The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

M: [Knickebein] is accurate enough for night work, so that I can simply drop the bombs at that moment.

L: But if you drop the bombs at that moment, then if you are at a height of 6,000 metres the bomb will drop 1½ km farther in front, won’t it? It doesn’t drop vertically.

M: It doesn’t make any difference with such targets.

L: Well then, it can’t be so accurate.

M: No, good heavens, as I have just said, it is so difficult even to get to the point of intersection…

L: Yes, but why don’t your bombs fall accurately?

M:… you are just told to take the centre of the town and you must each find your own targets.¹³⁵

German fliers knew that the levels of accuracy demanded were beyond them and that increasingly they hit the area in the target cities where the fires could be seen. It was even possible with a moment’s inattention to miss a target as large as London. ‘Göring should be told that we can’t hit the target,’ complained a German captain in another eavesdropping. ‘We must tell him all we have to put up with here…’¹³⁶

This was one among many problems faced by the German bombing campaign, though few of them were dictated by the enemy, whose capacity to inflict serious damage on enemy aircraft at night remained minimal for most of the period of German attack. The bomber crews sustained high losses from accidents caused by the difficulty of long night-time flights and poor weather conditions, which could alter suddenly in the course of an operation. The number of serviceable bombers stood at almost 1,000 at the start of August, but by the end of November was down to 706. That month Kesselring himself witnessed a crash between two Ju88s, one of them a new plane, and berated his crews for ‘carelessness’. Figures for the period of poor weather from January to March 1941 show that out of 216 bombers lost and 190 damaged, 282 were as a result of flying accident.¹³⁷ The often poor state of airfields in France and the Low Countries, in some cases lacking solid concrete runways, made landing and take-off especially risky. Over the winter months the German aircraft industry went through a period of crisis, making it harder to replace lost or damaged aircraft or to maintain the supply of filled bombs and mines. The planned output of bombers during the whole period of the campaign was little higher than in 1939, an average of 240 a month. Actual output was even lower, reaching a figure of only 130 bombers in January.¹³⁸ The older He111 and Do17 bombers were being phased out, but a new generation of higher-performance aircraft were still in the development stage, facing accumulating technical difficulties, particularly the ill-fated Messerschmitt Me210, which was finally cancelled in April 1942. Plans for a ‘Bomber B’, a faster high-altitude bomber more suited to a strategic role, were still on the drawing board in 1940. Bombs were also a problem. In March 1941 the Air Ministry technical office warned the air force staff that there was not enough explosive to fill all the required bombs and mines, and empty bomb cases were piling up in warehouses. It was recommended filling fewer mines, which took a much larger explosive charge, in order to free explosive for regular bombs.¹³⁹