Talk:Bombing of Berlin in World War II
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[edit] Restoration of page
The original entries on this talk page seem to have been accedently deleted Revision as of 14:54, 27 October 2006 -- Revision as of 14:55, 27 October 2006 --Philip Baird Shearer 20:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Battle honour
What does "battle honour" mean here? Get-back-world-respect 00:51, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That men displayed personal courage and resolve in carrying out their duties. Uncool 1 16:21, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
- See Battle honour, roughly speaking the UK/Commonwealth equivalent of the US campaign streamer or Presidential Unit Citation. David Underdown 13:33, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Suspected copyvio
While I understand that facts cannot be copyrighted, I suspect (based on another editor's message on my talkpage) that this could be a copyvio from [1]. I haven't been able to pin-point the copyvio though. Can some one double check to be sure? --Gurubrahma 18:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
- I put most of the time line onto this page. It is based on the RAF pages for that period:
- However it is not a cut and past and I have tried to make sure that no two sentences are the same and to introduce a slightly different way of describing what is basically a list. If there are any specific sentences which you consider to be a CVIO then lets talk about it and alter those sentences. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
From my Talk page:
- well,maybe no two sentences are alike,but if you have indeed altered the main article from the webpage,then you should have also wikified it,added sufficient templates and discussed this on the talk page prior to this.you could have atleast removed the numbering,which wasnt done.you can still write the article,but since i am not a admin,i cant direct you,maybe you can change the whole stylr of the article.--Jayanthv86 04:18, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
The numbering is mine and is not on the RAF pages. They represent the 16 day that the main raids took place on Berlin, as many other sources state there were 16 raids but not the dates they took place. I did not fully wikify it or finish the list (see the bottom entires are not fleshed out) because I ran out of steam and hoped that someone else would do the job. As for your other comments, it does not need templates and there is no need to discuss anything on a talk page before adding text to an article. If you think that these are valid points then there are other templates which could be used which are more appropriate (see: Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup), so I suggest that we removed the {{copyvio}} ASAP --Philip Baird Shearer 09:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
- As I remarked above, facts cannot be copyrighted; Philip Baird Shearer's comments seem to clear the misunderstanding about the copyvio; also, this is not listed on the copyright listing problems for 23 January 2006, the date it was tagged on. So, I too suggest that we revert the article to the edit before the copyvio tag was slapped. --Gurubrahma 16:18, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Removed. --Philip Baird Shearer 14:18, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Not encyclopedic
A long list of which attack was conducted on which day is not worth an encyclopedia article. Get-back-world-respect 02:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
- I already used this article, and found it quite helpful. There are many articles in Wikipedia that wouldn't be found in a paper encyclopedia because of space limitations. That's a problem with paper encyclopedias that we shouldn't feel constrained to imitate.
- Rbraunwa 05:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
- I do not think a paper encyclopedia would not include this for space limitations but because listing air attacks is not the task of an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia summarizes important facts. Get-back-world-respect 13:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Casualties? Photos?
What is known about civilian casualties? Can anyone provide photos of the destruction? Get-back-world-respect 15:14, 7 February 2006 (UTC
[edit] Numbers of bombers lost
The first paragraph states that the RAF lost 450 aircraft during the sixteen raids, then in the same paragraph two sentences later, it states that the attacks culminated with the British losing over a thousand aircraft. Now which one is it, 450 or over a thousand? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 15:36, 8 May 2006 (talk • contribs) 207.159.196.2.
- 450 on the 16 Berlin raids, but there were a lot of raids on a lot of different targets during the battle during which the RAF also lost machines. For example the final attack of the battle (on Nuremberg) when the RAF lost 95 aircraft. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:00, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Questions
- Why are attacks on Frankfurt and Nuremberg included in an article called Battle of Berlin (air)? Either they should be removed or the article retitled Stategic bombing of Germany.
- Why does the list stop in 1944? The biggest raid on Berlin was (from memory) the one on 4 February 1945, and raids continued well into April, when the Russkis took over. Adam 05:27, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
- Because the campaign was known as the Battle of Berlin. The RAF could not bomb Berlin every night (as the German air defences could have been concentrated). But the campaign's aim was to destroy Berlin. It is well known campaign and is usually referred to as the "Battle of Berlin" see for example http://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/25/article.asp as an example.
- It stops in 1944 because that was the end of the campaign. Because of losses it probably could not have been sustained, and also because the strategic bomber forces switched to tactical bombing in France to support of the Normandy landing. --Philip Baird Shearer 07:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
- Weather was another issue - some planned raids on Berlin were switched to other targets when it was believed that the weather over the 'big city' would be problematic. Lovingboth 15:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that's correct. Read and Fisher The Fall of Berlin say that the last RAF and USAAF air raids on Berlin were on 25 April 1945. In any case, we should have a more general Stategic bombing of Germany article. Adam 08:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
- The stratigic raids on Germany restarted in September 1944 once the tactical support of the D-day landings ended. There are already several articles on bombing. I do not think that we need another one but we do need many more articles on the major cities (in various countries) which were devestated by repeated air raids. For overview articles see:
- See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Military aviation task force#Aerial bombing. I think there are too many articles and they need consolidating.
- Visit this RAF site to get a feel for just how much the bombing of Germany was an industrial process: http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/diary.html --Philip Baird Shearer 09:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
BTW I am all in favour of expanding this article to cover all the other raids on Berlin, but to date not even the 16 of the battle are fully covered. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:28, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
OK. I was in Berlin recently and I bought a superb large-scale aerial photo of the city in May 1945, showing the extent of the devastation. I could scan and upload it section by section but I don't what its copyright status might be. Adam 10:05, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Rewrite
I have rewritten this crap article and given it a title that describes its contents. Adam 14:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
- Well done, I have been thinking along the same lines myself recently, but have not had time to do it. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Thunderclap
I have removed the references to Thunderclap because it is not clear to me that the raids in 1945 were Thunderclap. What Taylor says in Dresden, Tuesday 13 February 1945page 214 is that in a minute of a meeting on January 30th that Sir Douglas Evill reported that given that oil and tank factories were to remain the priority, that a Thunderclap attack would not be feasible, but that the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committeethought that an attack even on a lesser scale against Berlin would assist the military campaign on the Easter front. As Taylor puts it with his focus on the Dresden raid "In Other words, Thunderclap was to be replaced by a number of very powerful - but not, in numbers of aircraft dispatched, freakishly large - air raids on eastern German cities, including Dresden". --Philip Baird Shearer 17:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] RAF losses
The current source says: The Battle of Berlin cost Bomber Command 500 aircraft, with their crews killed or captured (Grayling, 332). Is that aircraft lost on the 16 raids on Berlin or total losses for the Battle? If it is the former then a quick count of the losses as published on the RAF web site are well above 500 (On a quick count I made it close to 550). On top of that the RAF lost a lot of other aircraft attacking other cities during the battle for example 95 on the night of March 30/31 1944 attacking Nuremberg. --Philip Baird Shearer 20:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Re Thunderclap and most of your other edits, fair enough. I have done some minor fixes. Re the RAF losses over Berlin, I have restored Grayling's figure. This is an article about attacks on Berlin, not Nuremberg or anywhere else. If you can calculate a more accurate figure for Berlin alone, please do so. Adam 02:23, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Battle of Berlin
By the same token I have gone through the "timeline" and removed references to raids on other cities. The complete timeline belongs in another article. Adam 02:23, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
- The section is about the Battle of Berlin. The battle includes the attacks on other cities. That is why so many articles on the battle include the casualty figures that they do. Are you suggesting that there should be two articles? Or do you need me to produce a source which shows that the other raids are part of the Battle of Berlin? --Philip Baird Shearer 13:02, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm suggesting (in fact I'm insisting) that an article called Bombing of Berlin in World War II must be about the bombing of Berlin, not about the bombing of other cities. I don't see what kind of logic can include bombing Nuremberg as part of a "Battle of Berlin". If there were diversionary attacks on other cities as part of the attacks on Berlin that can be noted, but doesn't need to be detailed. But many of the raids I deleted were clearly not diversions, they were full-scale attacks on other cities. They cannot be part of this article. Adam 13:10, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
- Major raids on the other cities were in part diversionary raids. If the RAF had flown nothing but major raids against Berlin for months on end the Germans would have concentrated their defences and the RAF would have been wiped out. The major raids on other cities were necessary to keep the Germans defenders guessing. There are many sources which support this point of view, do you have a source which says that the Battle of Berlin only consisted of the 16 major Berlin raids? --Philip Baird Shearer 14:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
The subject of this article is not the "battle of Berlin", which was after all just a catch-phrase of Harris' - six months of bombing a city isn't a "battle" in the real sense of the word. The subject of this article is the history of the bombing of Berlin. Raids on other places, even if they served as diversions for attacks on Berlin (and many of those listed did not), are not part of that topic. Adam 14:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
- It is more than just a catch phrase, unless you are of the opinion that the Battle of Britain is also just a catch phrase. The RAF lost far more men in the Battle of Berlin than they lost in the Battle of Britain (I believe I read recently they lost more on the Nuremberg raid than they lost in the Battle of Britain. Here is a reference on Nuremberg being part of the Battle of Berlin: RAF Bomber Command campaign diary March 1944 30/31 March 1944: "Pilot Officer Cyril Barton, a Halifax pilot of No 578 Squadron, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for carrying on to the target in the Nuremberg ... Pilot Officer Barton's Victoria Cross was the only one awarded during the Battle of Berlin, which had now officially ended". --Philip Baird Shearer 14:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Well if you want to write an article about the Battle of Berlin as officially defined, you are welcome to do so. This article is about the bombing of Berlin, which went from 1940 to 1945, and did not include bombing Nuremberg, which is a long way from Berlin. Adam 14:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
- I think you mean Battle of Berlin (air) and looking at the history of this page:
- 10:01, 23 September 2006 Dermo69 m (moved Battle of Berlin (air) to Bombing of Berlin: Battle of Berlin,how pathetic.This was no battle,it was the destruction of a city)
- 14:54, 27 October 2006 Adam Carr m (moved Bombing of Berlin to Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II)
- 17:18, 27 October 2006 Philip Baird Shearer m (moved Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II to Bombing of Berlin in World War II: Name to the same format as all the other similar articles)
- So I see no point in forking a page out of this one when the battle can be covered in the sectin Battle of Berlin. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
i don't really follow that last point, but since i have rewritten the article its past history is irrelevant. i hate to be stubborn, but i am not going to argue about this all night - an article with this title cannot include detailed material about attacks on other cities, and i will revert any such material. if you want to cover that topic you will have to do so somewhere else. Adam 16:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
- My point was that this article was under the name Battle of Berlin (air) until just over a month ago and had been there for a couple of years. We are now faced with a dilema. Either we can write another article about the Battle of Berlin (air) or we can keep it as a subsection in this article. I am in favour of keeping it in this article because othewise there will be duplication of information, you are not. So lets wait see what others think and see if we can build a consensus. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
The attacks on Berlin which were part of the Battle of Berlin belong in this article. Attacks on other cities do not. So if you want to write about those attacks on other cities, you will have recreate Battle of Berlin (air). In that case the entire timeline (which has more detail than is necessary for this article) can be removed and put there. Adam 01:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
In fact I have done it for you - Battle of Berlin (air). Enjoy. Adam 01:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Targeting the VI Panzer Army
Another matter. You say, citing Taylor (whom I haven't read), that the 3 Feb 1945 raid on Berlin was due to the VI Panzer Army passing through the city. Grayling doesn't mention this and says the raid was a straightforward area bombing designed to flatten the whole of central Berlin, which it did. If the raid had a clear military target, why did Doolittle protest about it and have to be overruled by Spaatz? Adam 02:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
- The Americans frequently said that they were aiming for a specific target but in reality went in for Harris style city busting. For example in the Dresden raid they used a mix of HE and incendiary closer to the RAF mix than the usual precision mix, but the target for the first US raid was the Friedrichstadt marshalling yards (which they bombed from a height of 28,000 in partial to full cloud cover). So I think the Taylor point is significant for the timing of the raid not so much the specific target.
- One has to remember that the British had broken the railway ENIGMA early in the war so they probably knew as much about German railway transport as the Germans. A point that is not made in the older histories is that when the Allies talked about communications, hitting large telephone exchanges (in the cities) was almost more important than hitting the railways or roads, because no telephone network put more information into radio traffic that the British could read. This of course was never explained to the air forces at the time, because even Harris was not let in on the ULTRA secret (he was too low in the food chain). Indeed if he had, he might have been more inclined to believe his superiors when they said that they thought the oil strategy was working, as he would have known that the source for this was intercepted German messages about critical oil shortages.Philip Baird Shearer 14:01, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
With respect, that doesn't really answer my question
- Was VI Pz in fact passing through the city on 3 Feb? What exactly does Taylor say?
- Was this in fact the motive, or a motive, or just a pretext, for the USAAF raid?
- If it was the reason, why did Doolittle protest?
- Is Taylor wrong, or is Grayling? Adam 03:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Also: "USAAF raids in 1944 and 1945 killed many civilians in Berlin. [citation needed]" Do you really think the assertion that air raids killed civilians needs to be referenced? Adam 03:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
- The citation is not for that specific sentence but for the whole paragraph. I do not doubt that most of it is true, (although I do not know "if war production in greater Berlin did not fall"). But some question the validity of some of or all of it, and it is the only paragraph in that section which is not referenced. Comparing the article Bombing of Pforzheim in World War II with Bombing of Braunschweig in World War II, I think makes the point.
- The pages in Taylor before 215 are discussing the targets in eastern Germany to be bombed to aid the Russians. As it is the Brits documents which are being reviewed they talk about area bombing various cities: Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz. It is mainly from a British perspective, but there is mention of Portal and Bottomley meeting Spaatz who was on a brief visit to England from SHAEF on the 28 January, and that Spaatz, and Bottomley would consult with Tedder (Eisenhower's British deputy at SHAEF and himself an airman). On the 29th Churchill flew to Malta for a 6 day meeting with the US President preparing for the Yalta Conference.(page 213). The paragraph before the last on page 215 says "The first objective would be the hearts and brains of the eastern cities, then their viscera - the transport links - and finally any industrial manufacturing". The final paragraph says:
- "Weather conditions in the first week and second weeks of February were, as so often in the winter of 1944-5, poor. Despite this, a massive attack was indeed mounted against Berlin by the U.S. Eight Air Force, just as General Spaatz had promised. On February 3, almost a thousand B-17 Flying Fortresses attacked Berlin in daylight. Marshalling yards through the vast urban area were the official targets, with the importance if the raid underlined by the belief that the Sixth Panzer Army was moving through the German capital on its way to the Russian front."
- The next page goes into details about the raid and on page 217 "Some claim that this was 'area bombing' by the Americans in all but name, and in this they had some justification." and in the next paragraph "The next day, February 4, with the ruins of Berlin's Regierungsviertel still smouldering, the 'Big Three'... began their first formal meeting...". The clincher of what the real target was whatever the official documents say is to look at what the mix of ordinance carried by the B-17. Was it a railway or city busting mix? But unfortunately Taylor does not do this analysis as he does in the Dresden raid, but he does however write on page 216,
- "Two thousand tons of air ordnance was dropped in less than an hour, including more than six thousand high-explosive bombs, a thousand air mines, and about the same quantity of liquid incendiary canisters. A witches brew fit to make a firestorm, But the failure of the second wave to capitalize on the concentrated bombing achieved by the first saved Berlin from the fate of Hamburg and Kassel."
- I do not think either Grayling or Taylor is wrong. As with Dresden, the target could have been railways but with the right ordianace mix (the very large area of Berlin at that time covered with marshaling yards station etc), and the known bomb scattering, the effect would be the same as an area bombardment. BTW a check of the German Sixth Panzer Army article shows that they did move from the Western Front (Battle of the Bulge) to the Eastern Front (Operation Frühlingserwachen) around this time although there is no conformation exactly when the moved or if they moved through Berlin.--Philip Baird Shearer 08:22, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
OK thanks for all that. My summary is that
- the Allied leaders decided to bomb the crap out of Berlin and other eastern cities to aid the Russian advance.
- the 3 Feb raid was really area bombing whatever it was called.
- Probably but I think you need a source like Taylor's "Some claim that this was 'area bombing' by the Americans in all but name, and in this they had some justification." because it is controversial. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
- the US was still squeamish about area bombing in Europe (tho not in Japan), so the fig-leaf pretext about marshalling yards etc was given out to make them feel better.
- Targeted stratigic bombing may still have been U.S. policy at this time in the Far East. The first fire raid took place on December 18 against Hankow, leaving it burning for 3 days, but that was an interdiction strike (because of Operation Ichi-Go). I am not sure when the policy officialy changed allowing the massive incendiary attacks on sixty-four Japanese cities. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
- I suspect that the U.S. position on strategic targeted bombardment was legal position based on the inter-war draft proposals for aerial warfare, as much or more than the moral/squeamish one. On this legal position the British and the America may have differed in late 1944. However once once the U.S. decided adopted stratigic area bombardment in the Far East (and then dropped of the atomic bombs), their legal interpretaion of the laws of war in this area ended up the same as the British. There is a description of treaties etc. under Area bombardment#Aerial area bombardment and international law --Philip Baird Shearer 11:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
- VI Pz may or may not have been passing through the city at the time, but even if it was, this was also only a pretext.
-
- Yes but the Allies though it was, and the evidence available on Wikipedia does not contradict this. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
-
Do you agree? If so I will work this up into an NPOV para and put it in the article.
- I think it is fairy close to that now. But as always a Wikipedia article can be improved --Philip Baird Shearer 09:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
On war production, I am just starting on Adam Tooze's massive tome on the Nazi economy, Wages of Destruction - when I finish it I will be expert enough to write the Economic history of Nazi Germany. My present understanding, however, from Grayling's comments about the effectiveness of area bombing, is that German war production continued to rise until the start of 1945 when they ran out of oil. Since Berlin was a major manufacturing centre, I presume that was true for Berlin as well. Adam 08:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Start of the RAF's 'Battle of Berlin'
Moved to: Talk:Battle of Berlin (air)#Start of the RAF's 'Battle of Berlin'
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