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juliet7bravo -> RE: Norden Bombsight (10/11/2004 5:39:39 AM)
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From the ETO USSBS
"In the attack by Allied air power, almost 2,700,000 tons of bombs were dropped, more than 1,440,000 bomber sorties and 2,680,000 fighter sorties were flown. The number of men lost in air action (KIA, WIA, MIA, & captured I think) was 79,265 Americans and 79,281 British. [Note: All RAF statistics are preliminary or tentative.] More than 18,000 American and 22,000 British planes were lost or damaged beyond repair.
In Germany, 3,600,000 dwelling units, approximately 20% of the total, were destroyed or heavily damaged. Survey estimates show some 300,000 civilians killed and 780,000 wounded. The number made homeless aggregates 7,500,000. The principal German cities have been largely reduced to hollow walls and piles of rubble. German industry is bruised and temporarily paralyzed."
Okay, so we lost 160,000 of our own men in order to "bruise and temporarily paralyze" German industry. With the bruising and paralyzing mostly coming from the medium bombers and F/B's.
Interesting Heavy Bomber Factoids (some of these are inaccurate BTW);
- Over 100,000 Allied bomber crewmen were killed over Europe
- 2/3 of Allied bomber crews were lost for each plane destroyed
- 6 bomber crewmen were killed for each one wounded
- More US servicemen died in the Air Corps that the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30 missions, your chance of being killed was 71%. (25 missions)
- A number of air crewmen died of farts. (ascending to 20,000 ft. in an un-pressurized aircraft causes intestinal gas to expand 300%!) (LOL)
- Average cost of a B-17 (in 1940's dollars) was $200,000.
- 12,000 heavy bombers were shot down in World War 2 (I think this is just USAF planes?...call each one a B-17 (cheapest), that works out to $2,400,000,000 USD in 1940-ish dollars)
- Another 3500 heavy bombers lost and 5000 men KIA in training in the US.
- US Air Force shipped almost 7,000,000 tons of stuff to the ETO by air and water.
- Germany’s power grid was much more vulnerable than realized. One estimate is that if just 1% of the bombs dropped on German industry had instead been dropped on power plants, German industry would have collapsed.
Mosquito - a very fast long range medium bomber which carried a 1.8 ton bomb and successfully relied on its high speed and agility instead of guns and gunners for self-protection. Although its loss rate was lowest of all allied bombers and its bombing precision the highest, British decision makers remained firm in their conservative belief that the main bomber must have gun turrets, so instead of becoming the main bomber type, the excellent Mosquito's advantages were used mainly in support of the main force of the slow heavy bombers, and less than 1/4 of the Mosquitoes produced were of bomber types. The other Mosquitoes excelled in multiple other combat roles.
B-17 Flying Fortress - the world's first 4-engine long range heavy bomber (1935), its excellent basic design enabled the production of ever improved types, and it fought everywhere until the end of world war 2. Built with the concept that a day bomber should be able to self-protect from enemy fighters, the common B-17G type had 8 gun positions with 13 heavy machine guns, arranged to cover all directions. It had a crew of 10 and was equipped with advanced electronics, and could carry over 5 tons of bombs, but mostly carried much less, depending on the mission's range, and as little as just 1.8 tons in missions to Berlin, which is what the British Mosquito bomber carried to Berlin with much greater precision, less losses, a crew of just 2, and no guns, thanks to its high speed which made the Mosquito much harder to intercept.
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