, its all-N.C.O. crew being all killed.
31. A Lancaster of 101 Squadron at Ludford Magna and a typical area-bombing load: one 4,000-pound 'Blockbuster', four general-purpose high-explosive bombs and containers of 4-pound incendiaries.
But these comments must be kept in perspective. Most crews did not abort unnecessarily, did not drop bombs in the sea and did their utmost to reach the centre of the target. What Bomber Command suffered from in the Battle of Berlin was not a widespread drop in morale but a deterioration of efficiency caused by adverse weather, the longer routes which had to be employed and which forced more fuel to be carried at the expense of bomb tonnage, and steadily increasing casualties which led to an ever greater reliance on inexperienced crews. All these factors applied to the Pathfinders as well as to the Main Force squadrons. There was also a steady dilution of effort. In the closing phases of the battle, up to 20 percent of the aircraft dispatched by Bomber Command were employed on diversionary and supporting raids and, although it must be said that some of those aircraft were not suitable for Main Force raids, the German defences had forced a departure from the principle of concentration. Finally, the electronic aids which had ensured victory in the Battle of the Ruhr were not available over Berlin. The limiting range at which Oboe could be used was the supremely vital factor in the outcome of the Battle of Berlin.
32. The tail unit of a burnt-out Lancaster, one of the 3,431 Lancasters lost in the war.
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VAIRES
76 Halifaxes and 8 Mosquitoes of 4, 6 and 8 Groups attacked the railway yards at Vaires, near Paris, in bright moonlight. The bombing was very accurate and 2 ammunition trains which were present blew up; it is reported that 1,270 German troops were killed. 1 Halifax lost.
Minor Operations: 19 Lancasters of 5 Group to the aero-engine factory at Lyons, which was bombed accurately. Mosquitoes: 32 to Kiel, where 47 people were killed and 134 were injured, 11 to Krefeld, 5 to Aachen and 4 to Cologne. No losses.
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NUREMBERG
This would normally have been the moon stand-down period for the Main Force, but a raid to the distant target of Nuremberg was planned on the basis of an early forecast that there would be protective high cloud on the outward route, when the moon would be up, but that the target area would be clear for ground-marked bombing. A Meteorological Flight Mosquito carried out a reconnaissance and reported that the protective cloud was unlikely to be present and that there could be cloud over the target, but the raid was not cancelled.
35. Squadron Leader Peter Hill briefs Halifax crews of 51 Squadron at Snaith for the Nuremberg raid of
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, when Bomber Command suffered its greatest loss of the war. On this night 51 Squadron lost six aircraft out of seventeen dispatched; Squadron Leader Hill and thirty-four more of the men in this picture would be killed and seven would become prisoners of war.
795 aircraft were dispatched - 572 Lancasters, 214 Halifaxes and 9 Mosquitoes. The German controller ignored all the diversions and assembled his fighters at 2 radio beacons which happened to be astride the route to Nuremberg. The first fighters appeared just before the bombers reached the Belgian border and a fierce battle in the moonlight lasted for the next hour. 82 bombers were lost on the outward route and near the target. The action was much reduced on the return flight, when most of the German fighters had to land, but 95 bombers were lost in all - 64 Lancasters and 31 Halifaxes, 11.9 percent of the force dispatched. It was the biggest Bomber Command loss of the war.
Most of the returning crews reported that they had bombed Nuremberg but subsequent research showed that approximately 120 aircraft had bombed Schweinfurt, 50 miles north-west of Nuremberg. This mistake was a result of badly forecast winds causing navigational difficulties. 2 Pathfinder aircraft dropped markers at Schweinfurt. Much of the bombing in the Schweinfurt area fell outside the town and only 2 people were killed in that area.
The main raid at Nuremberg was a failure. The city was covered by thick cloud and a fierce cross-wind which developed on the final approach to the target caused many of the Pathfinder aircraft to mark too far to the east. A 10-mile-long creepback also developed into the countryside north of Nuremberg. Both Pathfinders and Main Force aircraft were under heavy fighter attack throughout the raid. Little damage was caused in Nuremberg; 69 people were killed in the city and the surrounding villages.
DIVERSION AND SUPPORT OPERATIONS
49 Halifaxes minelaying in the Heligoland area, 13 Mosquitoes to night-fighter airfields, 34 Mosquitoes on diversions to Aachen, Cologne and Kassel, 5 R.C.M. sorties, 19 Serrate patrols. No aircraft lost.
Minor Operations: 3 Oboe Mosquitoes to Oberhausen (where 23 Germans waiting to go into a public shelter were killed by a bomb) and 1 Mosquito to Dortmund, 6 Stirlings minelaying off Texel and Le Havre, 17 aircraft on Resistance operations, 8 O.T.U. sorties. 1 Halifax shot down dropping Resistance agents over Belgium.
Total effort for the night: 950 sorties, 96 aircraft (10.1 percent) lost.
Pilot Officer C. J. Barton, a Halifax pilot of 578 Squadron, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for carrying on to the target in the Nuremberg operation after his bomber was badly damaged in a fighter attack and 3 members of his crew baled out through a communication misunderstanding. Although the navigator and wireless operator were among the men who had parachuted, Barton decided to attempt the return flight to England in spite of the fact that only 3 engines were running. An unexpected wind took the Halifax steadily up the North Sea and it was short of fuel when the English coast was reached near Sunderland. Barton had to make a hurried forced landing when his engines failed through lack of fuel and he died in the crash, but his 3 remaining crew members were only slightly hurt.
Pilot Officer Barton's Victoria Cross was the only one awarded during the Battle of Berlin, which had now officially ended.
Operational Statistics,
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AIRCREW CASUALTIES BY NATIONALITY
The Bomber Command men who died were serving with the following Air Forces at the time of their deaths (these figures include 73 men who died of natural causes; it is not possible to extract that figure from the nationality totals):
CASUALTIES BY RANK
From a random study of Bomber Command names in the registers of nine war cemeteries in Germany, the following were the approximate proportions of dead aircrew:
This table includes promotions which were being processed when airmen were shot down and which were applied after the man had died.
ESCAPERS AND EVADERS
During the war 156 R.A.F. men successfully escaped from German prison camps in Western Europe and 1,975 men evaded capture after having been shot down in Western Europe (source: Public Record Office AIR 40/1897). No breakdown by commands is available but it is probable that more than half of the escapers and evaders were Bomber Command men.
GROUNDCREW
It is not known how many men and women ground staff served with Bomber Command during the war but 1,479 men and 91 W.A.A.F.s died while on duty and 52 male ground staff became prisoners of war.
55. The Durnbach War Cemetery. Probably the most beautiful setting of any of the war cemeteries in Germany, the mountains of Bavaria. Nine out of every ten of these graves are of Bomber Command men killed while raiding targets in Southern Germany or on the way to Italy.
The figures for aircrew in Bomber Command are quoted by Sir Arthur Harris in Bomber Offensive, p. 267.
Letter to Martin Middlebrook from Air Historical Branch,
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582 SQUADRON
SERVICE
Formed as a Pathfinder squadron in 8 Group on
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.1 do not feel qualified to comment on Mr Dyson's main contentions and there were probably other factors involved, such as the Lancaster's heavier bomb loads, but his statements that, once shot down, the Lancaster crew member had a poorer chance of survival than his colleagues in the Stirlings and Halifaxes flying on operations at that time, seems to be confirmed by my figures. Dyson's estimate was that, over a long period of operations, 25 percent of shot down Stirling and Halifax crew members could expect to survive but only 15 percent of men in Lancasters would do so. The figures for the Hamburg, Peenemnde and Nuremberg operations are as follows. The loss of nine Wellingtons in the Battle of Hamburg has not been included.
These figures are not based upon a sufficiently large number of aircraft lost to be presented as absolute mathematical proof of Dyson's case, particularly in the smaller number of Stirlings involved, but they do tend to support Dyson's argument. Dyson's figures claimed a 10 percent advantage for the Stirling and Halifax; the above figures show a remarkably similar 9 percent advantage over the Lancaster for the combined totals of the Stirlings and Halifaxes.
It does seem, under normal circumstances, that although the Lancaster could expect to return more often from operations it was a more difficult aircraft from which to escape when it was attacked and shot down.
Some interesting figures are also available for the survival rate from the American B-17 Fortresses shot down in a similar series of raids. From four operations carried out by B-17s during July 1943 - two to Hamburg, one to Kiel and one to Hanover and from the Schweinfurt and Regensburg raids of
