World War II from above : an aerial view of the global conflict

334 Pages·2014·32.09 MB·English

by  Harwood

WORLD WAR II
FROM ABOVE
AN AERIAL VIEW OF THE GLOBAL CONFLICT
JEREMY HARWOOD
A squadron of B-17 Flying Fortresses from the US 8th Army Air Force is captured in the air over Germany on its
way to bomb Stuttgart’s ball-bearing factories on September 7, 1943. The American high command was
wedded to daylight precision bombing, believing that their heavily-armed bombers could fight off Luftwaffe
fighter attacks on their own. They were to be proved wrong. Only the eventual arrival of long-range fighter
escorts managed to reverse the ever-mounting rate of losses.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Theater Maps
BEGINNINGS
Pioneer Balloonists
Airplanes and Cameras
Photographing the Trenches
Between the Wars
Top-Secret Missions
BLITZKRIEG
Restricted Flying
Operation Sea Lion
The Battle of Britain
The Blitz
Air War in the Mediterranean
END OF THE BEGINNING
An Air Intelligence Revolution
Kriegsmarine
The Battle for Crete
Barbarossa and After
Pearl Harbor and the Pacific
TURNING THE TIDE
The Americans Arrive
The Doolittle Raid
The Battle of Midway
The 1,000-Bomber Raid
The Dam Busters
The Battle Over Hamburg
“Europe’s Soft Underbelly”
From the Ruhr to Berlin
Precision Bombing
THE END OF THE WAR
Overlord and After
V-Weapons
Setting Tokyo Ablaze
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Bibliography/Further Reading
Index
Photo Credits
INTRODUCTION
Looking at it from a 21st-century perspective, the vital role air power plays on
the modern battleground seems self-evident. Looking back into the past,
however, it may well seem surprising that it took a relatively long time for this to
be fully recognized. As Tami Biddle, a noted historian of air power has written,
“virtually every manifestation of 20th-century air power, was envisaged and
worked out in at least rudimentary form between 1914–1918”—that is, during
World War I.
This is why this book, though primarily concerned with World War II, takes
“the war to end war” as its starting point. To quote from Biddle again: “Those
who wish to understand the role of aircraft in subsequent conflicts do well to
turn back to the experience of the Great War precisely because all the roots of
modern practice are there to be explored.”
It was as a reconnaissance instrument that the airplane first made its mark.
Indeed, the outcomes of the battles of the Marne and Tannenberg at the start of
the war might have been very different if first the Allies and then the Germans
had not taken advantage of the intelligence provided by the airborne scouts.
Aircraft soon became invaluable for artillery spotting; aerial photography also
proved vital in building up a comprehensive picture of what was going on in the
trenches and behind the lines on “the other side of the hill.” The need to achieve
dominance in the air led to the birth of the fighter; the development of tactical
and long-range strategic bombers was not far behind. By 1918, air power was on
the verge of coming of age.
It was not surprising therefore that, in the period between the two world wars,
fears about the extraordinary destructive powers of aircraft flourished. “The
bomber,” people were grimly assured, “will always get through.” Apostles of air
power, such as the Italian air strategist Giulio Douhet and the American aviator
Billy Mitchell, fuelled such fears. In the 1930s, Goering boasted that his newly
created Luftwaffe, then the world’s most powerful air force, “stood ready to
carry out every command of the Fuehrer with lightning speed and undreamed-of
might.”
The truth was somewhat different. Though air power indeed emerged as a
major strategic element during World War II, it could not win wars on its own.
What the war showed was that, operating in close collaboration with the other
armed forces, it was the vital ingredient in the cocktail that won battlefield
victories. On both the Western and Eastern Fronts, air power complemented
ground power in bringing about the defeat of Nazi Germany. In the Far East, its
collaboration with surface forces was instrumental in achieving the collapse of
collaboration with surface forces was instrumental in achieving the collapse of
imperial Japan.
The actual air war, of course, is a fascinating story in itself. Highlights of this
book include vivid accounts of the great strategic bombing offensives, from the
Luftwaffe’s attempt to blitz Britain into submission to the RAF’s great area
bombing raids that laid waste to Germany’s major cities, and the USAAF’s
precision strikes on key German targets, to the 1945 fire raids on Japan and the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought the curtain down on
the war. The book also places equal emphasis on another important side of the
story, which is less familiar than it ought to be. This is the unsung efforts of the
“spies in the skies” to obtain accurate air intelligence—a struggle that began
even before the outbreak of hostilities.
Arguably, the work of the aerial photographers and photographic interpreters
had even more impact on the outcome of the war than that of the Bletchley Park
code-breakers. Indeed, some commentators believe that, without it, the Allies
might well have lost the war. The detection of Hitler’s vaunted “vengeance
weapons” is a prime case in point. Had they remained undetected and gone into
operation as the Germans had planned, it is an open question as to whether they
would have delayed Allied victory in Normandy at the best, or, at the worst,
brought about a humiliating Allied defeat.
A US photographer managed to shoot this dramatic picture of bombs falling on the industrial city of Terni,
Italy, in late 1943. The bombers involved in the raid came from the US 12th Army Air Force, their targets being
the city’s steel works and railway marshalling yards. Milan, Foggia, Naples, Palermo, Treviso, and Turin were
among other Italian targets that were heavily bombed. Rome was largely spared after Pope Pius XI appealed to
President Roosevelt not to attack the capital.
AXIS EXPANSION
By 1942, Hitler’s 1,000-Year Reich had reached its greatest territorial
extent. Nazi forces occupied practically the whole of mainland Western
Europe, had penetrated deep into Russia, and, in North Africa, had reached
El Alamein.
MARCH ON JAPAN
The progressive Allied penetration of Japan’s Far Eastern Co-Prosperity
Sphere involved island-hopping across the Pacific. Had Japan not
surrendered when it did, the next step would have been the invasion of the
Japanese Home Islands.

BEGINNINGS
From early times, land commanders used cavalry to reconnoiter
enemy strength and battlefield intentions. In the 19th century, balloons
were deployed as aerial spotting posts to increase artillery accuracy;
just before the outbreak of World War I, they were joined by
airplanes. By 1918, air reconnaissance had become a highly
sophisticated business; in that year alone, Allied aircraft took over 10
million aerial photographs of German positions along the Western
Front. The war witnessed other important aerial developments;
Germany’s Zeppelin airships and Gotha and Giant aircraft were the
forerunners of the heavy bombers that were to feature so prominently
in the strategic bombing campaigns of World War II.