(1940–1945)

The attempts to carry the aerial war to the capital of the Third Reich and draw out the Luftwaffe in its defense. Before August 1940, Berlin remained unscathed by Royal Air Force bombers. In that month, however, RAF Bomber Command launched two attacks in retaliation for the Luftwaffe’s bombing of London. Executed by Vickers Wellington, Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, and Handley Page Hampden twin-engine bombers flying at the extremity of their ranges, the raids did very little damage and killed few people. They nonetheless marked the beginning a years-long campaign to take the war to Hitler’s center of power. In what became the RAF’s largely nighttime “city-busting” campaign, the objective was to sap German morale and cripple their industry by “dehousing” workers. If factories and administrative centers were hit as well, then so much the better. Such tactics rested principally upon early RAF bombers’ ineffective defensive armament in daylight and a lack of accurate bombsights. Even the RAF’s introduction of the four-engine Short Stirling and Handley Page Halifax bombers in 1941 and the superb Avro Lancaster in early 1942 did not significantly alter this operational doctrine.

Nevertheless, the weight of Bomber Command’s assault on Berlin and other cities grew accordingly, and the Eighth Air Force of the U.S. Army Air Forces soon joined the fray. In late 1943, the RAF launched a sustained effort to pulverize the Reich capital. Building on the successful 1,000-bomber raids of 1942, Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris believed that Berlin’s destruction would cost Germany the war. On 18 November, Harris ordered 444 heavy bombers to Berlin. Of that number only nine were lost. Harris, encouraged, kept up the effort. Bomber Command sent in 15 more major attacks by the end of March 1944. From the 9,111 sorties, 492 bombers failed to return. Another 95 crashed at their bases, and 859 others suffered battle damage. These raids did not include yet another 16 smaller harassing attacks during the same period. Altogether more than 1,000 RAF bombers of all types were lost during the efforts against Berlin.

Up to this time, the Eighth Air Force had not participated in the raids on Berlin. It was still recovering from severe losses suffered in the second half of 1943, during the raids on Schweinfurt and Regensburg. Its efforts were also affected by diversions to the newly established Fifteenth Air Force in Italy. The Eighth’s effort against Berlin took shape, however, under the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) directive of 13 February 1944. The directive specified targeting Berlin whenever possible. Planners reasoned, in part, that the Luftwaffe would fight for the city, as it would fight for no other; and the consequent destruction of the Luftwaffe’s planes, pilots, and infrastructure by the Allies’ aerial forces remained the CBO’s primary objective.

As over targets such as Hamburg in 1943, the RAF bombed at night, the Eighth Air Force during daylight. The dramatic difference in early 1944 was the presence of long-range escorts, principally North American P-51 Mustangs, that were able to accompany the bombers all the way to the target (indeed, beyond it) and back. The replacement of any German pilots killed became increasingly difficult due to the Luftwaffe’s simultaneously constricted resources on the ground. That weakening of German airpower, in turn, would make an Allied invasion of northwestern Europe that much more likely to succeed. On 4 March 1944, the Eighth Air Force carried out its first daylight raid on the German capital. Three additional attacks followed before month’s end. They comprised some 1,700 sorties by Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and Consolidated B-24 Liberators escorted by hordes of fighters. Specific targets included the VKF Erkner ball-bearing facility, the Bosch electrical works at Klein Machow, and the Daimler Benz engine factory at Genshagen.

The Luftwaffe reacted fiercely throughout. For example, 69 of the Eighth Air Force’s big bombers fell on 6 March alone, losses as high as over Schweinfurt and Regensburg in 1943. In exchange, 81 German fighter aircraft were shot down on that same day. Still, the Eighth continued its effort throughout the rest of 1944 and into 1945 though the regularity of attacks on Berlin decreased. In addition, Fifteenth AF bombers executed their first large raid on the city on 24 March 1945, a mission exceeding 1,500 miles in total distance. The consequence, as Harris put it, was “the wrecking of Berlin from end to end,” though Germany did not lose the war as a result.

Heavy and effective Luftwaffe flak served as Berlin’s ground-based defense. As late as the Eighth Air Force’s raid of 3 February 1945, these guns clawed fully 25 heavy bombers from the skies. In addition, radar-directed day- and night-fighters rose to defend the city. They included late-model Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s carrying heavy machine guns, cannons of up to 30mm, and, occasionally, air-to-air rockets. Also attacking the bombers were radar-equipped twin-engine Bf 110s armed (at night) with the dreaded Schräge Musik (Jazz Music) twin 30mm cannon designed to fire diagonally into the bombers’ ventral surfaces. One twin-engine fighter, the follow-on Me 410 Hornisse (Hornet), even mounted a massive 50mm cannon—a true bomber-killer. Most fortunately for Allied airmen over Berlin, the potential of the elegant but deadly Me 262 Schwalbe (Swallow) cannon-armed jet fighter never materialized. Neither did that of the extraordinary Me 163 Komet (Comet) rocket-propelled interceptor.