The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

A high proportion of incendiaries were carried in the raids in 1941 and large-scale fires started. Photo-reconnaissance confirmed that incendiary bombs did more damage to port areas and storehouses than high explosives, with the result that the ratio between incendiary and high-explosive loads reached 1:1.¹⁸¹ In the last weeks of the campaign German bombers undertook a wide variety of operations. In April the three air fleets flew 5,448 sorties; 3,681 on major raids, 1,292 on Störangriffe, 263 against shipping targets at sea and 212 for sea-mining. The constant activity produced continually high losses. Between January and June 1941, 572 bombers were destroyed and 496 damaged; the figures for fighters were 299 lost and 300 damaged.¹⁸² By 17 May the bomber arm had 769 serviceable aircraft out of an established strength of 1,413, divided between the northern European and the Mediterranean theatres. This was 30 per cent smaller than the number of bombers available for the start of the campaign in France and it was to have serious repercussions on the impending operation against the Soviet Union. For the rest of the war the bomber arm never again achieved the size it had enjoyed on 10 May 1940.

For German aircrew the last months of the campaign were difficult to sustain. Thousands of casualties were taken for a campaign where there was no clear conclusion and results that could only be speculated over. Moreover, from March 1941 the air units in the west knew that the bulk of forces would be diverted to the war in the east; some forces were already detailed for combat in the Mediterranean and, from April, in the Balkan campaigns against Greece and Yugoslavia. Those that remained for the campaign against Britain were told to bomb with ever greater concentration and accuracy to compensate for the reduced numbers. On 16 March a directive was issued to the three air fleets explaining that part of Air Fleet 3 would stay behind in France during the Barbarossa campaign while the rest of the air force moved east. The remaining bomber force, including the small number posted in Norway (Air Fleet 5), was instructed to keep up the pressure on British supply by attacking ships in port and at sea and to raid aero-industry targets opportunistically. Attacks on London as ‘vengeance’ were to be carried out only when instructed by the air force High Command.¹⁸³ On 22 May the first stage in transferring Air Fleet 2 to the east began when command and organization units were sent to Posen in Poland. On 8 June air groups began a two-week transfer eastwards, leaving just 8 bomber groups out of 44. On 25 June Air Fleet 3 completed its reorganization across the whole of northern France. The reduced activity was immediately evident. In June only 6 major raids were mounted and 221 Störangriffe, in contrast to 31 major raids and 852 minor raids in April and May.¹⁸⁴ In France and the Low Countries the constant drone of German aircraft and the noisy presence of thousands of crewmen suddenly ceased. Londoners had their first month of almost uninterrupted sleep.

What did the eleven-month bombing campaign achieve? Although Hitler did not halt the bombing until the switch to the campaign against the Soviet Union, his few remarks show a sustained scepticism about the possibility of achieving anything decisive by air action alone. In December 1940 he dismissed the effects of bombing on British industry as minimal.¹⁸⁵ Göring later claimed that he had told Hitler repeatedly that raiding London would ‘never force them to their knees’.¹⁸⁶ The prospect that bombing would bring about a political collapse faded the longer the campaign continued. When the navy commander-in-chief discussed the bombing campaign with Hitler in February 1941, he found the Führer in complete agreement with his view that morale in Britain had remained ‘unshaken’ by the bombs.¹⁸⁷ Hitler was generally more optimistic about the sea blockade and the submarine war, to which bombing contributed indirectly. In his directive of 6 February he emphasized the importance of attacks on shipping and ports, but concluded that the effects on the British willingness to fight had been the least successful aspect of the bombing.¹⁸⁸ In spring 1941 he assumed that Britain could be dealt with by bombing and invasion after the defeat of the Soviet Union, in the summer of 1942. ‘We’ll deal with them later,’ he told a sceptical Göring, ‘if the stubborn Churchill fails to see sense.’¹⁸⁹