In practice what this meant was that 200 to 1000 aircraft would mass "carpet" bomb a German industrial area or city center, The first was stated in the February, 1942 Bomber Command "Area Bombing Directive".īomber Command was to target German industrial sites with the additional aim of attacking the morale of German industrial workers. As a resultĪllied planners adopted two bombing strategies. On some missions the entire bombing group dropped their bombs on the wrong location. A USAAF study estimated that less than ten percent of bombs fell withinĨ kms of the intended target. High altitude mass bombing was extremely inaccurate. To spin, roll, or break up, the crew had little chance of getting to their parachutes, or of strapping them on and ejecting.Īmerican crews kept their parachutes close beside them. If a plane was on fire, or if the plane began In RAF/RCAF bombers all parachutes were kept in a central locationīecause movement down the long tunnel of the fuselage was extremely difficult. Which flew daylight raids over Europe, had a casualty rate of only 17 percent, but a further 15 percent became POWs.Ī key reason for this was the problem of parachutes. RAF/RCAF bomber crews had twice the casualty rate of American crews. Statistically, an airman couldn'tĮxpect to survive twenty missions. On every mission over Germanyįive bombers out of one hundred failed to return and another would crash on landing. ![]() Six expected to survive their first tour and one in forty would survive their second tour. Aircrew had little prospect of surviving a tour of 30 operations and by 1943, only one in ![]() Out of 125,000 airmen who served in Bomber Command, over 55,000 were killed, 8,000 wounded, and 9800 became prisoners of war. The Continuing Controversy Over Bomber Command įew people realize how deadly bombing missions were to aircrew.
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