@carissamjohnson To my knowledge, (and I studied the air attack), the Americans did hit and damaged the buildings. However what was not anticipated by the military planners, that the heavy machinery left largely intact under the rubble. They also underestimated the Germans' ingenuity to substitute ball bearings with simple, plain bearings (or sleeve bearings) in most applications. All in all, this attack was a bloody fiasco, where the losses far outweighed the damage caused by the raid.
@wotan20 You are correct in every detail... it's such a pity that so many young men perished or were captured on this raid... My understanding is that nearly a thousand active 8th air force crew were written off as captured or killed on this one raid.
@MrOrmesby Thank you. You're very kind. The thousand per raid loss (there were 2 schweinfurt raids) is definitely in the ballpark, because at each raid, 60 bombers were shot down from the sky (out of 240), which meant the immediate loss of 600 crewmembers from the line of duty in one way or another. That leaves 400 other losses on the remaining planes, which were lucky enough to get home. That is -in my estimation- a realistic figure.
wow- what a smooth landing at 0:40...brilliant pilots...brilliant plane...saved many lives- lots of great stories about that plane bringing its crew home with ridiculous damage
how can they say they bombed accurately? they missed their target and never got the factory
carissamjohnson 1 year ago
@carissamjohnson To my knowledge, (and I studied the air attack), the Americans did hit and damaged the buildings. However what was not anticipated by the military planners, that the heavy machinery left largely intact under the rubble. They also underestimated the Germans' ingenuity to substitute ball bearings with simple, plain bearings (or sleeve bearings) in most applications. All in all, this attack was a bloody fiasco, where the losses far outweighed the damage caused by the raid.
wotan20 8 months ago
@wotan20 You are correct in every detail... it's such a pity that so many young men perished or were captured on this raid... My understanding is that nearly a thousand active 8th air force crew were written off as captured or killed on this one raid.
MrOrmesby 2 weeks ago
@MrOrmesby Thank you. You're very kind. The thousand per raid loss (there were 2 schweinfurt raids) is definitely in the ballpark, because at each raid, 60 bombers were shot down from the sky (out of 240), which meant the immediate loss of 600 crewmembers from the line of duty in one way or another. That leaves 400 other losses on the remaining planes, which were lucky enough to get home. That is -in my estimation- a realistic figure.
wotan20 2 weeks ago
wow- what a smooth landing at 0:40...brilliant pilots...brilliant plane...saved many lives- lots of great stories about that plane bringing its crew home with ridiculous damage
unkowndrunkenfrankli 2 years ago