The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

By this time Hitler was hoping to release the long-promised secret weapons for a real revenge attack. The first was the Fieseler FZG-76 cruise missile (generally known as the ‘flying bomb’). Developed by air force engineers at the research facility at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast, the first missile was test flown in December 1942 and had a maximum range of around 150 miles. The second weapon was the A4 rocket designed for the German Army by a team led by Wernher von Braun. Successfully launched in June 1942, it was the world’s first ballistic missile with a range of 220 miles. In June 1944 the first Fieseler flying bombs were launched at London, in September the first A4 rockets. Though the purpose of both weapons was to avenge the destruction of German cities – hence the name Vergeltungswaffen (weapons of vengeance) for what were known as the V-1 and the V-2 – and to try to buoy up German domestic morale, as many of the earlier bombing operations had been intended to do, neither weapon was strictly speaking a form of strategic air warfare.²³² They were fired randomly and exacted a high civilian death rate in the first few months, but had little effect on the wider strategic picture. The entire explosive weight of the A4 rockets fired at London, Paris and Antwerp was the equivalent of one large-scale RAF raid.²³³ Only 517 rockets hit London, a further 598 falling short or into the sea. The flying bombs were more deadly, but their threat to the home front peaked in the first few months. Thereafter the number of bombs and casualties declined as launch sites were overrun or destroyed and effective defence against the flying bomb was developed. The RAF, using some of the new turbojet Gloster Meteor fighters, found ways to knock the flying bombs off course, while anti-aircraft guns, using shells with proximity fuses, shot down increasing numbers. Out of 10,492 aimed at London, only 2,419 reached their destination (although another 2,600 fell short in Kent, Sussex and Surrey thanks to double-cross information fed to German intelligence that the bombs were dropping too far north). More flying bombs fell on Belgium than on England.²³⁴ Nevertheless, for the victim populations the effects of both weapons replicated a bombing raid and it is in that context that the V-weapons will be discussed more fully in the following chapters.

The failure of Steinbock and the deteriorating situation in Germany under heavy bomb attack, where every fighter aircraft was needed to protect the surviving war economy, sealed the fate of Germany’s bomber force. Bomber production had already fallen to a mere 16 per cent of overall monthly aircraft output as priority was given to fighters and fighter-bombers, including the Messerschmitt Me262 turbo-jet fighter, the first of its kind. In May 1944 Hitler insisted that the aircraft should be transformed from its intended fighter interception role, which posed a serious threat to Allied bombers, to the function of a fast fighter-bomber, for which it was less well suited. Although Hitler wanted the aircraft to be operated by the commander in charge of the bomber force, its object would be to mount harassing attacks on the advancing Allied armies and air forces, not to undertake long-distance operations.²³⁵ The following month Hitler ordered absolute priority for aircraft defending the Reich and the final exclusion of all heavier bombers. The bomber groups were ordered to transfer their crews and training personnel to the fighter sector. In early July a new production programme for aircraft cut out the remaining bomber models He177, Ju288, Ju290, Ju390 and He111, and further development of a range of advanced prototypes. On 8 July Hitler formally approved the end of the German bomber and a week later Göring ordered all researchers, engineers and workers employed on the bomber programme to transfer their skills to the new priority sectors. This did not stop engineers at Daimler-Benz recommending an intercontinental ‘superfast bomber’ project in January 1945, coupling a six-engine carrier aircraft with a smaller bomber which would be released over the ocean as it neared an American target city.²³⁶ German aeronautical technology entered the realm of science fiction as the war drew to a close. The German bomber force dwindled away in the last months of bitter combat under a weight of bombs greater each month than the quantity dropped throughout the entire first bombing offensive in 1940–41. In December 1944 just 37 bombers were produced.