World Battlefronts: The Case for Precision

In 1918, after four years of blockade, German industry was down 30%. Today it is off precisely the same percent on the tally sheets of Britain’s Ministry of Economic Warfare—and half the drop has occurred in the six months since Allied air power grew up. This week the Eighth Air Force tabulated its daytime share of the bag.

The record was an argument for daytime precision bombing. It was also a lesson in the limitations of all bombing: many a city and installation (Emden, Hüls), supposedly devastated, was still a going target for more & more bombings. Highlights:

Aircraft Repair and Storage Depots: Severe damage to two of the largest depots—Méaulte and Romilly-sur-Seine; heavy damage to repair shops at Antwerp, Brussels, Le Bourget, Meulan-les-Mureaux, Nantes; considerable damage to the Gnôme-et-Rhône plant at Le Mans; light damage to Paris’ Hispano-Suiza plant, destruction to Paris’ Caudron Renault shop; Villacoublay was marked “most severe.”

Single-Engine Aircraft Construction: Focke-Wulf assembly and component plants hit at Bremen (considerable damage, plant abandoned), Kassel (one considerable, one negligible), Oschersleben (light), Warnemunde (light), Marienburg (devastated), Anklam (most severe); Messerschmitt 109G plants severely damaged at Regensburg and Wiener-Neustadt; Paris Renault plant heavily damaged.

U-Boat Construction: Attacks on 13 yards, accounting for 80% of production. Hamburg (three yards) most severely, Kiel (three yards) and Vegesack all heavily damaged; Wilhelmshaven (considerably), Flensburg (lightly), Danzig (two yards), Bremen and Emden all negligibly.

U-Boat Bases: Eight of eleven operational bases attacked. Brest (very light), Lorient (considerable), St. Nazaire (very heavy), La Pallice (severe), Trondheim (most severe), Helgoland (very light), Bordeaux (very light permanent damage), Gdynia (negligible material damage, considerable morale destruction by shattering sense of security). Concrete pens for U-boats, heavily bombed many times, were damaged only at Trondheim.