The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

Date	Major attacks	Störangriffe	Mines laid
Aug 1940	4	1,062	328
Sept 1940	24 (22 London)	420	669
Oct 1940	27 (all London)	21	562
Nov 1940	21	840	1,215
Dec 1940	18	369	557
Jan 1941	15	103	144
Feb 1941	6	151	376
Mar 1941	19	234	410
Apr 1941	21	412	433
May 1941	10	440	363
June 1941	6	221	647
Total	171	5,173	5,704

^{Source: Calculated from BA-MA, RL2. IV/33, ‘Angriffe auf England: Material-sammlung 1940–41’, monthly reports reports from Luftflotten 2, 3, 5.}

The naval High Command placed great hopes on the plan to destroy at least 750,000 tonnes of shipping a month on the calculation that sinking 40 per cent of Britain’s 22 million shipping tonnage over a year would force Britain out of the war.¹¹² The air force High Command, however, preferred to run the bombing as a unitary campaign and in the end devoted only limited resources to the naval element of the trade war. In March 1941 Göring succeeded, in the face of naval hostility, in uniting control over aircraft operating over sea under an air force commander, the Fliegerführer Atlantik, based at the French Atlantic port of Lorient. The number of serviceable aircraft available totalled only 58, including 6 of the Focke-Wulf FW200 ‘Condor’, whose initial successes were now compromised by improved British interception.¹¹³ Between July and December 1940, aircraft sank 50 merchant ships with a gross tonnage of 149,414 tonnes. Over the following six months a further 68 ships were sunk, totalling 195,894 tonnes, an average over the year of just 28,775 tonnes per month, a mere 4 per cent of what was required.¹¹⁴ The sea-mining campaign was similarly affected by the shortage of aircraft. In October 1940 a specialized unit, IX Fliegerkorps, was set up for mining operations, but it consisted of only 88 aircraft to cover all the waters around the British Isles. Moreover, out of the 11,167 mines dropped from the air between April 1940 and April 1941, more than one-third, 3,984, were dropped on land targets.¹¹⁵ Sinkings were sparse, but German airmen claimed for themselves an unverifiably large tonnage sunk by their mines throughout the campaign from 1940 to 1943, even though many of them had been laid by naval vessels and submarines.

The German Air Force saw blockade as a strategy best carried out by destroying port facilities and existing stocks rather than ships at sea, and focused its efforts on urban targets. The blockade priorities are evident from the pattern of the major (and many minor) attacks carried out during the course of the ten-month campaign. Between August 1940 and June 1941 there were 171 major raids, of which 141 were directed at ports (including London). Major port attacks at night absorbed 2,667 tonnes (86 per cent) of incendiary bombs out of a total of 3,116, and 24,535 tonnes (85 per cent) of high explosive out of a total of 28,736.¹¹⁶ Although some of the tonnage directed at Manchester and London was destined for non-port targets, the priority was for docks, warehouses, silos, oil storage and shipping. The economic war was seen above all as one means of closing off United States aid to Britain, which Hitler, among others, assumed to be an important source of sustenance for Britain’s war effort even before the start of Lend-Lease in March 1941.¹¹⁷ The flow of American goods was in reality a slender stream rather than a flood, but the German fear of American reinforcement of Britain’s war effort plays some part in explaining the willingness to continue the campaign over the difficult winter months. An assessment of the RAF made by the German Air Force operations staff in January 1941 assumed that problems caused to the supply of American aircraft and equipment must be seriously undermining British air strength and operational performance.¹¹⁸