With the Possum and the Eagle: The Memoir of a Navigator's War over Germany and Japan

10. Bloody Summer

10: Bloody Summer !nJune 1943, Eaker instructed his stafIto plan a summer offensive . He told Hansell to meet with his RAF counterpart on the combined planning committee and plan a coordinated attack on Hamburg. The missions, scheduled for the last week ofJuly, called for the RAF and Eighth Air Force to bomb German industrial cities around the clock for six ofthe last seven days ofthe month. The RAF called it "Blitz Week." During the planning meetings, Hansell listened with quiet disapproval as the RAF members of his committee orchestrated a massive firebomb attack on the center of Hamburg. He reluctantly agreed to recommend to Eaker that the Eighthjoin in a combined effort and carry bomb loads that included 40 percent incendiary bombs. The British would fly the initial mission at night and we would follow in daylight. Hansell did his best to conceal his feelings about the massive use ofincendiaries. This was area bombing at its worst. Hansell thought that Gomorrah, the code name for the attack on Hamburg, was most appropriate. If the Eighth Air Force dropped its bombs on fires started by the RAF, it would be engaged in de facto area bombing. Innocent civilians would surely be killed. Whether air force leaders admitted it or not, this was a change of policy. The July 1943 incendiary bombing of Hamburg resulted in the firestorms that were unequaled until the bombing of Tokyo nearly two years later. The carnage was greater than the RAF leaders had expected. The firestorms destroyed more than half of the city and killed more than thirty-five thousand civilians. Hundreds of thousands of residents had to be evacuated. The combination of incendiaries and high-explosive bombs made fire fighting almost impossible . When the fires were finally extinguished, almost 75 percent ofthe center of the city had been destroyed. High-explosive bombs hit the entrance to subways under the Elbe River, drowning residents who had sought refuge there. Temperatures from the fires reached a 98 Bloody Summer 99 thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The citizens of Hamburg were hysterical with fear and rage, and a number of Allied crewmen who thought they were parachuting to safety over the Hamburg area were lynched when they reached the ground. I-Iitler and Nazi propaganda chiefJoseph Goebbels called the leaders of the two Allied air forces brutal barbarians. The missions achieved their objective, however, as military production dropped 50 percent. The RAF's incendiaries caused the bulk of the damage. In March 1945, when LeMay firebombed Tokyo, the Japanese press accused him of employing the barbarous techniques he had used on Hamburg. In fact, the Eighth Air Force and LeMay had only a small part in the conflagration at Hamburg. Unable to see the military targets designated in the flight plans because ofcloud cover and smoke from the fires raging below, our bombardiers aimed for the center of the city at the smoke and fires started by the RAF. LeMay was impressed by the magnitude of the destruction ofmilitary targets in Hamburg. He studied the strike photographs with Hansell. The fires that gutted the city also destroyed submarine and aircraft plants and other production facilities vital to the German war effort. Hansell, appalled by the magnitude of the destruction of the city's residential areas, told LeMay that he did not wish to be involved in any future such missions. LeMay remarked that the RAF's area bombing had located and destroyed military targets by using a new British radar device called H2S. The RAF radar equipment had been able to locate docks, riverbanks, and harbor checkpoints adjacent to military targets, and pathfinder aircraft dropped flares on aiming points for the aircraft that followed. He told Hansell that the radar could assist our navigators in locating target areas. It would be an adjunct to our visual daylight bombing techniques when cloud cover obscured the targets. Hansell replied that he was not interested in any nonvisual aids to assist with target identification. It was air force policy to sight targets visually. Visual sighting of targets was the only humane and civilized bombing procedure. LeMay reminded Hansell that our bombers had not been able to locate their targets visually and that if it hadn't been for the fires started by the RAF, the mission would have been a total failure. He 100 WITH THE POSSUM AND THE EAGLE the enemy. loss rate-and damaged. Many We paid a heavy...