RAF Bomber crews remembered. Better late than never.

[5./JG27.Farber]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Let's keep this civil guys.

I think these guys were neither 100% heroes nor 100% murderers, both terms get tossed around with too much ease nowadays. They were soldiers whose capabilities were used in a totally wrong and inefficient way by their commanders. Essentially, that is where the blame should go.

I once read a very interesting article on a quarterly aviation magazine (international air power review) about the Lancaster bomber. It concluded that post-war studies showed the bomber command campaign to be largely ineffective due to wrong priorities and assumptions.

It turned out that targeting civilians didn't really harm morale any more than it solidified their willpower to stand against what they perceived as a direct threat to their lives at any cost (the "rally around the flag" effect, if you are personally targeted you don't care that much about who runs your country but about surviving). It also resulted in loads of casualties (civilians and aircrews alike) for very small gains in terms of real operational factors. For example, German industrial production actually improved at some point during 43 or 44, in the midst of heavy bombings.

The article then described that bomber command's mistake was essentially using the right tools for the job, but a wrong job. Expensive 4-engined heavy bombers with crews of 7-10 men, who were vulnerable to flak and night fighters while lacking both the ability for precision night bombing and the defensive armament and durability for daylight raids (not to mention the lack of long range RAF escorts).

The final conclusion got me thinking, because it was a very obvious one but i hadn't really thought of it until that point. The RAF had a perfectly capable and highly versatile bomber that was precise (especially when using radio navigation equipment), fast, had long range and was much cheaper than the heavies, because it only had two engines and a crew of 2-3. The Mosquito which, along with the Ju88, probably ranks as the most versatile aircraft of WWII and one of the first truly multi-role designs.

If the industrial and human resources went towards building a fleet of Mosquitoes (it could carry as much as a B-17 by the way, so nothing to scoff at), the RAF would have probably twice or more the number of bombers than it actually had. Most of all, these bombers would be capable of accurately hitting industrial and military targets instead of leveling towns and killing civilians en masse, while at the same time if one went down the RAF was only 2 engines, some balsa wood and 2 men short, probably captured instead of dead thanks to it's docile handling.

In contrast, the Lancaster was designed with the sole aim of carrying as much as possible and was notorious for its abysmal crew survivability rates in the event of an emergency landing.

In the closing statement of the article, it was stated that the Lancaster was an indiscriminate bludgeon, while the Mosquito was a precision fencing sword.
It sure was one of the most interesting articles i've read in a while, i might go dig it up and reread it

Well said.

S!

[ATAG_Dutch]

Originally Posted by 5./JG27.Farber

Well said.

The flaw in Blackdog's theory is that it would take three Mossies and therefore three pilots to carry 12,000lb of Bombs to Germany, whereas one Lancaster only required one pilot.

With a limited number of pilots to go around, this would have meant a third of the tonnage of bombs would have been dropped. It's easy to say they could've been used in a more precise manner, but the low level pin-point Mossie squads were specialists with specialist training.
There wouldn't be either the time nor the resources to train every pilot in Bomber Command to this level of skill, or conversely, to produce three times the pilots.

Plus, the use of a heavy bomber force was a brand new weapon which no-one had experience of using, and therefore no-one had experience of its effectivity.
Again, it's easy to apply the wisdom of hindsight to the whole issue, but at the time no one knew what the effect would be.