Quote:
Originally Posted by ATAG_Dutch
November 1940.
Notable Luftwaffe Operation - Devastation of Coventry's aircraft industries.
Notable Bomber Command Operations - Krupps factory at Essen.
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Corrected for factuality.
Both sides attempted to hit industries, but there was of course a lot of collateral damage.
Bomber Command started its attacks on German cities on the night of 11 May 1940, a plan that was considered for some time by the War Cabinet, well before any German meaningful bombing of British soil occured (a few bombs fell on Orkney island, killing a single man iirc)
RAF Bomber Command was authorized to attack German targets east of the Rhine on May 15, 1940; the Air Ministry authorized Air Marshal Charles Portal to attack targets in the Ruhr, including oil plants and other civilian industrial targets which aided the German war effort, such as blast furnaces (which at night were self-illuminating).
The underlying motive for the attacks was to divert German air forces away from the land front. Churchill explained the rationale of his decision to his French counterparts in a letter dated the 16th: "I have examined today with the War Cabinet and all the experts the request which you made to me last night and this morning for further fighter squadrons. We are all agreed that it is better to draw the enemy on to this Island by striking at his vitals, and thus to aid the common cause."
Due to the inadequate British bomb-sights the strikes that followed had the effect of terror raids on towns and villages. On the night of 15/16 May, 96 bombers crossed the Rhine and attacked. 78 had been assigned oil targets, but only 24 claimed to have accomplished their objective.
On the night of May 17/18, RAF Bomber Command bombed oil installations in Hamburg and Bremen; the H.E. and 400 incendiaries dropped caused six large, one moderately large and 29 small fires. As a result of the attack, 47 people were killed and 127 were wounded. Railway yards at Cologne were attacked on the same night.
During May, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf and Hanover were attacked in a similar fashion by Bomber Command. In June, attacks were made on Dortmund, Mannheim, Frankfurt and Bochum. At the time, Bomber Command lacked the necessary navigational and bombing technical background and the accuracy of the bombings during the night attacks was abysmal. Consequently, the bombs were usually scattered over a large area, and the bombing was seen as indiscriminate. There was an uproar in Germany, Jodl wanted retalitory bombing attacks, but Hitler turned him down.
RAF BC during this period in May-June 1940 attempted to limit the bombing to military/industrial targets, just like the Germans tried to do so in Battle of Britain.
Operation Abigail Rachel was the bombing of Mannheim the first deliberate terror raid on Germany on the 16 December. The British had been waiting for the opportunity to experiment with such a raid aimed at creating a maximum of destruction in a selected town since the summer 1940, and the opportunity was given after the German raid on Coventry.
Internally it was declared to be a reprisal for Coventry and Southampton. The new bombing policy was officially ordered by Churchill at the start of December and the operation on condition it receive no publicity and be considered an experiment. Target marking missed the city center and most bombs missed the city center. This led to the development of the bomber stream.Despite the lack of decisive success of this raid, approval was granted for further Abigails. This was the start of a British drift away from precision attacks on military targets and towards area bombing attacks on whole cities.