an alternative in the middle of a waragainst enemies already armed with large and increasingly destructivebomber fleets. On the technical side as well as on the strategic side theseries of guesses made before 1939 turned out to be the wrong ones.The result was that the difficulty of switching strategy in 1941 wasexacerbated by confusion in technical planning.

IV

The technical and tactical reasons behind the failure of the Germanbombing strategy were in some sense symptomatic of a wider failure.To be sure there were a number of economic and technical limitationsbut these were never to prove decisive. The whole history of Germanstrategic bombing demonstrates a great deal of personal failure on theplanning and organisational side, poor technical appreciation and thedifficulty of getting the German aircraft firms to work well eithertogether or with the RLM.

Two factors dogged German aircraft planning and production. Thefirst was the problem of getting suitable aero-engines; the second wasthe supply of raw materials. There seems little doubt that a moreenergetic mobilization of economic resources could have providedGermany with a much more substantial stock of armaments.74 In 1942the Luftwaffe took less aluminium than it had used in 1941 and yet wasable to produce some 3,780 more aircraft.75 Moreover the argumentused by Goring and Udet in 1937 to stop the Uralbomber, namely thatraw materials were in short supply, took no account of the fact that awell-designed heavy bomber might indeed take up to two and a halftimes the amount of resources of a medium bomber, but could carry alarger load further than its equivalent in 'medium-bombers'. TheLancaster for example was able to carry four or five times as muchbomb-load as the Ju 88, and almost twice as far. Moreover the unloadedweight of the Lancaster was 36,000 lbs, whereas that of the Ju 88 startedat 17,000 lbs (Ju 88A-1) and rose to 21,000 lbs (Ju 88 A-4). The FlyingFortress B 170 weighed only 27,000 lbs when unloaded. In terms ofefficiency, therefore, the Luftwaffe would have done better to haveconcentrated on the heavy bomber from the start. For the sameindustrial effort it would have been possible to carry many more bombsover a significantly wider range than the medium-bombers.

The concentration on resources limitation reflected, too, the negativeapproach to planning adopted in assessing the overall output require-



ments. Instead of presenting the problem as one that had to be solvedat all costs, Udet and Goring simply fell back on the raw materialsshortage as an excuse for inaction. Even during the war itself, after theJu 88 had been shown to be unequal to the tasks in the war againstBritain, the RLM was arguing against the heavy aircraft on the basisof weight and production totals rather than in terms of militaryefficiency.76 This might have made sense if the medium-bomber hadreally proved to be the key to air power or if there had been a realshortage of raw materials. Since neither of these things was the case,the heavy bomber could have been a major part of Germany's armouryduring the war.

The one major thing that did hold up all aircraft production was thepoor state of aero-engine research. Despite large research programmesand much government money, the German engine industry lacked theskills, experience and knowledge of its British and American rivals tothe extent that aero-engine performance often held up the introductionof new models, particularly of multiple-engined aircraft. The reasonsfor this discrepancy are rather obscure. One reason was the prohibitionon large engine development under the Versailles Treaty. Germany hadalso been slower in general in expanding motor transportation thanmost other industrialised powers.77 Aero-engine development alsosuffered as other areas did from the gap which existed between researchin the institutes and universities and its application in industry.78 Underthe Nazis this often became an exaggerated gap thanks to the persecutionof individual researchers, the poor planning of research programmesand the isolated pieces of misjudgement—such as the failure to developthe jet-engine early or fast enough—that stemmed in part from thekind of administration and personalities favoured by the Nazi regime.79

Whatever the reason, the German aero-engine manufacturers wereregularly blamed by the airframe producers for their inability toproduce the right engine at the right time. With the DB 606 coupledengine for the He 177 there was the excuse that the requirement was aparticularly complicated one but after a period of seven years this factshould have been clear enough to bring an end to the development andto have encouraged the development of an alternative.

Both the resources question and the problem of aero-engine develop-ment might have been overcome if different decisions had been madeand a better judgement formed. Yet the planning of aircraft productionwas bedevilled with poor organisation, poor planning, poor technicalappreciation and 'production' politics. It was this fact that explained thefailure to predict the way bombers should be used and the failure toproduce the heavy bomber during the war when it was wanted. Thepoverty of thinking began right at the top. Goring had little grasp ofthe technical aspects of air planning and left that side to his engineeringofficers in the Ministry. On one occasion when Goring was supposed



to be visiting Heinkel in Vienna to discuss the latest development ofthe replacement urgently needed for the He 177, he went instead tospend the day at the well-known Viennese jewelry shop of ChristianeVoith.80 This kind of administration made it difficult for Göring'sjuniors to plan sensibly and systematically and often left a gap indecision-making that went unfilled. Udet, who headed the technical sideof the Luftwaffe from 1936 to 1941, was temperamentally unsuited to hisposition and largely out of touch with technical matters. He was a stuntpilot and bon viveur but was hardly equal intellectually to the kind ofdemands made upon him by his position in technical planning.81 Heonce remarked to Heinkel: 'I don't understand anything about produc-tion. I understand even less about big aeroplanes'.82 One thing Udetunderstood and that was the importance in his plans of dive-bombing.He it was who had been responsible in the first place for drawingGöring's attention to its advantages. To the idea of dive-bombing hestuck rigidly and this view, the product of Udet's own narrowness ofvision, coincided with the views held by some of the General Staff whofavoured an air force that gave mainly tactical support to the army.

In the end so much of the decision-making became a question ofpolitics. Goring and Udet favoured the small bomber, therefore asection of the General Staff favoured it also. When Jeschonnek wasmade Chief of Air Staff in 1938 he too became a staunch medium anddive-bomber supporter. There remained a division—sometimes a bitterone—between the advocates of both the heavy and medium-bomber, adivision that was to be seen against a background of hostility betweenengineers and the military, between State Secretary Milch and theGeneral Staff, between parvenus and regulars. It was no accident thatmuch support for the heavy bomber was to be found among theengineers and that this of itself was enough to reduce its chances ofacceptance among some of the air staff officers and air commanders.Many of them were originally army officers and found it difficult toescape from the view that the Luftwaffe was primarily a tactical supportforce for the army, a view that went well with the Stuka and the Ju 88.Only when Hitler came to favour the heavy bomber from 1942 onwardsdid the Air Staff, without much enthusiasm, come to support it too. Itwas much too risky to disagree openly with the Führer as Milch was todiscover.

Given this high level of personal and inter-departmental rivalry, it isnot perhaps surprising that the heavy bomber programme and thestrategy that supported it developed in a piecemeal, inconsistent andhaphazard way. What made matters worse was the absence of anyco-ordinating machinery to bring the various political camps togetherwhere full and free discussion might have produced a satisfactorycompromise. There was no satisfactory liaison between Air Staff andthe High Command (OKW) and hence Hitler, whose spasmodic inter-



vention in air matters was always decisive, was poorly informed of airaffairs and was less certain in his approach to air strategy in the frame-work of his wider ambitions.83 So fundamental was this communicationsgap that when Hitler was told by Heinkel in May 1943 that the dive-bombing requirement had held up development of a heavy bomber heretorted: 'But that's madness! I've heard nothing of this until today. Isit possible that there could be so many idiots?'.84 Yet this requirementhad been laid down six years before.

There was, too, a far from happy relationship between the aircraftplanners and the aircraft industry. The heavy bomber programmebecame a function of inter-firm rivalry as it had become one of inter-staff politics. For much of the time firms involved in developing a heavybomber had to work in secret to avoid the RLM proscription ondevelopment. For the one firm—Heinkel—allowed to work on a heavybomber after 1938 there was the running battle with the state-ownedJunkers firm whose managing director, Heinrich Koppenberg, was ableto bring pressure on Udet to push the medium-bomber programmeforward at the expense of everything else.85 When production of theHe 177 was cancelled at the factories scheduled to begin production inmid-1940, Koppenberg exultantly called out while drunk: 'I've alreadykilled the Do 217 and now I have killed the He 177!'86 When theAmerikabomber was to be chosen, it was again the Junkers model thatwas selected even though Messerschmitt complained that the necessaryaircraft was ready at his factory, waiting for permission to beginproduction.87 At the time Messerschmitt was particularly unpopularwith the Air Ministry and this almost certainly counted against him incompetition for new aircraft contracts. This kind of rivalry betweenfirms, encouraged by favouritism in the ministry, added as it was topoor administration and service politics, helped to confound what plansthe Germans had laid for a heavy bomber and for its use in a strategicbombing offensive.

It remains to ask: what could strategic bombing have achieved for theGermans during the war had they been able to carry it out? Theeffectiveness of the Allied air offensive against Germany is still the centreof a major debate. If an effort of this scale should have had doubtfulresults, what impact could a German offensive of smaller scope have hadon the course of the war? There were three possible ways in which theGerman air offensive could have had 'decisive' effect. The first was inthe war at sea. The successful development of a long-range bomberforce early enough in the war would have added enormously to theburdens facing the British in keeping the shipping lanes open. A merehandful of Focke-Wulf 'Kondors'—the 'Scourge of the Atlantic'—had



been responsible for sinking 150,000 tons of shipping a month in thefirst half of 1941. Shipping losses through air action totalled 580,000tons in 1940 and over one million tons in 1941, just under half the totalsinkings for the North Atlantic theatre.88 The second possibility wasthrough the bombing of the British mainland. Had this been carried outon a large scale with heavy bombers in late 1940 or 1941 its effect mighthave been very considerable. For one thing the Germans knew of theeffectiveness of the fire-bomb and could have attacked British cities withthe same destructiveness as the Allies, but at a much earlier date andbefore Britain could have been certain of American military assistance.89

Even at a later date a more determined bomber offensive against Britishcities and industry would have eased the full force of the bombing onGermany in 1943 and 1944, and might perhaps have persuaded theBritish to halt the escalating scale of retaliation. Finally both theUralbomber and the Amerikabomber—forerunners of the interconti-nental bomber—might have had an important effect in limiting Russianindustrial output which was not dispersed and would have provided arelatively easy target. Such attacks might have decisively affected theRussian ability to continue the war on the Eastern front, though it isperhaps unlikely that this could have been achieved by bombing alone.It seems fair to conclude that the strategic benefits that Germany wouldhave gained from carrying out such an air offensive might well haveexceeded those finally gained by the Allies, particularly as Britain wasnot able to get her own bombing offensive in operation until 1942. Whatwas so extraordinary about the German case was the fact that despitethe existence of such strategic ambitions there was such a great gapbetween intention and practice. This was partly because of strategicmiscalculations of which Germany had her fair share, but it was partly,too, a product of the Nazis own inability to translate intention readilyinto reality. This was true in military affairs as it was in other spheres,but it was especially true for the Luftwaffe which the Nazis regarded astheir own service, free from the traditions of the Prussian past. Everycountry had the opportunity to make wrong 'guesses' in warfare. TheNazis simply magnified their chances by the very nature of the person-alities and administration that they employed. In a sense the strategicair war was lost before it started.

NOTES

1. C. Webster, N. Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany,4 vols. London, 1961 : there is also D. Richards, H. Saunders The Royal Air Force1939-1945, 3 vols. London, 1953.

2. W. F. Craven, J. L. Cate The Army Air Forces in World War II 7 vols. Chicago,1948-58.

3. A. Nielsen The German Air Force General Staff New York, 1959, p. 152.


176 THE JOUNRAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

4. D. Irving The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe London, 1972, p. 170: A.Hillgruber Hitlers Strategie Frankfurt a M, 1965, p. 174: K. Klee Dokumente zumUnternehmen Seelöwe Göttingen, 1959, p. 298: W. Baumbach Broken SwastikaLondon, 1960, p. 107.

5. Lord Tedder Air Power in War London, 1948, diagram 5.6. W. Green Warplanes of the Third Reich London, 1970, pp. 223-7: C. Bekker

The Luftwaffe War Diaries, London, 1966, p. 261.7. R. Kilmarx A History of Soviet Air Power London, 1962, pp. 152-3, 193,8. Nielsen op. cit., p. 6, 155: G. Förster Totaler Krieg und Blitzkrieg Berlin,

1967, p. 150.9. A. Kesselring Memoirs London, 1953, ch. v: Green op. cit. p. 128: R. Suchen-

wirth Command and Leadership in the German Air Force New York, 1969, pp. 33-5.10. E. Heinkel He 1000 London, 1954, pp. 216-7. The He 177 first appeared in

German Air Ministry plans in Plan 10, January 1939. See Bundesarchiv (BA)RL3/158.

11. Heinkel op. cit. p. 215, 217-8: Suchenwirth op. cit. p. 35: Förster op. cit.pp. 153-4.

12. G. Douhet The Command of the Air London, 1943 ed. pp. 299-316. Thisbook greatly exaggerated both the quantity of bombs that aircraft could carry andthe destructiveness of such bombloads. Douhet was translated into German in 1935.

13. P. C. Smith The Stuka at War London, 1971, pp. 12-13: Nielsen op. cit.p. 156: Bekker op. cit. pp. 478-9 Appendix II, 'Statement issued on March 17th1954 by Field Marshal Kesselring on the subject of Luftwaffe policy and the questionof a German four-engined bomber'.

14. Heinkel op. cit. p. 215.15. Irving op. cit. p. 65.16. Suchenwirth op. cit. p. 77.17. For example General Paul Deichmann who complained bitterly to Milch

and Göring at a conference in 1937 about the unsuitability of the medium-bomberprogramme: see Nielsen op. cit. pp. 156-7.

18. K-H. Völker Dokumente und Dokumentarfotos zur Geschichte der deutschenLuftwaffe Stuttgart, 1968, pp. 445-9.

19. Ibid. pp. 460-66: D. Dempster, D. Wood The Narrow Margin London, 1961,pp. 224-5.

20. International Military Tribunal Trial of the Major War Criminals Nuremberg,1947, vol. IX. pp. 45-60, Milch interrogation.

21. H. Trevor-Roper ed. Hitler's War Directives London, 1964, pp. 74-80:Klee op. cit. pp. 298-372, documents 8-28.

22. J. Slessor The Central Blue London, 1956, pp. 203-7: A. Harris BomberOffensive London, 1947, pp. 31-2.

23. C. Fitzgibbon The Blitz London, 1957: A. Calder The People's War London,1969, ch. iv: Irving op. cit. pp. 107-8.

24. War Directives pp. 74-9, Directive 16: Klee op. cit. p. 263, 298 (Hitlerclaimed the air attacks 'could work decisively for the war') : W. Warlimont InsideHitler's Headquarters London, 1964, pp. 107-9.

25. Webster and Frankland op. cit. I, pp. 36-7 (note).26. Hillgruber op. cit. pp. 173-4: Klee op. cit. p. 263, 298: K. Klee Das Unter-

nehmen 'Seelöwe' Göttingen, 1958, p. 175.27. F. Halder Kriegstagebuch 3 vols, Stuttgart, 1962-4, II, p. 216, entry for

6.12.1940.28. War Directives pp. 102-4, Directive 23: A. Galland The First and the Last

London, 1955, pp. 53-4: A. Price Luftwaffe London, 1969, pp. 61-4.29. L. Lochner ed. The Goebbels Diaries London, 1948, p. 139 entry for 4.27.1942.30. H. Piocher The German Air Force versus Russia 1941 New York, 1965.



31. Milch Documents (MD) vol LI, 353-5 (from the microfilm collection in theImperial War Museum).

32. MD LIII, 756.33. Goebbels Diaries p. 139: A. Speer Inside the Third Reich London, 1970, p. 283.34. MD LXII, 5208.35. MD LXII, 5226, 5859-61. On this occasion Göring spoke of fire as being

the only way of effecting 'a colossal, complete and final destruction'.36. Heinkel. op. cit. p. 233.37. MD LXIII, 5862-3.38. MD LXIII, 6216.39. Goebbels Diaries p. 139.40. W. Boelcke ed. The Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels London, 1970, pp.

233-4. The name was coined by Batron von Stumm, Deputy Director of the ForeignMinistry Press Department and was highly unpopular with Goebbels who claimedit was 'totally wrong to boast of the destruction of things of cultural value'. Seetoo B. Collier The Defence of the United Kingdom London, 1957, pp. 303-11.

41. J. Killen The Luftwaffe London, 1967, pp. 238-9: Green op. cit. p. 345. The'Little Blitz', known as Operation Steinbock, employed some 550 bombers gatheredtogether from other fronts. Of these only 35 were heavy bombers.

42. Goebbels Diaries, p. 436.43. War Directives p. 239.44. Ibid. pp. 239-40.45. W. Boelcke ed. Deutschlands Rüstung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Hitlers Kon-

ferenzen mit Albert Speer 1942-45 Frankfurt a M, 1969, p. 468.46. S. Roskill The War at Sea 4 vols, London, 1954-61, I, p. 350, 362 615: II.

p. 485.47. MD XV, 2145-6.48. MD LXII, 5297.49. F. H. Hinsley Hitler's Strategy Cambridge, 1951, pp. 167-8. Hitler told

Raeder that Göring would 'greatly resent it' if the Navy were given control over airoperations in the Atlantic. See too Bekker op. cit. p. 273 : Roskill op. cit. I, p. 362.

50. War Directives, p. 97, Directive 21.51. Speer op. cit. pp. 281-3. Speer had actually set up a special committee of

industrialists on June 23rd 1943 to discuss possible technological targets in Russia.Working on their findings Speer spent a year trying to persuade Hitler and theLuftwaffe chiefs of staff to undertake pinpoint attacks on electric power stations.

52. MD LI, 479.53. MD LXII, 5204.54. Heinkel op. cit. p. 232.55. Nielsen, op. cit. p. 174.56. Baumbach op. cit. pp. 108-11.57. T. A. Wilson The First Summit: Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay 1941

London, 1970, pp. 134-6. Churchill believed 'the bombers alone provide the meansof victory'. C. Spaatz 'Strategic Air Power—Fulfilment of a Concept 'ForeignAffairs no. 24, 1945/46.

58. BA/RL3 6, letter from Milch to Jeschonnek.59. F. Swanborough United States Military Aircraft since 1919 London, 1963,

pp. 74-83.60. O. Thetford Aircraft of the Royal Air Force 1918-1957 London, 1957,

pp. 56-9.61. Green op. cit. p. 339, 342, 358-60, 454-5: Swanborough op. cit. pp. 84-90,

143: P. Lewis The British Bomber since 1914 London, 1967, pp. 340-1.62. National Archives (NA) Washington D.C., Microcopy T 177, Roll 14,

frames 3698585-7.



63. Heinkel op. cit. p. 222: MD LXV, 7281.64. G. Thomas Geschichte der deutschen Wehr-und Rüstungswirtschaft 1918-

1943/5 (ed. W. Birkenfeld, Boppard a Rhein, 1966) p. 420: Heinkel op. cit. p. 220.65. Green, op. cit. p. 343.66. Heinkel op. cit. p. 230.67. Irving op. cit. p. 172.68. Green op. cit. pp. 345-6.69. MD LXII, 5235.70. BA/RL3 16, He 177 Handakten, report from Petersen to Göring, 19.8.42.71. Heinkel op. cit. pp. 233-4: BA/RL3 16, 48-50, 70-76.72. Green op. cit. pp. 640-41: A. van Ishoven Messerschmitt London, 1975,

p. 115, 172.73. Green op. cit. pp. 55-6, 509-10, 519-21, 640. Hitler ordered the immediate

production of the jet-bomber in September 1944: see Boelcke, DeutschlandsRüstung p. 411.

74. This argument has been well-sustained in B. H. Klein Germany's EconomicPreparations for War Harvard, 1959 and A. S. Milward The German Economý atWar London, 1965. See too the discussion of comparative industrial mobilizationin R. J. Overy 'Die Mobilisierung der britischen Wirtschaft während des ZweitenWeltkrieges' in H-E. Volkmann, F. Forstmeier eds. Kriegswirtschaft und RüstungDüsseldorf, 1977.

75. R. Wagenführ Die deutsche Industrie im Kriege Berlin, 1963, p. 76; UnitedStates Strategic Bombing Survey, Report no. 20, Light Metal Industry of GermanyPart I: Aluminium p. 17a.

76. BA/RL3 97, chart dated 20.10.1941 comparing aircraft weights: chartdated 'winter 1942/3' on relative aircraft size.

77. See R. J. Overy 'Cars, Roads and Economic Recovery in Germany 1932-38'Economic History Review 2nd Ser. XXVIII, 1975, pp. 466-8.

78. L. Simon German Research in World War II New York, 1947.79. G. Hartcup The Challenge of War. Scientific and Engineering Contributions

to World War Two London, 1970, pp. 29-30. A. Beyerchen Scientists under HitlerLondon, 1977.

80. Heinkel, op. cit. p. 234.81. H. Herlin Udet: a Man's Life London, 1960.82. Heinkel op. cit. p. 185.83. T. Elmhirst 'The German Air Force and its Failure' Journal of the Royal

United Services Institution XCI (1946) p. 504.84. Heinkel op. cit. p. 233.85. Suchenwirth Command and Leadership ..., pp. 76-80.86. Heinkel op. cit. p. 219.87. Speer Collection, Imperial War Museum, FD 4921/45 Folder 2, Me 264.88. Roskill op. cit. I, p. 500, 613.89. Webster and Frankland op. cit. I, pp. 252-3. In the early stages of the war

German aircraft carried a larger proportion of incendiaries (an estimated 30 % ofbombload) than British bombers (an average of 15%).


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