HAMBURG
740 aircraft - 329 Lancasters, 235 Halifaxes, 105 Stirlings, 66 Wellingtons, 5 Mosquitoes. 30 aircraft - 13 Lancasters, 10 Halifaxes, 4 Wellingtons, 3 Stirlings - lost, 4.1 percent of the force.
The bombing force encountered a large thunderstorm area over Germany and the raid was a failure. Many crews turned back early or bombed alternative targets. At least 4 aircraft, probably more, were lost because of icing, turbulence or were struck by lightning. No Pathfinder marking was possible at Hamburg and only scattered bombing took place there. Many other towns in a 100-mile area of Northern Germany received a few bombs. A sizeable raid developed on the small town of Elmshorn, 12 miles from Hamburg. It is believed that a flash of lightning set a house on fire here and bomber crews saw this through a gap in the storm clouds and started to bomb the fire. 254 houses were destroyed in Elmshorn and 57 people were killed, some of them refugees from recent raids on Hamburg.
Minor Operations: 5 Mosquitoes to Duisburg, 6 Wellingtons minelaying in the River Elbe, 12 O.T.U. sorties. 1 Wellington minelayer lost.
Operational Statistics, 24/25 July to
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(10 days/nights)
Number of nights with operations: 9
Number of night sorties: 4,307, from which 130 aircraft (3.0 percent) were lost
Approximate bomb tonnage in period: 10,815 tons
Averages per 24-hour period: 430.7 sorties, 13.0 aircraft lost, 1,081.5 tons of bombs dropped
Public Record Office AIR 24/257.
A full description of the four R.A.F. and two U.S.A.A.F. raids on Hamburg, and of the introduction of Window and its effect upon the German defences, is contained in Martin Middlebrook's The Battle of Hamburg, London, Allen Lane, 1980; New York, Scribner's, 1981; and, as Hamburg Juli '43 Berlin, Ullstein, 1983.
The Doktor Krupps incident is taken from Philip Moyes's Bomber Squadrons of the R.A.F. and Their Aircraft, Macdonald, 1964, p. 348.
Bomber Command pressed on vigorously during the remainder of August and that month would prove to be the most active in 1943. There was a period of good weather and every advantage was taken of the shattering effect Window had on the German defences. Much of the month was taken up with a series of raids which Bomber Command was ordered to carry out against Italian cities in order to hasten the exit of Italy from the war. This policy succeeded and Italy surrendered to the Allies on 8 September, although the Germans remained in Italy and contested the Allied landings in the south which started on 3 September. It should not be forgotten that the bombing of the Italian cities was a major factor in forcing this enemy country out of the war.
There was a respite for the bomber squadrons during the moon period in the third week of August, although Sir Arthur Harris took advantage of the moon to risk the special raid on the German rocket-research establishment at Peenemnde which he had been ordered to make. Then, at the end of the month, Harris launched what was probably intended to be the opening of his next battle - the Battle of Berlin. He was prepared to devote several months to this next offensive. He started with three raids in the twelve nights between 23 August and 4 September. But this opening effort produced disappointing results. The concentration of bombing was not comparable with the recent results in Hamburg and bomber casualties were heavy. From the 1,669 sorties dispatched 125 aircraft were lost, a rate of 75 percent. Inland Berlin did not prove to be a good H2S target and the German defences were clearly recovering from the setback of Window.
Harris decided to draw back from Berlin. An improved version of H2S was in the pipeline and should reach the Pathfinders in a few weeks and another navigational aid called the Ground Position Indicator was also due to come into use soon. The arrival of these aids later in the year would also coincide with the nights of deeper and longer darkness. There followed a two-month period in which the bombers were still sent out whenever possible, but to what might be termed intermediate targets in Germany - important cities, usually beyond the range of Oboe, but not as fiercely defended as Berlin. In particular, there was a substantial effort against Hannover, which was raided four times, as many aircraft being used as had been dispatched on the first three raids which had devastated Hamburg. But Hannover was another inland target which did not show up well on the H2S sets and only one of the raids achieved a limited success. Altogether 110 bombers were lost in these raids to Hannover.
There was a major change in the shape of Bomber Command during this period. That veteran pre-war aircraft, the Wellington, finally disappeared from the Main Force. This dependable and much-loved aircraft had flown continually on Bomber Command operations since the first day of the war four years earlier. Its contribution to the command's offensive cannot be praised too highly. Some of the Wellington squadrons would remain in Bomber Command until well into 1944 but only flying limited operations, mainly minelaying.
Bomber Command's overall strength remained static during this period; the heady days of expansion earlier in 1943 were over. There was some gradual progress in modernization. 3 Group and 6 Group started to equip some of their Stirling and Halifax squadrons with the Hercules-engined Mark II version of the Lancaster (115 Squadron of 3 Group had actually received their Lancasters earlier in the year), but production of this version was only limited. The more popular Merlin-engined Lancasters were still pouring off the assembly lines but the need to replace battle casualties and worn-out aircraft in the existing Lancaster squadrons meant that the conversion of other squadrons proceeded only slowly.
A number of new devices were introduced during the period but none of them were of a revolutionary nature. The operational trials of a promising new blind-bombing device called G-H were carried out by Mosquitoes in October and by Lancasters in November. These trials were successful and the device was withdrawn until enough sets could be provided to equip a larger force. This would not be until 1944 and a description of the device will be left until a later section of the diary. Two new radio-countermeasures systems came into operation. Corona was the code-name for the ground listening and broadcasting stations in England from which R.A.F. men and women who were fluent German speakers attempted, often successfully, to imitate the German fighter controllers and broadcast false instructions to the night fighters. A.B.C. (Airborne Cigar) was a jamming device fitted into the Lancasters of 101 Squadron, 1 Group, with which an extra German-speaking crew member attempted to jam the German voice transmissions. The A.B.C. aircraft also carried bomb loads and they formed part of the normal bomber stream to targets. Both devices were introduced in October and they were further illustrations of the growing complexity of the bombing war.
Yet another sign of this was an extension of the 'diversion raid' tactic. Mosquitoes of 8 Group had been carrying out this type of operation for some weeks, attempting to draw the Luftwaffe's attention away from Bomber Command's main target by dropping flares and target indicators over other cities. But there were too few Mosquitoes available for this task and it was apparent that the Germans were rarely fooled. With the growing mobility of the German night-fighter force, after Window had rendered the box system obsolete, it was becoming important to conceal the identity of the main target for as long as possible. For this reason, Bomber Command now started flying diversionary raids - sometimes called 'spoofs' - by small forces of ordinary bombers in an attempt to deceive the German controllers. This was an escalation of a trend which was drawing Bomber Command planners away from the principle of concentration that had served so well in the past year and a half. The coming year of the bombing war would see a steady weakening of the main effort in this way.
There was one more innovation. On the night of 8/9 September, five B-17 Fortresses of the 422nd Bomb Squadron, part of the 305th Bombardment Group of the American Eighth Air Force, joined in a Bomber Command night raid on German gun positions near Boulogne. This was undoubtedly an experiment initiated by Brigadier-General Fred Anderson, the American bomber commander who had recently taken part in R.A.F. raids to Essen and Hamburg, flying in a Lancaster. The Eighth Air Force had suffered severe losses in their first deep penetration raids into Germany and Anderson was allowing a handful of his B-17s to experiment with night-bombing operations, perhaps with a view to devoting a part of his force to the night offensive in which the British had always urged the Americans to join. The 422nd Squadron participated in seven further raids with Bomber Command, five of them to German cities; thirty-five B-17 sorties were dispatched altogether and two aircraft were lost. These flights ended early in October and, although 422nd Squadron continued to fly leaflet operations by night until the end of the war, it never returned to night bombing and was not joined by other American bomber units.
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12 Wellingtons of 6 Group minelaying off Lorient and St-Nazaire without loss.
