Preview The Globalisation of War Volume 4 – Stalingrad. Kursk. The bombing of Germany. The atom bomb.

Chapter 1 Preview

Overview continued. Scroll down for Chapter 1 preview

In this volume the decisive battles were on the Russian front. At Stalingrad the Germans were held and forced to retreat. At Kursk the Soviets nullified the advantage that the Germans previously had in tanks and aircraft and again the Germans were forced to retreat. On the Atlantic Ocean the Allies gained superiority through the use of intelligence and aircraft. In North Africa the Germans were defeated and the battle was resumed in Sicily.

In the Far East the Japanese still controlled most of the Pacific Ocean, but the Americans were building ships to confront them. In the South Pacific the war continued at Guadalcanal which was in part a land battle and in part a sea battle. The British lost Malaya and the fight continued in Burma with Japan having the upper hand. All these battles on several fronts were nothing compared to the production of the atom bomb. Oppenheimer was the brains behind the bomb, but its production was a great engineering feat which has been underrated. The man who organised this was General Leslie Groves.

This massive endeavour, which in the context of the war could only be done by the US. Nils Bohr did not believe they could do it and he was nearly right. It was the brilliance of the nuclear scientists that created the bomb but it was the engineers that delivered it. To do this task required enormous competence. Groves wanted a field command but was prevailed upon to lead the Manhattan Project. Groves could be abrasive and appear to others to be over confident but the biggest compliment he was paid was that he produced the best out of people revealing their intrinsic abilities. For an engineer to do this to the world’s greatest scientists was a major achievement. He believed in the competence and brilliance of Oppenheimer and was not phased by his communist connections.

The one scientist with whom he had difficulties was Leo Szilard, an able man, but to Groves he was disruptive and not a team player. Szilard was contemptuous of an engineer making decisions on a par with the intellectual brilliance of the scientists. Yet the Manhattan Project was an engineering project and Groves delivered. It was a tour de force with a team that worked together at the highest creative level.

Preview: Chapter 1
Bomber Command – August 1942 to March 1943

Introduction

Air Marshal Arthur Harris was an astute and gifted leader who had his faults but his virtues greatly outweighed his defects. He had come to embody Bomber Command but there were men of talent above and below him. He robustly fought his corner but did not create enmity and did not thwart his opponents. The concept of the Pathfinder Force was the inspiration of Squadron Leader Bufton, who was subsequently promoted to the staff. It was a concept that Harris opposed and he was supported by most of his station commanders, not because they did not want accurate marking, but because they felt that their best pilots would be taken from them. Nevertheless, Harris did not try to snuff out the idea, which flourished in discussion.

Eventually, Chief of Air Staff Charles Portal gave the go-ahead and the force was assembled by sending a squadron from each of the four main groups. This provided a cross-section in terms of ability and the airmen available. To begin with, it also consisted of a cross-section of aircraft: Wellingtons, Halifaxes, Lancasters and Stirlings. At the time there were no special bombs and the objective was to mark the target with flares. By September, bomb casings were being filled with chemicals, which would give a coloured pyrotechnic display on the ground and guide the bombers if placed in the right position. However, it was not easy to implement this system of marking.

The Pathfinder Force started with an operation to Flensburg, situated on an inlet in the Baltic and theoretically easy to find. The pathfinders claimed to have marked and bombed it but it was not hit, although towns nearby were hit and bombed. The next raid was on Frankfurt, which was covered in cloud, so the raid was only marginally more effective. The third raid, on Kassel by 306 aircraft, was more successful, killing twenty-eight soldiers and fifteen civilians and damaging three factories of the Henschel aircraft company. But losses were mounting as the night fighter aircraft were too good and 10 per cent of the aircraft did not return from that raid. The next night it was even worse when 159 aircraft attacked Nuremberg and lost 14.6 per cent of the force, including a third of the Wellingtons. This was an horrific depletion that could not continue.

By 1 September, marking had not improved as Saarbrücken was the target but Saarlouis was the city marked. The breakthrough came three days later when the pathfinders divided themselves into markers to identify the target with white flares, enabling the visual markers to drop incendiary bombs and drop coloured flares. The third group dropped incendiary bombs to provide further illumination, which allowed the bombing force to offload more accurately. The destruction and damage to industrial premises and houses was considerable, including the Weser aircraft works and the Atlas shipyard. Although 4.6 per cent of the 251 aircraft were shot down, there was only one through flak, which was not encouraging to those on the ground in Bremen.

Nor were the casualty rates encouraging to those in Bomber Command. Operations were leading to a constant attrition rate that was debilitating to morale. The survival odds were not good. At this stage of the war an airman flew for forty completed operations before being rested and then had to complete another twenty before being relieved of aircrew duties. When Harris started the thousand-bomber raids at the end of May, the attrition rate to the end of August was 4.3 per cent. Averaging this out over fifty operations meant that only ten crews out of a hundred would survive. It was not only that mortality and capture would decimate Bomber Command but there would be a dearth of leadership and experience. Harris recognised the dangers and at this time rested the Halifaxes in 4 Group for a month because of a drop in morale. The plane had teething troubles at the beginning of the year and 109 Halifaxes had been lost during a six-month period.

Role of Bomber Command

The balancing of resources was a constant theme throughout the war.