AMMUNITION AND FUEL DUMPS
227 aircraft - 119 Lancasters, 99 Halifaxes, 9 Mosquitoes - of 4, 5 and 8 Groups attacked an ammunition dump at Fouillard and a fuel dump at Chtellerault. The raid at Fouillard, carried out by 4 Group with Pathfinder marking, hit the north-western section of the target and the all-5 Group raid at Chtellerault destroyed 8 fuel sites out of 35 in the target area. No aircraft lost.
RAILWAYS
224 aircraft - 184 Lancasters, 30 Stirlings, 10 Mosquitoes - of 3 and 8 Groups attacked railway yards at Lens and Valenciennes. The raids took place in clear visibility and both targets were accurately bombed. 6 Lancasters were lost from the Lens raid and 5 Lancasters from Valenciennes.
Minor Operations: 31 Mosquitoes to Gelsenkirchen, 13 Serrate and 21 Intruder patrols, 7 Stirlings and 4 Halifaxes minelaying off Channel ports. 1 Mosquito lost from the Gelsenkirchen raid.
Total effort for the night: 527 sorties, 12 aircraft (2.3 percent) lost.
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2 Mosquitoes of 100 Group carried out uneventful daylight Intruder patrols to Leeuwarden airfield.
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FLYING-BOMB SITES
405 aircraft - 236 Lancasters, 149 Halifaxes, 20 Mosquitoes - of 1, 4, 5, 6 and 8 Groups commenced the new campaign against flying-bomb launching sites with raids on 4 sites in the Pas de Calais area. All targets were accurately marked by Oboe Mosquitoes and successfully bombed. No aircraft lost.
STERKRADE/HOLTEN
321 aircraft - 162 Halifaxes, 147 Lancasters, 12 Mosquitoes - of 1, 4, 6 and 8 Groups to attack the synthetic-oil plant despite a poor weather forecast.
The target was found to be covered by thick cloud and the Pathfinder markers quickly disappeared. The Main Force crews could do little but bomb on to the diminishing glow of the markers in the cloud. R.A.F. photographic reconnaissance and German reports agree that most of the bombing was scattered, although some bombs did fall in the plant area, but with little effect upon production. 21 Germans and 6 foreigners were killed and 18 houses in the vicinity were destroyed.
Unfortunately, the route of the bomber stream passed near a German night-fighter beacon at Bocholt, only 30 miles from Sterkrade. The German controller had chosen this beacon as the holding point for his night fighters. Approximately 21 bombers were shot down by fighters and a further 10 by Flak. 22 of the lost aircraft were Halifaxes, these losses being 13.6 percent of the 162 Halifaxes on the raid. 77 Squadron, from Full Sutton near York, lost 7 of its 23 Halifaxes taking part in the raid.
Minor Operations: 25 Mosquitoes and 1 Lancaster of 8 Group to Berlin, 12 R.C.M. sorties (the airborne Mandrel jamming screen was used for the first time on this night), 53 Serrate, Intruder and flying-bomb patrols, 8 Stirlings and 4 Halifaxes minelaying in the Frisians and off the Biscay coast. 1 Stirling R.C.M. aircraft lost.
Total effort for the night: 829 sorties, 32 aircraft (3.9 percent) lost.
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. Roy Carter baled out successfully but, while he was being hidden by Dutch civilians in a house at Tilburg, he was discovered by Germans on 8 July and shot, together with a Pathfinder pilot and an Australian airman. The bloodstained Dutch flag which covered the bodies after their death was brought to England in 1983 and placed in the 83 Squadron Memorial Chapel in Coningsby parish church.
The Allied armies finally broke through the German defences in Normandy and, led by their armoured divisions, raced across France in all directions. A link was quickly made with the Allied units which had recently landed in Southern France. Paris was liberated on 24 August. Belgium was entered early in September - with the vital port of Antwerp being seized almost intact - and most of that small country was completely liberated within a few days. The first American troops reached the German border near Aachen and Trier on 10 September but their headlong dash was then held in front of Germany's old frontier fortifications, the Siegfried Line. Holland was reached on 15 September but then the bold plan to take a series of vital road bridges across the Rhine, Waal and Maas rivers by British and American airborne troops just failed, when relieving ground forces were not able to reach the British troops at the furthest bridge at Arnhem. Most of Holland would have to endure further months of German occupation.
The breaking of the German armies in Normandy and the swift advance to the German frontier completely altered the war situation. Many people had hoped that the advancing troops could continue unchecked on into Germany, to meet the Russian troops advancing from the East and end the war in Europe before the winter. But there was no chance of this happening; the hard facts of logistics and the need to bring fresh divisions in from the United States to man the huge new front line imposed themselves on the situation. The Allied commanders were seriously handicapped by lack of port facilities. Brest had fallen and was a useful port of direct entry from America, but it was now 500 miles from the new battle lines. The Germans had left do-or-die garrisons in all the Channel ports and, although the Allies held the perfectly placed port of Antwerp, the Germans still controlled the banks of its forty-mile river approach. The armies were forced to halt after Arnhem and wait for the clearance of the Channel ports and Antwerp.
Bomber Command had played little part in the great advance, though they had contributed greatly to the preliminary weakening of the German defence. Sir Arthur Harris was formally released from his control by Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in mid-September and Bomber Command reverted to Air Ministry control, although all future operations were still intended to fit into overall Allied planning. This was the last of Bomber Command's historic turning-points. Which path was the R.A.F. heavy-bomber offensive now to take, with the circumstances of the war so vastly altered? Firstly, Bomber Command was ordered to remain ready to answer any calls for direct assistance to the ground forces. No one argued about that and Harris thus devoted whatever part of his force was necessary to bombing the German garrisons in the Channel ports, to clearing the approaches to Antwerp and, later, to bombing German towns facing Allied ground attacks. But the army demands required only a small proportion of Bomber Command's huge strength. How to employ the great potential remaining was the subject of much debate and, as usual, some controversy.
Two schools of thought favoured two different target systems - synthetic-oil production and the German transportation system; a smaller number of people favoured a third option, the continued general bombing of German industrial cities. A successful all-out attack on oil would produce obvious benefits; the Germans would be robbed of the ability to wage any form of mobile war on land and the Luftwaffe would be grounded. This was believed to be the best way to end the war by many of what might be termed 'the senior strategists', the men who held the highest positions in the direction of the Allied war effort. As far as the R.A.F. was concerned, this was the preferred policy of Sir Charles Portal and the Air Ministry. The second option - the attack on communications - was supported by the senior Allied commanders fighting in Europe; their success in Normandy and the recent advance to Germany owed much to the successful interdiction campaign by the British and American heavy bombers. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Eisenhower's deputy commander, was the main R.A.F. supporter of this policy.
An important directive issued both to R.A.F. Bomber Command and to the American Eighth Air Force on 25 September showed that the oil school of thought had won. A clear first priority was given to both air forces - 'the petroleum industry, with special emphasis on petrol (gasoline) including storage'. Joint second priorities were the German rail and waterway transport system, tank production and motor-vehicle production. German cities were mentioned much later in the directive for general attack 'when weather and tactical conditions are unsuitable for operations against specific primary objectives'. These clear instructions were reinforced on 1 November by a directive addressed to Bomber Command alone:
Sir,
I am directed … to inform you that, in view of the great contribution which the strategic bomber forces are making by their attacks on the enemy petroleum industry and his oil supplies, it has been decided that the maximum effort is to be made to maintain and, if possible, intensify pressure on this target system.
Sir Arthur Harris scribbled a comment alongside this: 'Here we go round the mulberry bush.'
Harris made it quite clear to his superiors during the war and is perfectly open in his post-war writings that he did not hold with the bombing of particular target systems, 'panacea targets' he called them. He believed that, because of weather and tactical limitations, Bomber Command would be best employed in continuing to wear down the industrial production of large cities and the spirit of their inhabitants. Harris also still believed that Germany could collapse from within and the Allied armies could be spared the final task of storming the German frontier defences. His interpretations of the tactical latitude allowed to him in day-to-day (or night-to-night) target selection continued to lean generously towards area attacks on German cities, although many of those cities were associated with the oil industry.
39. Civilians hurrying to a substantial air-raid shelter in Mnster.
40. Inside the air-raid shelters in which German civilians spent so much of their lives in the last year of the war. These people are a typical cross-section of wartime German city-dwellers - women, children and old men; the younger men are all at the front and the middle-aged men are either at the front or on air-raid duty.
Bomber Command's strength was now increasing steadily. The numbers of front-line aircraft rose by 50 percent in 1944, most of the increase coming in the second half of the year, with a particular rush of new Lancaster squadrons being formed in the autumn. Expansion took place in every group. 1 and 5 Groups, equipped with Lancasters, were each able to drop as many bombs as had the whole of Bomber Command two years earlier. 6 (Canadian) Group became a mixed Halifax and Lancaster force and could, when required, provide nearly 300 aircraft for operations. 4 Group remained an all-Halifax force to the end, receiving the improved Mark VI version to add to the IIIs which had served them so well. The biggest change in the regular groups was the resurgence of 3 Group, which had borne the brunt of Bomber Command's early war years with the Wellington but had then suffered and more recently languished in near idleness with the Stirling. 3 Group's last Stirlings were transferred to 38 Group, in Transport Command, and soon not only would 3 Group be fully equipped with Lancasters, but many of its aircraft would be fitted with the G-H blind-bombing device. G-H enabled the 3 Group aircraft to bomb accurately in any weather, provided the cloud tops did not reach to the Lancasters' operational height. 3 Group was then permitted to operate on its own on most occasions. With 5 Group also acting in an independent role, the standard Main Force was now composed of 1, 4, 6 and 8 Groups but still able to provide up to 1,000 aircraft for a maximum effort. 8 Group received an improved Mark III version of H2S and an increase in the number of Mosquito squadrons in the Light Night Striking Force. Finally, 100 Group was steadily increasing both in strength and in its technical ability to outwit the Germans.
The scene was now set for Bomber Command's operational climax. The German night-fighter force was declining. Bomber casualties were falling. Bombing accuracy was improving. Daylight raids on Germany were resumed before the month was out. Several German cities which had so far defied all of Bomber Command's efforts were now destroyed; Brunswick (in October) and Nuremberg (in early 1945) come to mind. Old targets were attacked again; there was a second Battle of the Ruhr that autumn, mentioned under that title in the Official History but not as well remembered as the 1943 campaign. Much of the German war industry disappeared underground or to distant locations. Bomber Command then began to run out of large cities to attack and started to strike at smaller, less industrial communities, places like Darmstadt, Bremerhaven, Bonn, Freiburg, Heilbronn, Ulm; many more narrow streets of medieval houses and other cultural landmarks disappeared as well as a vast quantity of ordinary housing. And all the time Harris was sending smaller forces to attack the synthetic-oil refineries and the transportation targets. The bomber crews of that period certainly had variety. They could fly by night or by day; their log-books might contain details of raids on gun batteries near Calais or Boulogne, old faithfuls like Essen and Cologne, the dykes on Walcheren island, oil refineries, the Dortmund-Ems Canal or the railway yards in some German town they had never heard of - all in rapid succession.
Approximately 46 percent of the total tonnage of bombs dropped by Bomber Command in five and a half years of war would be dropped in the remaining nine months.
