Big Week
With Big Week ( eng. For , Great Week ' , code name: operation argument ) was a series of Allied air raids during the Second World War on specially selected targets of the German defense industry between the ages of 20 and 25 February 1944 respectively. The Americans ( USAAF ) and the British ( RAF ) deployed around 6,000 bombers and 3,670 escort fighters for this purpose. The decisive phase of the Allied air war against the German Reich began with Big Week . The Americans and British intended to destroy the German air force as planned by destroying the aircraft factories and engaging in a battle against the fighter planes .
prehistory
Since the aerial battles over the English Channel and England in the summer of 1940, which later went down in history as the " Battle of Britain ", uninterrupted Allied operations had tied forces of the German Air Force on the Western Front.
Initially, the RAF led mixed formations of a few medium-weight bombers and up to 240 fighter aircraft over German armament targets in France. These formations, also called "CIRCUS" by the British , had the purpose of raising the German interceptors and engaging them in aerial battles. The underlying intention was, just as in the Battle of Britain with the opposite sign, to weaken the German air defense through attrition .
When the USA entered the war in December 1941, the material battle in Europe took on new dimensions. Four-engine bombers with strong defensive armament were flown in incessantly from the USA via Greenland and Iceland to England to be stationed there ( "aircraft carrier England" ).
While the RAF intensified the night attacks against targets in Germany and continued the "CIRCUS" operations during the day, the forces of the 8th Air Force ( "Mighty Eighth" ) prepared day attacks with and without escort fighters .
The 1943 Casablanca Conference led to an open clash of two views on the bombing war to be waged against Germany . While the Commander in Chief of the RAF Bomber Command strictly called for night attacks, the Commander of the 8th Air Force Major General Ira Eaker could not be dissuaded from the day bomber strategy. Ultimately, they agreed to the " Combined Bomber Offensive " (CBO) (dt. "Combined Bomber Offensive" ), which established a division of missions between RAF (night) and USAAF (day). Theorists of the strategic bombing war believed they could force Germany to surrender from the air alone. Lossy night attacks, especially against Berlin, were the result. The daytime attacks by the USAAF against targets of the arms industry in the Ruhr area were also extremely lossy due to the heavy resistance of the Air Force. After the extremely loss-making Operation Double Strike in August 1943, the USAAF initially refrained from deploying deep into enemy territory.
In January 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower , coming from the theater of war on the Mediterranean Sea , took command of the Allied forces in England to lead Operation Overlord , the invasion of Normandy . With him came as a member of the "Air Team" Lt. Gene. James H. Doolittle , who joined the 8th Air Force from Lt. Gene. Eaker took over.
From now on the priorities were set differently: The aim of the upcoming attacks was now the destruction of the German fighter planes , since air supremacy over the operational areas of the invasion was absolutely necessary. With this in mind, Doolittle gave the order to the escort fighters to follow the German fighter planes to their bases and to attack them during take-off and landing.
Preparations for “Big Week” began at the end of 1943 under the code name “Argument” . The operation should start as soon as the weather permitted.
aims
The main aim of this large-scale bombardment was the permanent destruction of German aircraft production by destroying the final assembly plants in particular.
Massive resistance from the German Jagdwaffe was expected, especially from the experienced pilots of Jagdgeschwader 2 and Jagdgeschwader 26 stationed on the Channel coast . By involvement in aerial battles with the now available long-range fighters of the P-51 Mustang type , supported by other short and medium-range fighters, it was hoped that the German hunting rifle would be defeated in a single week.
Another aim of the intensified attacks in the context of the strategic air war was to break the morale and will to go to war of the German population, and here mainly the civilian population.
The 8th Air Force stationed in Great Britain , the 15th Air Force stationed in Italy and the RAF were supposed to carry out precision attacks in order to carry out such attacks every day for a whole week, even with the greatest risks and expected serious losses of people and material.
procedure
February 20, 1944, a Sunday, was chosen as the starting date because of the forecast favorable general weather conditions . Major-General Anderson at the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe (USSTAF) headquarters gave the order to attack. US General Doolittle , already famous at the time , sent 1,003 heavy US B-17 and B-24 bombers , protected by hundreds of escort fighters (mainly P-47 Thunderbolt ), against twelve targets in Germany and occupied territories.
On the first day of the "Big Week" , the bombers and fighter planes first attacked aircraft factories and railway facilities in Braunschweig , Oschersleben ( AGO ), Helmstedt (alternative destination instead of the Junkers plant in Halberstadt , which was under thick clouds ) and Leipzig ( Erla-Werke ) , also the Tutow airfield with the Arado assembly plant and, in occupied Poland, the Focke-Wulf plant in Posen (“ Reichsgau Wartheland ”). The operations of February 20, 1944 had been the USAAF's largest strategic offensive operation in Europe to date. Before that, Magdeburg , Berlin , Dresden and Hamburg had already become destinations.
The destinations in Braunschweig were two MIAG factories in which parts for the Messerschmitt Bf 110 were produced. 76 US B-24 Liberator aircraft were to attack this target. At about 1.30 p.m. they were via Braunschweig; However, the cloud cover over the city was too low, so that most of the bomb load fell on residential areas in the city, the Wilke and Luther works and the Karges-Hammer machine works , but almost nothing fell on the MIAG works. The attack killed 110 people in Braunschweig and 2,000 were left homeless.
For the first time in the air war it reported the pilots of P-51 escort fighters, they were of German Me 262 - jet fighters attacked. Whether this sighting corresponded to the facts is doubtful; however, it could have been training flights for the planes designed as "lightning bombers". None of the fighter squadrons in action had been equipped with this type at the time.
On February 21, in addition to various airfields in northern Germany, the main target of the attack was the Lower Saxony Motor Works (NIEMO) in Querum , then a suburb of Braunschweig. NIEMO built aircraft engines from Daimler-Benz and BMW under license: in 1944 alone 6,000 units. At around 3:30 p.m. they were attacked by 81 bombers, which dropped around 500 medium-caliber high explosive bombs . Here, too, the cloudiness prevented a precise targeting, which meant that the NIEMO plant was hardly hit, but residential areas and fields were hit. On that day, 26 deaths were registered in Braunschweig.
On February 22nd, 289 B-17 bombers were sent against targets in the aviation industry: The Junkers factories in Aschersleben (34 planes) , Bernburg- Strenzfeld (47 planes) and Halberstadt (18 planes ). 15 aircraft attacked the BRABAG - Hydrierwerk and Krupp-Gruson in Magdeburg on. Bünde (32 machines) as well as Wernigerode (19) and Marburg (9 machines) were bombed as “target of opportunity” .
The 15th Air Force from Foggia (Italy) bombed the Messerschmitt factories in Regensburg -Prüfening and Obertraubling as well as the Steyr Daimler Puch factories in Steyr (Upper Austria) belonging to the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" .
On February 24, the Americans' daily destinations were the Gothaer Waggonfabrik (Gotha) and again the Focke-Wulf-Werk in Posen-Kreising. The British bombed ball bearing factories in Schweinfurt during the night .
The next day two more attacks on Schweinfurt followed: the Americans during the day, the British again at night. This tactic was used by the Allies as a "double blow" (dt .: double strike called) and proved to be quite effective.
Also on the 25th, the Bachmann aircraft repair plant from Blumenthal & Co. KG was targeted in an attack on Fürth . Augsburg shared the same fate, where the Messerschmitt factory was to be destroyed by an attack by around 600 bombers (see the article Air raids on Augsburg ).
Result
In total, the "Mighty Eighth" flew 3,300 combat missions during Big Week; the 15th Air Force 500 and the RAF supported through five night raids.
The 8th. and the 15th Air Force lost 226 bombers and 28 fighters with a total crew of 2,600 in that one week. British losses totaled 157 aircraft.
Especially on the last day and in the attacks on Augsburg (USAAF by day) and on Nuremberg (RAF by night), the losses of the Allies were great - greater than had been expected and bearable. The 15th US air fleet that flew from Italy lost 19% of its aircraft and the RAF via Nuremberg 6.6% at night. The result was that no more attacks were flown on the German aircraft industry until further notice.
In February 1944, the German Air Force lost a total of 225 pilots to death and 141 to wounding. A total of 258 hunting machines were lost on the German side during Big Week.
There is also hardly any reliable material about the exact losses of the German civilian population , since the German side could not establish a direct connection with the Big Week. There are no losses at all among prisoners of war , forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners , as statistics were almost never kept on them.
German aircraft production was set back by about two months as a result of the attacks, it fell from 2,077 (January 1944) to 1,671 in February, which, however, did not meet the expectations of the Allies by far . In March 1944 it was already back at 200 aircraft more than in January and in June 1944 twice as many combat aircraft were produced as in February.
In addition, the Big Week meant that German aircraft production was decentralized or outsourced even more (than had already happened before), so that in 1944 the German side reached the highest emissions of fighter aircraft during the entire war. After the war, Hermann Göring admitted that quality suffered from mass production, especially from decentralized final production. In mid-1944, complaints from German pilots about the poor quality of the fighters increased. According to Göring, those responsible in the armaments ministry, which was made responsible for aircraft production immediately after Big Week, were more interested in high numbers of fighter aircraft than in the production of spare and wear parts. The operational readiness of the units sometimes fell below 50%. In 1945 final assembly was centralized again.
The German hunting rifle could not be completely destroyed during a week, but the loss of combat-experienced pilots during the day hunt was devastating. In just one month, the Air Force lost 17.9% of its fighter pilots. The Allied Air Forces could deduce from this that they could gain air supremacy whenever and wherever they sought it.
The successes of the German night hunt were alarming and reached their climax in March 1944, when 95 RAF bombers were shot down over Berlin in one night. This unequal day / night ratio persisted until after the invasion on June 6, 1944: the Allies owned the sky without restrictions during the day, the Luftwaffe at least partially at night.
The desired demoralization of the civilian population was in part noticeable and expressed itself, for example, in the increasing dissemination of political jokes as bitter criticism of the warring regime, but beyond that it had no beneficial effect for the Allies. The Nazi propaganda used the desperation of the bombed-out population to implement their slogans of “ total war ”. It was hoped that the war would end quickly, and with it the suffering, largely from the use of the long-promised “ miracle weapons ” .
literature
- Federal Minister for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims (Ed.): The aerial warfare over Germany 1939–1945. German reports and press comments from neutral foreign countries. dtv documents, Munich 1964.
- Roger Freeman: The Mighty Eighthy War Diary. London 1981.
- Werner Girbig: 1000 days over Germany. The 8th American Air Force in World War II. Munich 1964
- Eckart Grote: Target Brunswick. 1943-1945. Air raid target Braunschweig. Documents of Destruction. Heitefuß, Braunschweig 1994, ISBN 3-9803243-2-X .
- Martin Middlebrook: The night the bombers died. The attack on Nuremberg and its consequences for the aerial warfare. Frankfurt (Main), Berlin, Vienna 1975.
- Markus Pöhlmann : It was just as if everything was going to burst. Augsburg in the bombing war, Munich 2019 , ISBN 978-3-86222-282-7 .
- Rudolf Prescher : The red rooster over Braunschweig. Air raid protection measures and aerial warfare in the city of Braunschweig 1927 to 1945. Braunschweig 1955.