HAMBURG
103 aircraft of 6 types. 1 Wellington lost.
71 aircraft claimed to have bombed Hamburg, starting fires in docks and city areas. Hamburg reports 3 large fires, 13 people killed, 56 injured and 393 bombed out. One bomb caused a major disappointment to the people of Hamburg when it set fire to the express-goods parcel store at the main railway station. It was 'film changeover day' in Hamburg and the entire stock of films for the area was destroyed. No other major incident was recorded.
Minor Operations: 9 aircraft to Ostend, 7 aircraft to Dunkirk, 5 Hampdens minelaying in the mouths of the Elbe and Weser rivers. 1 Hampden lost from the Ostend raid.
Operational Statistics, 7/8 July to
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(126 days 1 nights)
Number of days with operations: 83
Number of nights with operations: 92
Number of daylight sorties: 1,567, from which 112 aircraft (71 percent) were lost
Number of night sorties: 11,991, from which 414 aircraft (35 percent) were lost
Total sorties: 13,558, from which 526 (39 percent) were lost
Approximate bomb tonnage in period: 14,851 tons
Averages per 24-hour period: 107-6 sorties, 42 aircraft lost, 1179 tons of bombs dropped
Official History, Vol. IV, pp. 135-6.
Luftwaffe Quartermaster-General return, quoted in the British Official History, Vol. I, pp. 187-8.
Kiel im Luftkrieg 1939-1945. Tagebuch des Detlef Boelck, Kiel, 1980, pp. 24-5.
Details from Bowyer, op. cit., p. 163.
The two vital factors in any military campaign - the achievements compared to the casualties sustained - had now moved adversely against Bomber Command. It is an old maxim of warfare that heavy casualties can be sustained only as long as comparable results are being obtained. It was now quite obvious that Bomber Command was not gaining results to justify the recent run of heavy casualties either by night or by day.
Let us deal with the evidence available on bombing results first. Disturbing reports of the ineffectiveness of attacks on targets in Germany had been arriving at the Air Ministry through neutral countries for many months. During the first half of 1941, the R.A.F. had also been collecting its own evidence from three sources. Firstly, there was a multitude of verbal reports from returning bomber crews, processed and passed on with varying degrees of optimism by squadrons and groups to produce the final intelligence reports on which most public announcements were based. Then came the newly formed Photographic Reconnaissance Unit, although this had only been able to produce a very limited daylight cover of a very few targets. This evidence conflicted sharply with the crew reports but was too scanty to be accepted as conclusive. The only depth of sure evidence in the possession of the R.A.F. was the accumulated stock of individual aircraft bombing photographs taken by that proportion of the force whose planes were fitted with bombing cameras. In the middle of the year it was decided that a survey should be made of all such recent photographs. That decision was not made by Bomber Command or even by the Air Ministry; it was taken on the initiative of Lord Cherwell, scientific adviser to the Prime Minister and the War Cabinet. The actual work was carried out by Mr D. M. Butt, a civil servant in the War Cabinet secretariat.
The famous Butt Report was completed by 18 August. Its conclusions were a sensation. Mr Butt analysed 4,065 individual aircraft photographs taken in 100 night raids in June and July 1941. Despite the fact that it was usually the best crews in squadrons who were given these cameras, only one in four of the crews which claimed to have bombed a target in Germany were found to have been within five miles of that target. In the full-moon period, the proportion of crews whose bombs fell in the five-mile zone increased to two in five on all targets (about one in three over German targets) while, in the non-moon periods of each month, the five-mile zone was hit by one in fifteen crews on all targets (about one in twenty on German targets). In the Ruhr, which was usually affected by industrial haze, the proportion of successful crews was considerably less. These disappointing figures were further worsened by the fact that only the photographs of crews reporting successful bombing in the first place had contributed to the figures; one third of all crews dispatched did not even claim to have reached the target area!
Early in the war, Bomber Command had been forced to turn the majority of its effort to night bombing by the harsh fact that bombers could not defend themselves in daylight operations. Recent casualties in 2 Group confirmed that these rules had not changed, even though most of the Luftwaffe day-fighter force was in Russia. The Butt Report, taken with other evidence available, seemed to prove with equal harshness that Bomber Command, with its present navigation equipment, standard of crew training and methods of tactical employment, could not hit its targets with any accuracy, even on the best moonlit nights in summer weather. The Butt Report finally showed the R.A.F. what officials in German cities had been recording all the time and what this diary is revealing in its entries for night after night.
The contents of the report were shown to Sir Richard Peirse and his group commanders. Their attempts to explain the report's implications impressed neither the Air Ministry nor the War Cabinet. In his operations during the weeks after the report was issued, there is evidence that Peirse was no longer concentrating on the offensive against the priority targets which would cut off the transportation links from the Ruhr war industries. The bombers were sent instead to places of lesser importance in the hope that he could counter the adverse comments of the Butt Report by gaining successes on targets which were less well protected by Flak, searchlights and ground haze. There is also evidence, however, that the proportion of crews prepared to press on through difficult conditions and bomb even those secondary targets was declining. In short, Bomber Command was losing its confidence.
As far as the bomber crews were concerned it was that other part of the equation - the casualties incurred - which meant more to them than a Whitehall-produced report of which they had never heard. The latest round of operations - classified in this diary as 7/8 July to 10 November - had cost 414 night bombers and 112 day bombers lost over enemy territory, in the sea or shot down over England by German Intruders. This was approximately equivalent to the loss of Bomber Command's entire front-line strength of aircraft and crews in four months. The percentage loss of aircraft dispatched was 3.5 percent by night and 7.1 percent by day.
The views held by Bomber Command and Air Ministry on this dual state of affairs - results and losses - did not matter; it was the Prime Minister who decided the next move. Sir Richard Peirse was summoned to what must have been an uncomfortable meeting with Churchill at Chequers the evening after the heavy loss raid to Berlin of 7/8 November. The War Cabinet later discussed the situation at length and informed the Air Ministry of its decision. The bomber offensive, in its present form, was to be virtually halted to allow for the passage of the midwinter months and the formulation of a new policy. On 13 November the Air Ministry informed Sir Richard Peirse that only limited operations were to be carried out in the coming months while the whole future of Bomber Command was debated.
The squadrons would be subject to these orders for more than three months, a period which would see further world-shattering events. A British offensive in North Africa which commenced on 18 November made good progress and relieved the siege of Tobruk, but Rommel's Afrika Korps counter-attacked and would chase the Eighth Army back again in January. On 7 December the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor and many other places and a new war flared across the Pacific and South-East Asia. Britain lost two capital ships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, off Malaya on 10 December and then the great base at Singapore surrendered in February. Those were grim days for Britain and her resources would be stretched to the limit, a factor that might affect the future of Bomber Command. There was one beacon in the darkness. Three days after the Japanese struck in the East, Hitler, although already locked in battle with the Russians, made the fateful decision to declare war on the United States. Having failed to knock Britain out of the war when she had no Allies, Hitler had now succeeded in bringing in on Britain's side the two most powerful nations in the world. Although there were dark days still to come, Hitler had now sealed his own fate. But what part would R.A.F. Bomber Command play in that process?
There were no Bomber Command operations from 10 to
