Butt Report

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The Butt Report ( German  Butt Report ) was a military report submitted in August 1941 on the effectiveness of British air raids during the Second World War . The report reveals major weaknesses in the accuracy of British bomber groups .

Content of the report

The report was suggested by Professor Frederick Lindemann , a friend of Winston Churchill and a scientific advisor to the British Cabinet. He commissioned his assistant David Bensusan-Butt, who gave the report its name, to evaluate 633 aerial photographs in order to compare the hits reported by the bomber crews with the photographs. The results were first distributed to cabinet members on August 18, 1941. Many bomber crews struggled to correctly find, identify, and hit targets. Specifically, the report says:

“Any examination of night photographs taken during night bombing in June and July points to the following conclusions:

  1. Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within 5 miles.
  2. Over the French ports, the proportion was two in three; over Germany as a whole, the proportion was one in four; over the Ruhr it was only one in ten.
  3. In the full moon, the proportion was two in five; in the new moon it was only one in fifteen. ...
  4. All these figures relate only to aircraft recorded as attacking the target; the proportion of the total sorties which reached within 5 miles is less than one-third. ...

The conclusion seems to follow that only about one-third of aircraft claiming to reach their target actually reached it. "

"All evaluations of the aerial photographs taken at night in the reporting period June and July [1941] allow the following conclusions:

  1. Of all the observing bombers that were supposed to attack a target, only 1/3 reached a radius of [8 kilometers] around the target to be found.
  2. Over the French ports the ratio was 2/3, over the whole of Germany 1/4 and over the Ruhr area only 1/10.
  3. At a full moon the ratio was 2/5 and at a new moon only 1/15. ...
  4. All of these statements relate only to bombers that claim to have attacked a target. The number of bombers that, taken together, reached a radius of 8 kilometers around the potential target, was only 1/3. ...

From this it can be concluded that only a third of the aircraft whose crews stated that they had reached their destination actually made it. "

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Maurice W. Kirby: Operational Research in War and Peace: The British Experience from the 1930s to 1970. World Scientific Pub. Co., 2003. ISBN 978-1860942976 . P. 135 ( Google Books ).
  2. Max Hastings: Bomber Command. Pan Macmillan, 1999. ISBN 978-0330392044 .
  3. Norman Long Mate: The Bombers: The RAF Offensive Against Germany 1939-1945. Hutchinson, 1983. ISBN 0091515807 . P. 121.

literature